[SPARCbook] Tadpole patched Solaris 7 for $350.

[sunder]

The Archimage wrote:
> 
> Are you using 2.7 with the Tadpole patches?  How much were they?

$350.  They ship you a copy of their CD with all the patches, but no NCE,
so it's just like the patches for Solaris 2.6, except that the Solaris 7
CD you install from has the patches applied, so that means while you're
installing the SPARCbook doesn't overheat due the lack of power management
like with a normal 2.6 install.

So you get to use the command line tools - like in 2.6 and the free patches
you can download off their ftp site to configure the screen, mouse, sound
etc.

They also include a stock Sun boxed version of Solaris 7 workstation,
which you don't need to even bother opening - unless you want to skimpy
manuals in the box or the stuff on the other CD's.

The bad thing is that when I ordered it, I paid extra for 2-day fed-ex
and the Tadpole sales guy said "No problem" but I didn't receive it for
two weeks.  He didn't bother to tell me it was back ordered, and upon
several calls, each time, he told me, "Oh, yeah, we should get them in
in a day or two and I'll ship it immediatly."  He still charged me the
extra for the shipping. Bastage!

IMHO, if 2.6 is ok for what you need, stick with it, and save yourself
the $350.

7 does however offer better PCMCIA drivers and more of them. One of the
drivers included is a WAVELAN driver, but I think someone mentioned
that this is for the older 2Mb standard, not the 803.11b 11Mb cards.
I can't confirm this one way or another as I don't have either of
the cards.  So just assume 2Mb. :)

Now that Solaris 8 is out and 9 is in the works, having a later version
will help extend the usable life (in terms of third party software,
not GNU software which you could compile yourself of course) of your 
machine.  I bought it because I was using CodeForge which requires
Solaris 7, though once in a while the CodeForge guys were nice enough
to compile for MicroSparc and link against the motif libs included
with 2.6. :)

Would be nice if we were able to get Solaris 8 running on these boxes
as Sol 8 is the end of life product for the SPARC 4m platforms...
Unlikely unless some kind soul reverse engineers Tadpole's drivers and
writes new ones, but I digress...


A big huge warning if you do decide to plunk down the $350:

*** DO NOT *** patch the system with the recommended patches from Sun.
If you do, you'll find that Sun has upgraded their PCMCIA kernel hooks,
and anything that replaces the kernel or the PCMCIA drivers will cause
the PCMCIA port to fail.

Instead, download the entire recommended patch cluster and extract it,
then go through each of the patches and see if does anything to the 
kernel.  (search for *kernel* *unix* *pcmcia*, etc.)  remove these
patches from the cluster, or you'll be sorry.   Sadly, I haven't
seen (not that I've been to ftp.tadpole.com lately) patches to fix
this for Solaris 7.

Security wise, you should install and learn to use Darren Reed's IP
Filter package, especially since it's likely some of the kernel holes
fixed are security related. Also make sure you don't give others 
access to your sparcbook as again, you wouldn't have patched all the
holes.

I prefer using the 3com xjack card over the AUI cable and transceiver.
It's a tad bit slower, but there's less to carry and hook up, and these
things are damned heavy as is. :)  Besides, the built in modem is useless
at 14.4 as a modem - ok for faxing, but too slow for doing work...

So mind you, unless someone else tried the xjack version of that 3com
card, it's possible that it might NOT work with 2.6.  Still, you if
manage to buy some and they don't work for 2.6, I might be inclined to
buy one or two off you if they're in good working condition.  (Test it
on a PC etc.)

Still, it's a great little machine.  As some people noted here a while
ago, a sparcbook is nice as a firewall or router: you can throw in two
3com NIC's in the PCMCIA slots, use the built in modem for PPP 
dialin/out access, and ISDN, or add a 56K PCMCIA modem, etc. and 
since it's a notebook  and has a battery, you can think of it as having
a built in UPS. :^)


Although I haven't tried it on the sparcbook yet, I've just gotten a
Novatel Merlin - which is a 19.2Kbps PCMCIA CDPD wireless modem.  I
might try it when I get a chance to see if it works well.  The big
problem is the battery drain which is higher than on modems.  You
would still need a PC with a PCMCIA port or a windows notebook to 
configure the modem, but once configured, I hear that it just accepts
an AT command to work as a PPP server directly.

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