Date: Sat, 2 Sep 00 13:53:09 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #22 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 2 Sep 00 Volume 13 : Issue 22 Today's Topics: booting floppy, mixed cpus, and jumpstarting. Info Printer & Scanner advice Questions about SunOS 4.1.x SANE (Scanner software) URL Scanners sparc CPU's make offer SunGX and a Sparc Classic SunPC software Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #21 (2 msgs) +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com | | Requests: suns-at-home-request@net-kitchen.com | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 03:24:52 -0400 (EDT) From: der Mouse Subject: To: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) >>> Also look seriously at NetBSD (www.netbsd.org). Agreed. >>> I have it running on a Sparc 1+ as my FTP server - Unless they've fixed something relatively recently, you can expect occasional random userland crashes on a 1+ or an SLC. The ELC, IPX, and SS2 appear immune; others I don't know about yet. (Very occasional crashes; the 1+ on my desk at work would typically lose my X session about three times a week - past tense; it's now an SS2 on my desk.) >>> SunOS 5.x would be too bogged down on the 25 Mhz sun-4c processor. >> I disagree on this point - I have a 25MHz Sun SPARCStation 1+ and it >> runs Solaris 2.6 (full + OEM) quite decently, thank you very much. Without seeing at least the RAM config of the machines in question, no meaningful conclusion can really be drawn. >> I *DO NOT* recommend running Linux or *BSD on a SPARC architecture >> for three reasons: I too disagree with this. >> a) They do not perform as well and do not have adequate support for >> the SPARC architecture (Linux on SPARC sucked) As for supporting the SPARC, they do a damn good job, especially considering that they're working without the internal docs and developmental influence the Solaris people (presumably) have. Level the playing field and I fully believe the free ones will promptly blow the doors off Solaris. As for performance...well, I've never done a head-to-head benchmark. But based on my seat-of-the-pants "feel", Solaris is a pig - it needs at least twice the computrons to be comparably zippy. And since anecdotal evidence seems to be allowed, well, NetBSD/sparc is highly usable for *me*. >> b) *BSD has a comparatively small following, and apart from being >> Berkeley based, is run by a very small user base, the binaries have >> to be compiled for it or Linux, etc., etc., whereas there's loads of >> software available for Solaris... need I go on? NetBSD, at least, runs SunoOS, Solaris, and (I think) sparclinux binaries. (Assuming, in the case of dynamically linked binaries, that you have the appropriate libraries on hand; also assuming your kernel was built with the relevant compatability turned on.) Come back when Slowlaris runs NetBSD binaries and we'll talk. :-) And even if you do believe that following size is relevant, give a BSD or Linux the advertising budget Solaris has and watch what happens. Again, they're doing a damn good job given the unfairness of the competition - IMO, the only reason their followings are as large as they are is that they're so much *better* than Solaris. >> c) just because something is "leaner and meaner" is not reason >> enough to run it and does not justify running it on SPARC machines. Other things being equal, sure it does. And it definitely does if it means you can run on a machine that was being thrown out instead of having to spend thou$and$ on a new box in order to get something usable. As another argument in favor of looking at NetBSD: if you are heterogenous, instead of all Suns, it cna be really nice to have "the same OS" on all your machines. I routinely run NetBSD on i386, sparc, and sun3, have vax, hp300, mac68k, and next68k working but not in "live" use, and have a pmax and alpha that basically work but appear slightly broken hardwarily (and at one of my jobs I have access to a NetBSD/alpha machine). And porting a new program from one machine to another consists of copying the source code and typing make. No blizzard of #ifdefs, no complex configuration scripts...just some minimal attention paid to issues like byte order and 64-bit cleanness. Oh, and with the free OSes (NetBSD, Linux, etc) you get source code and full redistribution rights. der Mouse mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 17:55:01 -0400 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: booting floppy, mixed cpus, and jumpstarting. To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com "Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:11:06 +0000 (GMT) "From: Ken N "Subject: Sparc 1+ " " I am new to suns and I just got this old sun to play with. I would "like to install some form of BSD