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Date:      Wed, 30 Dec 1998 09:40:24 -0700
From:      Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
To:        Paolo Di Francesco <paipai@tin.it>
Cc:        freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Read this...
Message-ID:  <368A5778.F86A2695@softweyr.com>
References:  <19981230160105.CCMM25116.fep04-svc@winworkstation>

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Paolo Di Francesco wrote:
> 
> > Curiosity begs me to ask why you are so eager to work on a USparc port if you
> > neither have the hardware nor the funds to get the hardware? I can understand
> > people who have hardware around, or people who have a need for some hardware
> > which is better than PC and can buy some test hardware, but I can't readily
> > think of a reason why I'd be so eager to port to hardware I don't have nor
> > can't afford.
> 
> 1) I want to learn. I think kernel coding is good to learn new things.
> 
> 2) I don't like PC architectures. Personally, I think many persons
> don't understand if you want good performance from a system is not
> sufficient to upgrade the CPU, you have to change everything.
> So, a new architecture is interesting for me.
> 
> 3) I want to learn _new_ things. I have experience only on PCs. Few
> experience on SGI and SUN and I want to change this situation 8)
> 
> 4) I can buy a Sparc MB, but this means I can buy _only_ it. I have not
> enough money for the memory, disks, etc...
> 
> 5) Why not?

So why not buy an older SPARC, for far less money, and work on that?
Much of what you learn will be portable to the UltraSPARC system later
on, and these machines are fantastically reliable.

When Dayna Communications was "assimilated" into the Intel intranet in 
January of this year, they retired their DNS and mail server, which was 
a SPARCstation SLC manufactured in 1990.  When it was shutdown, it had
been up for over 200 days, because it had been neglected since the Intel
acquisition.  Before that, the engineer in charge of it would reboot it
twice a year, on Dec 24 and July 3, "just to be safe."  ;^)

-- 
             Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

Wes Peters                                                     +1.801.915.2061
Softweyr LLC                                                  wes@softweyr.com

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