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Jurassic SPARC... what is it?(As cool as it was, Jurassic SPARC was silly and has been retired in favor of: http://macflowerpot.com)The
Sun Box:
It's an iMac DV 400 motherboard in a Sun SPARCStation box. There are lots of old dead iMacs out there, mainly because the CRTs are starting to die on otherwise perfectly good computers. And with no television to see what you're doing, computing can be tedious. As the whole idea of doing anything Macaroni is to use OSX, I don't recommend a tray-loader machine. Stick with the later >350MHz iMacs. As well as iMacs, there are plenty of other machines past their sell-by date, like this Sun. I spent four years nursing one of these puppies, which was considered cutting edge hardware at the time. So it brought back some memories, but why grep and awk when you can OS X? It's the world's biggest and best Unix, so you can open a terminal and command line all day, or sit back and enjoy the friendliest and most robust HMI on the planet. How to make your very own Jurassic SPARC You will need: CRT-type iMac motherboard (loot and pillage) (This refers to the medieval 400MHz DV, although we'll be tweaking that to 500MHz.) Sun or any other pizza box enclosure - there are many to chose from. (local surplus store) Dell Optiplex Power Supply (eBay) Video cable (modified) Laptop-type heatpipe (eBay) Electronics, mechanical and computer experience Nerves of steel, preferably stainless, and a box of Band-Aids iMac Motherboard: Details here Strip down the iMac and save the motherboard, hard drive and ram. Sun SPARCstation Box: Details here Needs completely gutting - throw away everything. Yes, that bit as well. Power Supply: Details here Dell Optiplex GX100 or GX110 Power Supply. Video Cable: Details here Cut the video cable off an old monitor. Put it all together: Details here More mods and final tweaks, but will it work?
Proof it works:
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