Hi Dennis,
Sun#1 is a Sun Enterprise 220R with 2 UltraSPARC-II 450 MHz Processors and 2 GB
of RAM
Sun#2 is a SunBlade 150 with 1 UltraSPARC-IIe 650 MHz and 256 MB RAM (which is
still sufficient for driving 3 Testers)
I have the installation media for the vendor-specific software, it's probably
no problem to get the installation media for Solaris 8 from our IT-department.
Reinstallation of the vendor-specific software is pretty simple, I've done it
several years ago: just rsync a directory tree under /opt and create some
symlinks for the startup files. That's it.
Currently we are using gtk for graphics. Some time ago I've downloaded the
install packages of gtk for solaris 8 from the internet, so basically I have
everything to do a clean install.
Hartmut
Am 31.08.2014 um 20:00 schrieb Dennis Luehring:
Am 31.08.2014 16:54, schrieb Hartmut Rombach:
Hello everybody,
Thank you for your quick response and for the time you spent to help me find
the best way to keep old hardware productive.
Perhaps, it's best to describe my situation a bit more detailed to clarify the
situation:
Back in the 1980th / 1990th, our company bought several parameter test systems
(used for in-production testing of semiconductor devices). Those systems have a
build in computer-board (based on an 68040 microprocessor). All of those
testers are controlled by two Sun SPARCs running Solaris 8. User Interface,
program generation and everything else is done on the Sun. The vendor of the
test systems supplied us with some shared object libraries, we may use in our
programs to control the tester (make it force some voltages, measure some
current and so on). So, basically we develop programs on the Sun, and use the
vendor-supplied lib to convert and transfer our commands to the tester, wich
returns the results back. Please note: communication from Sun to tester is done
via ethernet, but they are using their own network protocol and not e.g.
tcp/ip. Unfortunately, I have only very little information about that network
protocol.
The tester-hardware is still in good condition (though out of support) and its
performance is still sufficient for most of our products. The longer, the
testers are usable, the more money we save.
On the other hand, the Sun SPARCs are out of support as well, and I am afraid
that some time one of them breaks down leaving us in a quite difficult
situation.
So I just want to check out, if it's possible to move the programs, which are currently
running on the Sun SPARC, to an x86/Linux PC using some kind of "SPARC
emulator".
further questions:
-what are your SPARC system specs (Sparc Ultra 5, 10, etc.)?
-got the vendor-software a graphical frontend or just console programs?
-are you able to re-install solaris and the vendor software if image booting
does not work?
