[geeks] Super Sun3

[Sam Creasey]

On Thu, 17 May 2001, Brian Hechinger wrote:

> > I was surfing ebay, and I saw this Dual MC68040 VME Single Board Computers
> > (http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1236413911).
>
> ok, that's just cool as hell.

Tell me about it, I just bid on a couple of the things. :)

> > The following occured to me.  Many Sun3 owners run NetBSD, OpenBSD, or
> > linux instead of SunOS.  So, one could take 4 or these boards, cram them
> > into a Sun3/160 chassis, and run linux SMP with Mosix patch on them.
> > Thus, making a Super Sun3.
>
> does linux run on a sun3? i'm one of those *BSD bigots, so i'm not even sure.
> i do know that you shouldn't have too much trouble getting these to work with
> NetBSD.  i will definitely grab a few and add them to my list of unsupported
> by NetBSD hardware that i'm going to attempt to get working.  hell, i can even
> plug them into my SGI 4d boxes which have VME and work on AMP (Asymetric MP)
> or something like that. :)

Linux does run on sun3.  I maintain the 3/3x, acutally.  (shameless self
promotion).   It has the downside that I'm a very lazy maintainer, so
there's no installer, or distribution, or really anything of the sort.
There are redhat RPMS which you need to find some way to make a root
filesystem (nfs or scsi) from...

I should really do something about that.

The real problem with this whole scheme is that linux/m68k isn't really
anywhere near being ready to go SMP.  (i suspect because none of the m68k
developers has ever gotten his hands on a multiprocessor m68k.)   That's
why I'm buying some of them....  it will if I have anything to say about
it. :)

-- Sam

Computer games don't affect kids. I mean if Pacman affected our generation as
kids, we'd all run around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to
repetitive music.
        -- Unknown