[SPARCbook] 3XP Linux/XFree86

[Brendan D. Donahe]

All,

I was recently given a SparcBook 3XP (64MB RAM, 800MB disk) and have
mostly successfully installed Debian Linux 3.0r0 (Woody) through the
simultaneous use of a crowbar and shoehorn.  (I would have considered
Solaris or NetBSD, but I only have Solaris 2.3 from Tadpole w/NCE and am
not already familiar with NetBSD.  Anybody have a larger disk for sale
cheap?)

Thanks to a recent posting here (I found in the archives), I was able to
get a 2.3.5 kernel that boots (thanks, Tom!) and includes framebuffer
support.  I had attempted a 2.4.19 build but the image won't boot, I get
an "Instruction Access Exception" and drop into the boot prompt after
decompressing the image.  Does anyone have any ideas or a kernel build
config file?  I hacked sunlance.c so I could compile.  Are there other
patches I need?

Perhaps my most important question follows - does anyone have any
experience getting XFree86 up and running?  I've had the best luck (in
other words, least errors) with using the suncg3 driver with framebuffer
(don't seem to have p9100 support, do I need to go back to XFree86 3.3.6
from 4.1?) but still can't seem to figure out the mouse.  I've heard that
it should be /dev/sunmouse with protocol busmouse or mousesystems, but
startx errors out on "cannot open input device".  I've also tried
variations on PS/2 and /dev/input/mice.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks much,
Brendan Donahe
brendan at polylith.com

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