Re: Sparcstation 670MP Operating Systems

From: Chris Newport (me_at_see-my-sig.invalid)
Date: 02/26/04 

Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:35:11 +0000

On Wednesday 25 February 2004 10:41 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Derek
Konigsberg wrote:

>>>A while back I picked up a Sparcserver 670MP. I had no idea if it worked
>>>or not, but it was free so that wasn't much of a turnoff. It sat idle
>>>for a while until I picked up a framebuffer card, and it fired up and
>>>tested the memory without issue.
>>>Now that I know that the thing works I want to go about getting some hard
>>>disks in it and getting the old beast up and running, but I'm unable to
>>>find a free (beer or speech) operating system that completely supports
>>>the
>>>machine. As far as I know Linux supports SMP but not the VME bus.
>>>NetBSD and OpenBSD supports the VME bus but not SMP.
>>>Any suggestions?
>
> Actually, you can run Solaris 8 (maybe even 9) on a SPARCserver 670MP,
> provided that your MBUS CPU modules are still supported (it's the same
> type
> of modules used in the SS10/SS20/SS1000/SS2000). However, you won't get
> VME support (that's ok, the 600-series also has SBus, and I doubt you'll
> run across any VME cards you really need anyways). Basically, you just
> have to hack the kernel to disable a section that essentially says "If
> this
> is a 600MP series machine, don't boot". In reality, the 600MP series is
> just a sun4m /w VME slots. So Solaris 8 will work just fine, albeit
> without VME support.
>
> http://lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick/sunshack/data/sunos_6x0.html
> (these instructions are for Solaris 2.6, but I've used them (albiet with
> some poking around, as the addresses in the 8 kernel are different) to
> successfully hack a Solaris 8 kernel)

It is rather simpler to use Solaris 2.5.1 which was the last to
properly support these machines. 

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