but I have a floppy and when I do the "test-floppy with the boot disk I made in there I get, "seems to OK" but "when I say "boot fd" It doesn't work. I know that the PROM is bad and I "have ordered a new one for it but I thought I could boot it anyway. I "actually have a SUN supported CD-ROM and a copy of Solaris I was toying "with but I can't get teh CD to boot either. have you tried 'boot floppy' or 'boot diskette'? "Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 00:06:35 -0500 "From: Garry Garrett "Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #20 " "> i have a SPARCstation 20 with an SM50 cpu. I want to upgrade my CPU to "> an SM71 and the question is could I use the SM50 as the second CPU? "> I know that SM71 is a SuperSPARC II and the SM50 is an older SuperSPARC "> chip. Will they work together? What combinations are supported/reported "> to work? " "Unfortunately, you can't mix & match clock speeds. If you have "2 CPUs, they have to be the same MHz. Of course, BridgePoint "makes faster CPUs (200MHz, 150MHz, etc.) for your Sparc20, though "I'm sure they aren't as cheap as a 71MHz one. actually, -some- mixed speeds -do- work, but it's definitely not supported, not guaranteed, and not handled well -- the os assumes all cpus are equal when dividing the work up. "> I have a Sparc Classic that I'd like to "> try NetBSD on. It has no diskette drive. "> Is there a publicly accessible cdrom "> iso image I can download from the 'net? " "Just wondering (not that I have one), but if a JumpStart server "existed on the internet, could you JumpStart install NetBSD off "of it? (perhaps it would be too slow?) Just thinking out loud. in theory yes, but -someone- would have to do an add_install_client or equiv on the server. this might be doable with a cgi or majordomo-like interface, though. i don't think there's a way to wildcard the files around it. _____________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay 'Tis not he who has but little that's poor internet rambler But he who ever desires yet more adh@an.bradford.ma.us Celtic proverb (tr.) - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 20:00:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Any Key Subject: Info To: Dwight McKay I gather your trying to hook to a PC? This probably wont work. Check http://www.monitorworld.com/monitors_home.html for the specifications on the NEXT monitor you have they have six of them. You can try reacking them down also if you know where the monitor was OEM'd. If it is listed as FIXED FREQUENCY you will need a special video card. Do be aware that the specifications are user created and may contain some errors, but it is a handy quick check. Usually the older 13W3 monitors will only sync at a very specific Horizontal and Vertical frequency. Those monitors only work at one resolution as well. The refresh rate that you can set in the M(i)S-Operating Systems is usually the Vertical refresh, and the Horizontal dirfts arround based on what res your looking at. The monitor supports that. In my 1962-B Sun monitor (Fixed Frequency) the settings are H Freq/ V Freq: 71.7 Khz/76 Hz. If your still wanting to try the cable, Ive seen them as low as $25US This is one of those things that I would suggest buy over build, because the 13W3 cable routes the R, G, and B video signals through their own grounded co-ax in the cable. I wish the cable style had caught on, because of the extra shielding. There are 2 companies that I have seen making specialty video cards for PC's to drive those monitors, they are SI87 (www.si87.com) and Mirage (www.mirage.com). As for the cable, lots of places sell them. The cheapest place Ive seen is PI Manufacturing at www.pimfg.com. they also have a really ecclectic colliction of adapters, any one need any DB50 SCSI-I Sun terminators? they sell them. Get them to send you a catalog Hope that helps. As usual I make mistakes to, if you see any -- correct them. Rowan Hawkins On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Dwight McKay wrote: :Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 22:02:52 CDT :From: "Kazi M. I. Haque" :Subject: info :To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com : :Hello, :I have a 21 inch Next color monitor (with 13W3 female connector attached) :and a Gemini-C1 video card (with SVGA-D female connector attached) :and a 13W3 male to 13W3 female video cable :and a SVGA to SVGA cable :I would like to cut my existing 13W3 cable and cut the SVGA cable and solder :them together to make a 13W3 to SVGA cable. Do you have any diagrams that :shown the pin connections? Thanks. :________________________________________________________________________ :Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 19:48:54 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill