--- title: How A Single University Project Started Everything description: A talk at Vintage Computing Festival Berlin traces much of modern computing hardware back to Sun Microsystems. Andy Bechtolsheim, later Sun's co-founder,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-a-single-university-project-started-everything-sjujzpgzw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How A Single University Project Started Everything | daily.dev og:description: A talk at Vintage Computing Festival Berlin traces much of modern computing hardware back to Sun Microsystems. Andy Bechtolsheim, later Sun's co-founder,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-a-single-university-project-started-everything-sjujzpgzw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/sJUjZPgZW.png og:image:alt: How A Single University Project Started Everything og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How A Single University Project Started Everything **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A talk at Vintage Computing Festival Berlin traces much of modern computing hardware back to Sun Microsystems. Andy Bechtolsheim, later Sun's co-founder, designed a workstation CPU board around Motorola's 68000 processor while a postgraduate at Stanford University. Since the 68000 lacked an MMU, he built one externally using a bank of SRAM as the page table. That design formed the CPU board of the first Sun workstation. Sun supplied the same CPU board to other companies, including Silicon Graphics, whose first workstation used the same CPU, and it appeared in early Imagen laser printers and AppleTalk to Ethernet bridges. The original board was also used as a router, and that router software became part of Cisco's first product. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did Andy Bechtolsheim's Stanford workstation board need an external MMU for the 68000? The Motorola 68000 processor lacked a built-in memory management unit, which was required to run UNIX. Andy Bechtolsheim, then a postgraduate on the Stanford University Network project, implemented the MMU externally to the chip, using a bank of SRAM to serve as the page table. This design became the CPU board of the first Sun workstation. _Developers curious how early hardware constraints shaped today's systems can explore more retrocomputing deep dives on daily.dev._ ### How is Cisco's first router related to Sun Microsystems and Stanford? Cisco's first product used router software that originated from the same Stanford University Network CPU board that became the first Sun workstation. The board, designed by Andy Bechtolsheim around the Motorola 68000, had also been used as a router at Stanford, and that router software later became part of Cisco's first product. _Anyone tracing the roots of networking gear can find similar hardware history stories on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Apple1 Project](https://daily.dev/posts/apple1-project-a7qswoifh) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Sony’s First Computer](https://daily.dev/posts/sony-s-first-computer-1jojgc7ys) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Random adventures in electronics](https://daily.dev/posts/random-adventures-in-electronics-hxvfmbfss) · Two Stop Bits · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Linus Torvalds tells The Reg how Linux evolved from solo act](https://daily.dev/posts/linus-torvalds-tells-the-reg-how-linux-evolved-from-solo-act-p4kzkvymw) · The Register · 6 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#retrocomputing](https://daily.dev/tags/retrocomputing), [#computing-history](https://daily.dev/tags/computing-history) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-a-single-university-project-started-everything-sjujzpgzw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How A Single University Project Started Everything","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-a-single-university-project-started-everything-sjujzpgzw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-a-single-university-project-started-everything-sjujzpgzw"},"datePublished":"2026-10-27T23:05:53.069Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T23:37:13.432Z","description":"A talk at Vintage Computing Festival Berlin traces much of modern computing hardware back to Sun Microsystems. 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