[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that Solaris 8 won't run

[Magnus Abrante]

> I know a few people inside of Sun involved with core OS work, and at no
> time have I heard anything that would point towards the dropping of h/w
> support being a marketing trick. 

Me neither.

We do droped the sun4c support in Solaris 8, but sun4c was borned 1989, 
and we sold the last sun4c box many years ago, i think its very unrealistic 
expecting sun to support such old hardware. 

The reason to why the sun4c was droped was most likely other reasons than 
commercial/marketing issues. 

Just take the IPX/SS2, the maximum amount of memory in those are 64 MB,
most of the other 4c's can take even less. Do you really want to run
Solaris 8 on an IPC with 48 mb memory? Well, perhaps you would, i'm 
running Solaris 7 on a IPC and its working without any problems, but still.

There has been four new generations of CPUs after the sun4c; sun4m, sun4d
Ultra I and Ultra II, and i think the work requierd to support sun4c, both 
from the software developers and the support organisation would be a lot 
more than its actually worth, this is however my own opinion.

And i know, some customers still have support on their sun4c boxes.

Regards,

	//Magnus Abrante
    /* This is my own opinion and has nothing to do with my employeer  */

	/* Quote:
	Sun4c - Born 1989, Expired 1999 - Rest In Peace

	Services in memory of the late platform will be held at a time and
	place to be determined. */