
History of SPARC systems from 1987 - ohjeez
http://www.sparcproductdirectory.com/history.html
======
nineteen999
Back in the 1990's I worked for a company that I think was the few independent
SPARC integrators in the southern hemisphere. We resold these units called
Sparcplugs created by Ross Technologies in Austin, Texas:

[https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-
Technology...](https://www.edn.com/electronics-news/4148519/ROSS-Technology-
Introduces-SPARCplug-Motherboard-and-ASIC-Chip-Set-for-Embedded-Applications)

Kind of cool idea, you could plug a HyperSPARC motherboard into a 5.25" floppy
bay of a PC. Never really took off though.

We also did custom UltraSPARC 1/2 machines in custom enclosures for the HK MTR
system which were used for monitoring air quality in the underground. We'd
tested them for reliability by pushing the cabinets off a six foot drop in the
loading bay of the warehouse to test whether they'd keep running in earthquake
conditions. Fun times.

Sparc might have had its warts and has obviously lost marketshare to the point
where it's no longer really viable for the most part. But all through the
1990's Sun hardware was everywhere, and it was nice to have a relatively
inexpensive alternative to Linux which was already making huge inroads
especially into the lower end, eg. ISP's etc.

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt: "the relatively low cost accessibility to semiconductor fabrication
using gate arrays. Chip manufacturers who needed high volumes to recoup their
capital investments of hundreds of millions of dollars (now billions) had
figured out a way of producing standard product families of chips called gate
arrays, which were identical except for the last few steps of the production
process which defined the interconnections. This enabled computer systems
companies to buy state of the art fabrication by effectively buying batches of
wafers on a time-share basis from a few thousand dollars upwards, instead of
the millions of dollars required previously."

