when I was a student in the waning days of Sun, the SPARC/Solaris machines were impenetrable Big Iron guarded closely by the greybeards -- not to be touched by the likes of mere undergrads. Never really did get beyond noodling around with cast off gear from eBay, though I did get to enjoy a bit of it via the Sun DNA in SmartOS years later.
I did get to sit in front of the consoles that served the whole school (via telnet) and even hard rebooted them a few times and I wasn't even in a techy major. Just had good relations with the head of school IT. That much exposure was enough to crave a similar computing experience and that's when I installed Linux at home right after college.
cmdrk · · focus · HN ↗
dizhn · · focus · HN ↗