[rescue] storing old Suns and parts

[silcreval]

Hi Walter

One thing I find with storing systems, is that its good to have some kind of plan to power them up at least once a year.

I cycle through most of my systems every 12 months.

The other thing is to avoid sealing things in plastic boxes etc. I find this seems to encourage oxidation unless your storage is temperature controlled.

Most of my systems are on open shelving in a dry but unheated  part of the house and generally I dont see much deterioration.

- Ian

> On 8 Apr 2026, at 20:21, Lionel Peterson via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> 
> Walter,
> 
> I apologize for asking, but why are you holding on to all this stuff?
> 
> Hear me out.
> 
> You are making a significant investment ("I've bought a garage"), to what end?
> 
> I've been to Dave McGuire's LSSM in PA, and I can understand what he's doing, but are your systems actually interesting enough to justify warehousing them? The devices you listed so far seem pretty common, and in need of repair/part replacement.
> 
> Ideally, the equipment should be stored in an environment as close to a traditional office environment, and maybe left plugged in to to perhaps extend the life of NVRAM parts (assuming the PS never really turns off).
> 
> I ask about your intentions because that will shape the responses.
> 
> A few years ago I significantly reduced my Sun collection, realizing that I could logically keep myself entertained/happy with one, high-spec U60 system, that various old SS/5, SS20, and Ultra 2 systems were just redundant and taking up too much space.
> 
> You don't have to justify your collection to me, but if we know your plans, we can make better suggestions.
> 
> Hope I didn't offend,
> 
> Ken
> 
>> On Apr 8, 2026, at 14:07, Walter Belgers via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Either my collection is too big, or my house is too small. I've thought about giving (most of) my collection to a museum, but this has been unsuccessful.
>> 
>> I've now bought a garage as storage. It's part of an appartment complex, so the temperature/moisture levels should be better than in a garage that has no heating/conditioning whatsoever. Of course, it will be much worse than in my home.
>> 
>> Any tips on storing stuff? Sparcstations and other Sun boxed, spare cards (sbus, VME), boxed with OSes on tape/CD, documentation, etc.
>> 
>> I was thinking about keeping the documentation and books at home. I want to put in (heavy duty) shelves for the systems, use big plastic boxes for parts. Maybe put some bags around the systems. A dehumidifier is not really an option I think, there is mains power, but I cannot go there very regularly to check on it.
>> 
>> I've just started to make an inventory of my stuff, seeing if the systems will still run after having been shelved so long. The first four systems: SPARCstation 20: still working! SPARCsystem Netra i4: one DIMM dead, disk dead, NVRAM empty (was fixed but battery empty again). SPARC Xterminal1, dead. SPARCstation 4: I had to hit the disk because of stiction but then it booted although NVRAM empty. I've built a whole bunch of GW-48T02-1 repair boards but I don't think I'll put them in at this time.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Walter.
>> _______________________________________________
>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue_sunhelp.org/attachments/20260408/b895b1f0/attachment-0001.html>