[SunRescue] Recommend starter Sun?

[User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak]

> >Well, I run all 3 on various PC/MIPS/VAX/Sparc boxes in the office.
> >I would not recommend NetBSD on a sparc.  I would recommend OpenBSD.
> >I would not recommend OpenBSD on the MIPS/VAX, but NetBSD instead.
> >I would recommend FreeBSD as best on the PeeCee hardware.
> >That is how it breaks down, for me, in actual use, on side-by-side boxes
> >in my hands, doing about what you are wanting to do.
> 
> I have two vaxstation 3100/30s at work still running ultrix. Maybe it's
> finally time to switch them over to netbsd...

Well, I had U45 up and running until last night, on one of my dinsoaurs,
and another has U32m, still, which is a tiny little BSD suite.  But,
the later BSD's are much better, if you don't need to run X on the VAX.
On a lark, last night, I made an OpenBSD VAX boot floppy (Yes folks, 
OBSD does have a real VAX boot floppy that works!), and loaded up OpenBSD
2.8+ VAX (the last snapshot in the archives, cuz 2.8 release is still a
bit buggy).  That came up and running quite well, and actually a bit
faster than NetBSD (which has gone to slow style rc.d boot gobbledygook).

If you have a floppy on any of your VAXen, you might try the OpenBSD
boot floppy install.  If only a cd is handy, then use the NetBSD mini
boot/install iso down in the pub/NetBSD/misc/isos tree.

On VAXen, I would give OpenBSD and NetBSD about even steven, with the
caveat that OpenBSD is still a bit new on the VAX, and does not have
quite a perfect compile optimization suite.  It works fine, with -O
off, though.  If you have a fast VAX (e.g., greater than 3 vups),
the NetBSD is a bit more polished.  The ethernet drivers in OpenBSD
have some minor timeout problems, but generally work well.  The
NetBSD drivers were totally rewritten lately, and are a bit faster
without timeout problems.  Disk I/O seems comparable between either.

In my hands, I would hedge my bet on the VAX towards NetBSD, for now.

Good Luck..

Bob