Trapped down a dark alley with nowhere else to go, Sun is ready to restart takeover talks with IBM provided IBM puts more starch in its commitment to actually close the deal despite whatever regulatory hurdles it has to vault, according to Bloomberg, which has it from two people "familiar with the matter."

There was no mention of price in the wire service story.

It said that there had been no new talks as of Wednesday and that "each company is waiting for the other to make a move." Perhaps telegraphing IBM by way of Bloomberg will be the spark.

Sun's board reportedly rebuffed an IBM offer of about $7 billion almost two weeks ago as too low.

Supposedly IBM had trimmed the price it was willing to pay to somewhere between $9.10 and $9.40 a share after doing due diligence and after being asked for guarantees that it would acquire Sun no matter what trouble the pair run into with the regulators.

Sun was supposedly willing to take a lower price of $9.55, down a dollar, in exchange for such an undertaking.

Sun reportedly talked to HP last year and HP decided it wasn't interested. Cisco CEO John Chambers said Wednesday in Korea that if Cisco was interested it "would probably have already moved."