Solbourne
Solbourne used to be an australian company working on high-performance SPARC
systems. They were able to deliver working multiprocessor systems runing a
modified version of SunOS called `OS/MP', while Sun opted to end the
developement of the SunOS code base and was still struggling to get
their System V flavour, nowadays known as `Solaris', stable.
After it became obvious that the multiprocessor battle would be eventually lost to Solaris, Solbourne tried to entered the workstation market with the not-as-expensive-as-Sun S3000 and S4000 systems, built around a Panasonic (Matsushita) clone of SPARC, the so-called `KAP' processor. KAP did not use any of the Sun MMU, and thus required a specific operating system, which was once again OS/MP (albeit in a single-processor flavour). Unfortunately, the early KAP processors were ridden with severe bugs, which did not help Solbourne gain market share.
After it became obvious that the multiprocessor battle would be eventually lost to Solaris, Solbourne tried to entered the workstation market with the not-as-expensive-as-Sun S3000 and S4000 systems, built around a Panasonic (Matsushita) clone of SPARC, the so-called `KAP' processor. KAP did not use any of the Sun MMU, and thus required a specific operating system, which was once again OS/MP (albeit in a single-processor flavour). Unfortunately, the early KAP processors were ridden with severe bugs, which did not help Solbourne gain market share.
Links
- Dr Carlo
Kopp's Solbourne history page
Dr Kopp was part of the Solbourne adventure, and tells an insider story.
Inventory
Here is the current Solbourne inventory.
- S4000 (ceroux)
- S4000DX (mezere)