I believe Mr. Ibarra is talking about an RDI laptop.  Before RDI
and Tadpole merged into a single company, they were the two most
well known (but very distinct) Sparc laptop vendors; RDI's boxes
were based on the original Sun motherboards, and followed the
naming convention of 'BriteLite', 'PowerLite', 'UltraLite', etc.
There would be no trouble popping a Weitek accelerator in an RDI
BriteLite, as it would indeed be 'exactly the same architecture
as an IPX.'

Tadpole designed their own motherboards and they adopted the
naming scheme of 'SPARCbook', 'SPARCbook 2', etc.  While I don't
claim any particular knowledge of the Tadpole implementation, I
know that they did NOT provide an openboot PROM until the third
generation (SPARCbook 3), and I would generally expect Tadpole's
SPARCbook architecture to be substantially different from Sun's
original motherboards.

On the other hand, the NetBSD implementors have done a remarkable
job covering a wide range of hardware, and it wouldn't shock me to
learn that NetBSD does indeed run on a Tadpole SPARCbook.

I'd just like to know if you're making that particular claim from 
your own experience with a Tadpole SPARCbook, or if you're talking
about an RDI BriteLite instead, just to set the record straight.

(I've got a Tadpole Sparcbook 2, haven't yet tried to run NetBSD
on it but I plan to as soon as I have a chance, hopefully in the
next few days.)

If Mr. Maynard has had any more luck with his SPARCbook 2, please
let me know either in this forum or by private Email.  Thanks!

	Michael Maciolek


On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Michael C. Ibarra wrote:

  >> 
  >> 	If it has a floppy, download the floppy image from the latest
  >> 	snapshot (ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/sparc/...) and try
  >> 	booting it. You dont have to run any of the install programs
  >> 	so your disks should be safe if you decide not to go ahead :)
  >> 
  >> 		David/absolute
  >> 
  >>  -=-  "I know its not the right thing, and I know its not the good thing"  -=-
  >> 
  >> On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Jay Maynard wrote:
  >> 
  >> > The SPARCbook 2 isn't listed as one of the supported platforms. Anyone have
  >> > any experience at all with these and NetBSD? I'd love to jettison SunOS
  >> > 4.0.3...
  >
  >I've blasted one of those not too long ago, SunOS 4.1.4, however it
  >was exactly the same architecture as an IPX. I even installed a
  >Weitek chip in there as well.
  >
  >-mike
  >