[rescue] You see a wild SPARCstation 20. What do?

[Majdi S. Abbas]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 04:26:33PM -0800, Robert Novak wrote:
> I pulled my old SS20 out of storage this weekend (in the course of cleaning
> out my early-2000s storage spaces), and I'm thinking about putting it into
> use somehow.
> 
> 1) What OS do you guys think I should run on it? I think I'm stuck with
> Sol9 and earlier (maybe even Sol8 and earlier?), or Open/NetBSD, and I've
> read that Open may be quirky on a MP system.

	You can run 9, but if you had the free licenses for 8 that may be
the route to go.

	Then again, don't listen to me, I've got one running 8, and one
running SunOS 4.1.4, so I may be a bit of a nut.

> 2) I guess this will depend on #1, but is it worth bumping up from 8x32MB
> to 6x or 8x64MB? It's relatively cost-effective... Also pondering a VSIMM
> for it, although I'm just as likely to run serial console.

	SS20 RAM is pretty cheap on eBay these days, I was able to max
mine out for about $20.  VSIMM will cut your capacity, go with the serial
console.

> 3) Are the SBUS GigE cards supported? I am not sure I have any anymore
> (just sent an E4500 for auction and left the SBUS cards in it), so I may
> just put a QFE or two in...

	Drivers can be hard to come by these days.  Not sure what the
point of a GigE card on SBus on old hardware is, though.  I'd be happy
with an hme.

> I'm pondering using it primarily as a router/firewall/proxy... would love
> to do fileservice but scsi isn't cost-efficient in terms of power and
> capacity for this apartment dweller.

	With Solaris, the qfe is an option, or slap 2 hmes in there.
It should proxy or NAT okay.  I wouldn't try to do fileservice even if
money weren't an object -- remember, these machines are 20 years old now.

	--msa