Ken Nakata wrote...
> On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 07:57:40 -0800, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> > On 21 Feb 1999 22:49:02 -0800 
> >  Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org> wrote:
> > 
> >  > They have.  They're doing Alpha, and I think they did Sparc.
> > 
> > No, they have not done SPARC.
> 
> Just out of curiosity.  I've heard Sun has done a port of FreeBSD to
> SPARC.  Is it true?  When I heard it, I thought it was a shame they
> didn't just take NetBSD/sparc.  Would it be possible they didn't know
> any better than porting an OS when there's a perfectly fine OS already 
> running on their platform?

As far as I know, that isn't true.  There was a guy at SME who worked for a
short time on a port of FreeBSD to some of their newer hardware, but he got
pulled off to do something else before things really went anywhere.

I think Sun approached Jordan at one point, asking for a Sparc port, but he
turned them down because of a number of issues.  (I think the main issue
was the short time period they wanted it done in.)  If you want the exact
details, look in the FreeBSD-sparc list archives.  Jordan posted a few
months ago and explained the whole thing.

There are some folks making noise on the FreeBSD-sparc list, but I don't
think things have gone very far yet.

I think the issue of Sun wanting *any* OS to run on their hardware should
be viewed from the perspective of hardware sales.  They're interested in
selling more hardware, and if they think that getting FreeBSD running on
Sparc hardware will do it, they'll support it.  It's just like all of the
work that Intel does to cook up new uses for its processors.  Intel wants
to drive hardware sales, so they try to make sure that as much software as
possible runs on their chips.

Ken
-- 
Kenneth Merry
ken@plutotech.com