<snippage> > More importantly, it would mean that project teams doing extensive > kernel work (such as the ones already named) would have to do testing on > old US-I machines, which at least at Sun are getting harder and harder > to find. They break down and can't be repaired due to a lack of parts. > They are expensive in terms of lab real estate, power, and heat. > They've long since fallen off the price list. They're very slow and > usually very limited in memory and disk space, and thus make poor test > machines. Many can't even boot the installer anymore.
I am glad this has been said. I have a whole slew of old hardware all the way back to the Sun SPARC 670MP and a big ol' DEC AlphaServer from 1996. They make sort of cool fridges if you buy a bar fridge and skin it. Other than that I have no idea why anyone would care anymore. My quad Ross Sparc 20 serves a purpose on very rare moments when I want to test something obscure. Then I power it off again. Even with a vintage Solaris 8 support contract it can not be patched anymore .. sun4m just isn't supported anywhere anymore. Why would it? I do think that looking at very low cost, low power embedded technology is very worth while both for economic reasons and ecological reasons. A full build of the kernel can take 24 hours on a VIA C7 Coolstream cpu based unit but the result is as stable as a rock and perfectly usable. I can't see any benefit in digging up the old UltraSparc I 160E or the Sparc 20. Regardless of how cool they are to see running. Put NetBSD or OpenBSD/FreeBSD on them or even run Solaris 8. But Solaris Nevada/OpenSolaris ? Not even in a drunken moment in some geeky bar in Silicon Valley would anyone scrawl that crazy idea on a napkin. -- Dennis Clarke dcla...@opensolaris.ca <- Email related to the open source Solaris dcla...@blastwave.org <- Email related to open source for Solaris _______________________________________________ opensolaris-code mailing list opensolaris-code@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/opensolaris-code
