I agree with all of this.
For me, I think the best “I want the SPARC experience with minimum fuss” boxes are the SS 5/20 (which are very similar machines, the SS20 is sort of a multiprocessor SS5) or the Ultra 1/2 desktop workstations. All of those are SBUS machines (there are PCI machines with the Ultra 2 CPU and chipset, too, I think, but they’re not just called “Ultra 2”?).
I also think of Solaris 7 as peak Solaris, I don’t think you’re alone there @[email protected] . If you want something past Solaris 7, just go with OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana/etc. and do “new Solaris” whole hog.
I show 0.18.4, you may want to shift+reload. :-)