[rescue] Sol9 on old x86

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 03:55:11PM +0000, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> > I know that some people (DaveM) would say otherwise, but I think that
> > Solaris 9 is still quite usable on a dual SM71 machine.  Certainly as
> > usable as Irix 6.5.20 on a R5k/180.
> 
> I suspect that DaveM would agree, for a sufficently "trim" install of
> Solaris 9, and that the machine is run as a server/headless and has
> ample RAM for the required task... 

Having argued with him about it (he advocates NetBSD on such hardware),
the only concession I could get is that Sol9 on Sparc32 is only
appropriate when using hardware with no NetBSD drivers or software that
won't run on NetBSD.

Which is actually what I do.  I have one SS20 (dual SM61s) running
NetBSD 1.6.2[0].  I have another SS20 (dual SM71s) running Solaris to make use
of the onboard FDDI card[1].

[0] I haven't built a SMP kernel for it yet.  Building NetBSD on my
    Ultra5 takes approximately 24 hours, and I still having some minor
    problems with the process.  I wan't to get that worked out before
    tampering with the SS20 that I actually use for real work.
[1] This machine isn't actually in use.  It was, but the motherboard
    died.  I replaced it, but haven't put the machine back into use
    since doing so.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/