Subject: Printer & Scanner advice To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com >Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 17:20:48 -0500 >From: Garry Garrett >I'm looking for a color printer and a scanner to hook up to >my SparcIPX running Solaris 7. I intend on using the printer >to print both garden variety color printouts (from StarOffice, >or Netscape, etc.) and printing Photos (on photo paper, etc.). >I want the Photos to have maximum shelf life (colorfastnses, >etc.), so I'm willing to pay more for a nicer printer if it >makes better photos. The scanner I intend to use to scan >photos (and turn around an print copies, or maybe stick >them on a web page), and I intend to use it for OCR. Not sure about the printer. I've used Andreas Klemm's "apsfilter" on FreeBSD machines; it might port to Solaris OK: it depends on ghostscript for much of the conversion work, and thus the printers that it supports are basically those that ghostscript supports. As for the scanner, I expect that the OCR requirement may turn out to be expensive to meet. Not having had that requirement, and being unwilling (at that time) to deal with the then-current state of SANE (http://www.sane.org/), when I obtained a used HP scanner a couple of years ago, I found that Sean Reifschneider had some software based on John Bradley's wonderful "xv" program, called "xvscan". He charged $80 for it, and it works for me (on my SS5/110 running Solaris 2.6). (Note, however, that xv appears to be designed to display just the pixels that correspond to what is in the image -- that is, if your display has a dot pitch of 72 dpi, and you scan an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, the only way it will appear at 8.5"x11" is if you scan it at 72 dpi. If you scan it at something rational for scanning or printing -- even 300 dpi -- the resulting image is going to be larger (>4x in this case) in each dimension when displayed at 72 dpi... or you're going to lose information. Thus, I use a window manager that utilizes a "virtual desktop" -- generally tvtwm on BSD-ish boxen, and olvwm on the SS5 itself -- so I can have an image that is (much!) bigger than the viewable display. I tend to provide a fair amount of swap space, under the theory that although I prefer not to need to use it, I absolutely never want to run out. The SS5 has been up for almost 236 days... and that last downtime was because I had installed the then-current recommended patch cluster.) As I recall, there's also some discussion at the SANE Web site re: TWAIN and how it is eminently unsuitable for use as anything approximating an API. Cheers, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product. - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 13:57:25 -0500 From: Cory.Bajus@mts.mb.ca Subject: Questions about SunOS 4.1.x To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com The comments regarding running SunOS on older Sun hardware has me interested. I have a copy of 4.1.3 on CD that I have been itching to try. I have a few questions for those with experience with SunOS: - What are the major differences between versions 4.1.3, 4.1.3_U1, 4.1.4, and 4.1.4_U1. Are the differences such that a certain version would be preferable to others? - What is the actual year 2000 status of 4.1.3 - according to Sun, I think only 4.1.3_U1 can be made compliant by applying patches. - Other than applying the Sun recommended patches for 4.1.3, are there any other steps that are required to have a usable 4.1.3 system? I hear that getting DNS to work without NIS is interesting... Thanks in advance for your knowledge - I was only 17 when 4.1.3 was released, and was still living in a DOS/Windows world at that time... Cory. - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 21:06:19 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill Subject: SANE (Scanner software) URL To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com It found that I mis-cited the SANE URL. The correct URL is http://www.mostang.com/sane. Sorry for any confusion. :-(, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product. - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 21:49:26 -0400 (EDT) From: David Herron Subject: Scanners To: Dwight McKay TWAIN is a Windows-specific thingey. Obviously it won't work on Solaris!!! However ... The Linux folk are developing something called SANE (don't remember what the cutesy acronym means). So ... what does it do? It is scanner support for {Li,U}nix, that's what! There's an API to provide access to a scanner, and you can even access it remotely over a network from some other system. (Just watch TWAIN even try to attempt this feat of hackery! Hah!! ;-} You can hear the nya nya's in the back of your mind as you read the site and they explain why