[rescue] fire codes and an SS20 question

[Michael-John Turner]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 12:42:56PM -0500, Wes Will wrote:
> Back to the topic, another SS20, two processors, so-so video (don't
> remember exactly what, but will look when I get around to popping the top
> again soon).  There's a video RAM socket empty, what should I be looking to
> pay to fill that hole and would it really help much, or any at all?  I do
> very little graphical anything on the box, it will be a Nessus scanner and
> a BigBrother box again if/when I get the time to put it back together.

You'll need a VSIMM to use the onboard 24-bit cg14 - Mike N. may have one
for you, otherwise check ePay. Not sure of the cost. Otherwise, you can
always stick in a cg6 for accelerated 8-bit graphics. I'm not sure how well
the cg14 is supported by the *BSDs, but I know that NetBSD (3.0 and later -
currently in beta, scheduled to be released end of July) have accelerated
support for the cg6 as graphical console as well as in X11.

If you don't need X11, run it headless.

> I will be putting some form of BSD on it soon, comments on the best distro
> for this dino are also solicited.

If you want a *BSD that supports both CPUs, your only option is NetBSD.
AFAIK OpenBSD only supports SMP on i386. I have several SMP sun4m machines
running NetBSD and I recommend it highly. FWIW, all of them run headless.

-mj
-- 
Michael-John Turner | http://mj.turner.org.za/
mj at turner.org.za    | Open Source in WC ZA - http://www.clug.org.za/