[SPARCbook] Re: P9000 Linux Framebuffer "kind of" working

[Michael Schwarz]

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> or you could run NetBSD or OpenBSD, both of which have had X11 support for
> the sparcbook 3 family (certainly those with the p9100 chip) "out of the
> box" with no fuss for years. No recompiling. No special kernels. I've run
> OpenBSD on my sparcbook from version 2.7 onwards (current is 3.2).
>
> I got my SB from someone else who was running OpenBSD on it then (hi bob)
> so it's been natively supported in the sparc port (but missing a few handy
> things like PCMCIA support :/) for a while. Like over five years even. The
> framebuffer is treated like a cg3 which is only 8-bit (and not the 24bit I
> understand my 3GS to be capable of but am unwilling to bear running a
> modern solaris with 32MB of RAM).
>
> I've been wondering if this would just work on an SB3 like yours. IIRC you
> didn't have a cdrom or some kind of fundamental boot device. I've
> installed Open & Net onto my 3GS using an install floppy and by netbooting
> (RARP+TFTP). I imagine I could install off tape too but I haven't been
> that much of a masochist. With OpenBSD it's easy enough to dd the cdrom
> boot image onto another disk partition or, I guess, tape. Once the install
> kernel and image is loaded you can clobber the disk partition and/or
> install from the network more conventionally (DHCP & then
> HTTP/FTP/NFS/whatever)

Linux also supports the P9100.  The older Sparcbook 3 (with the 50MHz 
MicroSparc) has a P9000.  I installed Linux on it using RARP/TFTP (better 
known as BOOTP).  I'd be having the same problems with NetBSD or OpenBSD.  
Thanks, though, for your thoughts and observations.

- -- 
Michael Schwarz
http://www.multitool.net
mschwarz at multitool.net
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