Re: sparcstation ipx info?

KURT BRENDGARD wrote, On 1/19/2005 9:55 PM:
> i wanted to pick up the keyboard and external cdroms
> so i aquired an old sparcstation ipx. anybody remember
> what kind of memory these things take? or know of any
> links giving info on them?

http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ipx/ is a great place to start. In fact,
the site is served up on from an IPX box running RedHat 6. Not that
I recommend that. :)

> or sun stations in general
> even? it looks like old 72 pin parity memory but im
> not sure lol. does it take the 64 meg ones?

4M or 16M 72-pin true-parity tin SIMMs. 64M max.

> what
> speed?. i gotta find an old 50 pin scsi hard drive now
> and some memory for this thing. anybody know what
> version of solaris will run most comfortably on it? im
> thinking 2.5.1? or linux?

Solaris 9 minimum is 96M, I think, and 10 is 128.

> i got a version of openbsd
> that is sposed to work. i think freebsd is outa the
> question. anybody know where i can pick up an old
> version of solaris like 2.5.1 cheap? thanks in
> advance.

Yes, FreeBSD is definitely out, sadly. For maintainability, NetBSD or
Debian are probably your best bets. I wouldn't go as far back as
Solaris 2.5.1. You'll be hurting for functionality and end up spending
a lot of time tacking on so much GNU that it would have been easier to
just install another OS in the first place. There's also a small and
finite amount of time left for security and package support left for
2.5.1. Whatever you choose, make sure that it's an OS that doesn't
need a lot of CPU to keep patched/updated, make sure you've got a faster
box to build packages on, or be prepared for many upgrades you perform
on the box to take days.

I've got NetBSD on my SPARCclassic -- which is also the lunchbox form
factor -- because it needs relatively little RAM and disk space, and
because I already had a NetBSD 170Mhz SS5 to use for package builds. :)

-royce

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Royce D. Williams                                    IP Engineering, ACS
personal: [first]@alaska.net                      PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531
work: [first.last]@acsalaska.net             http://www.tycho.org/royce/
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