[LispM-Hackers] Kappa will be relocating

[James A. Crippen]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, John Morrison wrote:

> Hi;
> 
> "James A. Crippen" wrote:
> > In the not too distant future (this weekend probably) kappa will be
> > relocating to a new IP address.  It's moving from my office to my house.
> > It will also be changing computers, however I will be keeping all the
> > data.  My boss wants his Ultra 10 back for some strange reason so I'll be
> > doing some speed shopping for another UltraSparc system.  If I *can't*

I picked up an Ultra 5 off of eBay for $910.  It's got two spare PCI slots
so I can hang a SCSI card from it and eventually get a DAT drive for
backup, a RAID array, etc.  It's a 270MHz UltraSparc ii with 256KB of
cache and 128MB of memory.  The processor and memory are upgradable.

It's only got one slot for an IDE drive, but it does have a CD-ROM drive
installed which I might remove, or maybe I'll remove the floppy
drive.  Not sure.  In any case, I'll be working out somehow to transfer
the two IDE drives from the Ultra 10 (old Kappa) to the Ultra 5 (new
Kappa) without having to do a bunch of messy reinstallation and copying of
configuration files.  The move should be fairly painless excepting the IP
address change.

> Do you want a shitty old Sparc 1?  Or is that too slow for words?  Is it
> even the right "architecture" for Red Hat Linux?

Actually a Sparc 1 will run Linux well, better than it runs Slowlaris or
SunOS.  Linux is not as optimized on the 64b UltraSparc as it is on the
32b Sparc.  Linux is the ideal OS for 32b Sparc processor systems.  The
home for the Sparc port of Linux is http://www.ultralinux.org.  Look at
the FAQ on speed of UltraLinux (Linux/SPARC) versus SunOS and Slowlaris:
http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html#q_1_14
Very instructive.  Most of the MM changes in 2.4 have resulted in even
better memory and VM performance on older Sparc 32b hardware.

You should keep that box around for testing.  Red Hat 6.2 SPARC will
install on it without trouble, as long as you have enough disk space and
some sort of bootable SCSI CD-ROM drive.  You can also netboot it with
TFTP (I've done so with a SPARCclassic that I own) but it's a little bit
of a pain to get right, takes a couple of tries to do it.  You can get
RH6.2 SPARC from their FTP site or a suitable mirror.  ISO images should
be available, if not I can get you one from my copy.

Compiling the kernel on the Sparc 1 takes an awfully long time, though.  
It's a *really* slow processor, probably 33MHz or 50Mhz.  You can get
processor upgrades off of eBay for very cheap, likely < $50.  Then you'll
have a much more useful (although still a bit slow) machine.  That would
be great for testing the speed and operation on a Sparc 32b platform.  
You'll have to look at what Sun recommends for upgrade paths, and then go
hunt for the requisite processor upgrade on eBay.  Increasing memory on
the Sparc 1 and similar systems should be very cheap, since it uses 30 pin
parity SIMMs.  You can probably get them for a buck a piece if you search.
Upgrading graphics is a bit harder, and if you're just doing console mode
it's not really worth it anyway, since the Linux Sparc console is quite
usable and has a very good font (I think 132 columns, 50 lines?).  Much
better than the default console font you get from the boot PROM.

If you're really weird you can run NetBSD or OpenBSD on the system as
well.  And try porting e3 to it.  That'd be somewhat useful.  Somewhat...

:)
'james

-- 
James A. Crippen <james@unlambda.com> ,-./-.  Anchorage, Alaska,
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