SPARCstation IPX (4/50) Specifications:
Processor(s)	Fujitsu MB86903 or Weitek W8701 @ 40MHz, FPU on CPU chip, Sun-4c MMU, 8 hardware contexts, 28.5 MIPS, 4.2 MFLOPS, 21.8 SPECint92, 21.5 SPECfp92, 517 SPECintRate92, 510 SPECfpRate92
Chassis type	lunchbox
Bus	SBus, 2 slots
Memory	64M physical; 64K write-through cache, direct-mapped, virtually indexed, virtually tagged, 32-byte lines
Architecture	sun4c
Notes	Code name "Hobbes". It takes 4M or 16M x 33 72-pin SIMMs. Onboard GX-accelerated cg6 color framebuffer (not usable with mono monitors, unlike SBus version). Picture of Hobbes (from Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip) silkscreened on motherboard. 1.44M 3.5" floppy.

The Cache is the large chip on the left with the gold center, the CPU is next to it - as the all black chip, and the all grey chip on the right side is the framebuffer controller. Note the 8 rectangular chips right below the framebuffer chip. This is the VRAM for the video.

Above the 3 "main" chips are the 2 black strips of SBUS connector, above those are the white strips that are the main RAM slots.

The performace of IPX can be further increased by using Weitek Power UP. The picture on right is of a Weitek Power UP CPU. The Power UP CPU is an internal "clock doubled" CPU and it operates at 80 MHz internally. It is pin to pin replacement for the regular 40 MHz sparc CPU. Price of this CPU ranges from $50-$100 on ebay :-).

The IPX and the SparcStation 2 are very similar performance-wise. Both use the same CPU, both clock in at 40Mhz, but can take the "power up", and both can take the RAM SBUS card that allows for another 64MB of RAM, for a total of 128MB. The SS2's only advantages are that it can hold an additional hard drive.

The CG-SIX framebuffer is built on the board so you don't need a framebuffer card but the CG-6 framebuffer is just a basic framebuffer with limited color capability and it is only good for light-weight graphics. If you run KDE or CDE on this box the preformance would be very slow. I prefer to run this box without monitor / keyboard / mouse as there is no need of them if you are running server apps on the box.

The size of the lunchbox is the prime factor why I like them. These lunchboxes stack very nicely, I have several of them stacked up on my desk and they look nice. You can also get a vertical stand for lunchboxes so that you can mount them vertically. There is only one cooling fan onboard and that cools the box very good. The upper part of the box contains the power supply, floppy drive and hard drive. The bottom half contains the motherboard and memory.

The older sun boxes used a 13W3 Connector for the video so the newer monitors that use a 15 pin HD Sub-D connector can't be used. There is an adapter that claims to run a regular SVGA monitor on a sparc, but not all 15 pin monitors run with that. The monitor has to be a multi-sync monitor to supporth the H-V frequency and the resolution that sun needs. One of the adapter is shown to the right. The adapter price ranges from $20 to $50 or maybe more depending on the vendor. My suggestion is that to ask the vendor whethor your monitor will work with that or not, or at least try before you buy. There are dedicated sites that have a circuit diagram of that converter. Try the lonks below for home-brewed adapters:
http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/faq/vga2rgb/interfacing.html

Memory Banks and Board Layout
Total Memory MEM1 U0407 MEM2 U0408 MEM3 U0409 MEM4 U0410 8MB 4MB   4MB   12MB 4MB 4MB 4MB   16MB 4MB 4MB 4MB 4MB 16MB 16MB       20MB 16MB   4MB   24MB 16MB 4MB   4MB 28MB 16MB 4MB 4MB 4MB 32MB 16MB   16MB   36MB 16MB 16MB 4MB   40MB 16MB 16MB 4MB 4MB 48MB 16MB 16MB 16MB   52MB 16MB 16MB 16MB 4MB 64MB 16MB 16MB 16MB 16MB