Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 15:15:58 -0800 (PST) From: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com> To: Brian Handy <handy@sag.space.lockheed.com> Cc: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Beginning SPARC port Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971210141829.19030C-100000@paladio> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.971210120907.24073I-100000@sag.space.lockheed.com>
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On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, Brian Handy wrote: > Now, I know we have quite a few older Sparc 10's and such running around > that seem like they're getting along in vintage. I'm not going to be able > to liberate any of these, but it suggests to me there probably is a bunch > of this sort of stuff out there for cheap. How different are the > different Sparc's? If people want to start hunting for one, is this like > the alpha fiasco -- you need "this" model in order to play? I don't think it will be as bad as having to have a particular model. However, whenever I or anyone else at some point says, "Such and such works," it's necessarily implicit that it works on the hardware it was tested on, and that if you have something else, you may not see the same results. Sun has several different lines of machines, and honestly I'm not too clear on how many differences there are between them, or even what all of the lines are. The first SPARC I ever sat at was a SPARC 20 running Solaris 2.5, followed shortly thereafter by an Ultra (before they were released). With enough input from people using older machines, I expect we'll be able to get it running on lots of different Sun hardware. > Also, from the viewpoint of us clueless user-types, can anybody wax on the > advantages of buying a Sparc platform? My familiarity is mostly with > x86's and Alphas...not many suns in-house. "Why will my next h/w be a > sun?" :-) The hardware is plain out better quality than what you normally find in the PC world. They always use parity RAM! When parts fail, you can usually tell which part failed, because the system is helpful in figuring it out. Sun hardware designers generally pay better attention to detail, so that there aren't silly bottlenecks in the final product. Traditionally, Suns have also been very spendy, though some of the newer PCI-based machines are dropping into the price range mere mortals can afford. On the down side, they sell a hardware/software bundle (you can buy them separately, but until recently there were no other notable OSes to run, so Solaris was it), which means you see some of the same proprietary attitudes as Apple (Open Boot PROM, for example, is a major stumbling block for an OS port), though Sun seems to mostly sell proprietary implementations of open specifications. Jason Jason Evans Email: [jasone@canonware.com] Home phone: [(650) 856-8204] Quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison]
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