they architected it certain ways, rather than try and implement TWAIN on Unix) As I recall (this was last year when I installed it on my Linux system) it works best with SCSI scanners and not at all with USB scanners (because USB support is spotty on Unix), and there are specific models that work well and others that don't work well, and it all depends on how open the scanner companies were to working with a bunch of geeky hackers who call 'em up on the phone saying "I want programming documentation, no I don't want to sign an NDA, and no I don't have a budget, I'm going to give it away". In practice (this was last year, they may have improved it by then) there was an application named xscanimage that did the scanning, and produced a jpg for you, with little option to tweak and frob and suchnot. There was the possibility for integration with other packages such as Gimp, but I never tried that or else it wasn't available at the time. I eventually got a SCSI card for my NT box, and have the scanner connected there, but that was so that I could get direct connectivity with the paint programs I use on NT. I'd be surprised if you could find OCR software for Solaris, but you can certainly get it for NT. The project is at: http://www.mostang.com/sane/ Platforms: http://www.mostang.com/sane/sane-support.html It supports Solaris. David Herron Web site creation and hosting assistance available for spiritual healers and teachers. See http://7gen.com for more info - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 11:05:29 -0400 From: Steve Ashbrook Subject: sparc CPU's make offer To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com I have 10 -supersparc II CPus' Some of the numbers on the chips are: stp1091pga-90 stp1091gf barecode: 501302223001327 also have a sun sbus fiber channel card make offer send emails to sigma@ureach.com ________________________________________________ Get your own "800" number - Free Free voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:03:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Ken Nagorski Subject: SunGX and a Sparc Classic To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com Hi, I have a sparc classic and It runs great, I however have an extra video card for it (frame buffer I think it's called) It is a SunGX I put it in and when I boot it diplay's the boot up but then the CDE login comes up on display 0, So I know it work fine. I was wondering how I could change it to use the SunGX which I believe to be display 1, and if I could get any better resolution? Is there a tolls to configure this like there is for Xfree? Thank you Kenn@pcintelligent.com - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 11:27:18 -0500 From: Floyd Rodgers Subject: SunPC software To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Anyone know of a source for the software or does it come ont the standard software distribution? Looks like I may end up having the hardware without the software. Floyd Rodgers KC5QBC Multi ended candle burning artist in training - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 12:28:59 +0100 From: "Pete Fenelon" Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #21 To: > As far as printers go, I've been looking at: Xerox NC20, I have a C20 (without the ethernet card) on one of my Intel boxes running Linux, and it's a lovely device. Rather overengineered for home use (I didn't really need A3!) but I found a very good deal on it. It's certainly robust enough for a small workgroup printer, although it isn't terribly fast. It seems a little sensitive to the sort of paper it gets -- although no more so than our office Lexmark laser. It also has the advantage of being expandable -- ethernet, hard disk and more RAM are all possibilities. > paper begin to fade after 1 year. Of course, the Xerox and > Lexmark (which seem like my best bet in terms of usability) [...] > PostScript is a plus huge. Networkability is a plus, but > you can get these print servers that hang off of a network > relatively cheaply, so that's not a big deal (I have no > parallel ports, and both my serial ports are spoken for - > to add a printer it's going to have to be networked). The C20 has Postscript and enough ram (8Mbytes) to make good use of it. The b/w print quality is superb (all but indistinguishable from a 600dpi laser), and at the highest quality setting on decent paper it's been excellent at printing scanned material in colour. I got mine for about £90 ($140-ish, I'd guess), I believe the "street price" is more usually about £200/$300. I don't know how much the NC20 is going for. pete - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 22:05:53 -0500 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #21 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > > ... > > From: "v b" > > ... > > >Also look seriously at NetBSD (www.netbsd.org). I have it running on a > > >Sparc 1+ as my FTP server - SunOS 5.x would be too bogged down on the 25 > > >Mhz sun-4c processor. > > > > I disagree on this point - I have a 25MHz Sun SPARCStation 1+ and it > > runs Solaris 2.6 (full + OEM) quite decently, thank you very much. > > I have never had it crash, and I run all the regular stuff on it plus > > StarOffice, Netscape Communicator 4.7, IE5 and Outlook Express... I *DO > > NOT* recommend running Linux or *BSD on a SPARC architecture for three > > reasons: > > Sorry, but I disagree with this. I have at home (in speed order) a SS2 > (Weitek uP, clock doubled to 80MHz), a Tadpole SPARCbook 3GX (110MHz > SuperSPARC, but only 32MB memory), a SS10 (40Mhz SuperSPARC) and an > Ultra 5 (333MHz UltraSPARC). Only the U5 is capable of running Solaris > properly, the others are too slow. On slower machines I would definitely > recommend SunOS 4.1.3 if you want a Sun OS, or Linux. I have no > experience with BSD but I'v heard good things. I'm probably not qualified to speak on these issues, but since when has that stopped me before... :-) Solaris, while being larger (some would say bloated) compared to a linux or a BSD variant, actually isn't all that wasteful of resources as you might think. It also depends heavily on what all you install on the box (when you install Solaris, you are given 4 templates to choose from, but you can go in and "customize" from there, taking off stuff that you will never use - not that people commonly do that, unfortunately the various packages aren't always labeled clearly as to what they do). Where it does get wasteful is on RAM. Solaris itself will take more RAM than a Linux or BSD. It's not the 25MHz that bytes you so much as the fact that the 25MHz boxes topped out at what 16MB? 24MB? 28MB? It's the RAM that bites you. On the plus side, Solaris's memory management blows Linux away (i.e. if you do dip into swap, Solaris does a more intelligent job of shufflinging pages in and out from swap space). Still, dipping into swap at all will slow you down. If you have a handle on how much RAM you are going to use, and it's under the amount that you have, a Linux/BSD might serve you better, but if you are going to be dipping into swap, Solaris's better swapping may well make up for it's hogging of RAM. I've got a couple of FTP servers at work. When you get done stripping it (which you want to do on an FTP server - don't leave anything running that you don't absolutely need - start with "end user" and strip it down from there, and when you are done, remove stuff like the telnet client, the FTP client, etc. and make sure that you don't have anything that can be used for a C/C++ compiler, like /usr/include, etc.), it has a whole 11 processes running (really, you can strip it down to more like 7 or 8, but I left a few things in that weren't truely necessary). Odds are, your FTP server is talking over a T1 (1.5 MegaBits/sec theoretical, 1 MegaBit/sec more realistically). With 11 processes, 25MHz will not be your limiting factor, the T1 will. This is why old/slow machines make great FTP servers - really all you need is disk space, not CPU or RAM. An SLC with (what do they have now, 56GB disks? x 7 SCSI IDs = 392GB, probably more if you hooked up some kind of RAID box) a bunch of disk. B&W monitor: who cares! Slow CPU: who cares! 10MB ethernet: 10x faster than a T1. The only reason to use anything more powerful is the service contract (I'm sure you can't get one on an SLC). If you are planning on doing more than just an FTP server, the 25MHz is going to be slow. Star Office is slow on my IPX, though "slow" is a relative term. Star Office is still slow on a Sparc1000 at work; I'm sure you need 333MHz to get it to start up quicky. What your expectation is has a lot to do with if you call it "slow" too. > > b) *BSD has a comparatively small following, and apart from being Berkeley > > based, is run by a very small user base, the binaries have to be compiled > > for it or Linux, etc., etc., whereas there's loads of software available for > > Solaris... need I go on? > > DSB is also very stable, is used extensively by ISPs all over the world. > The user base is in fact enormous. Uh, these days, most freeware apps are *developed* on linux and ported elsewhere. I personally love Solaris, but if I was looking for a Unix with "loads of software available" that would be Linux and not Solaris. Solaris is one of the first ports, but freeware is ported from Linux to Solaris and rarely the other way around these days. -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett http://garrett.no-ip.com/ ._o o __o |> <\ -\<, 4 . . .. /> . . .. ...O/ O - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************