Hi,

Yes, sparc64 runs fine on it and was running fine on it until 3 days
ago.

My problem is that I would like to run either scheme48/scsh, or
chicken (another version of scheme) for a project I'm working on.

scheme48 doesn't really work on 64 bit systems, even the AMD ones.  It
turns out to be a hard problem to solve, and, there are active debates
as to how to solve it.  One of the big hang ups at the moment is
trying to get it to do the right thing when faced with a system that
can run both 32bit and 64 bit executables and has both sets of
libraries.

Chicken, while it works on sparclinux, doesn't work on NetBSD sparc.
It's probably a gcc 3.3 glitch or something, but, the resulting code
produced doesn't work.

Therefore the simpliest solution from my POV was to run the sparc port
on my Ultra10.  My home group of systems started out with FreeBSD on
the multiprocessor Ultras, NetBSD/sparc on the sparcstations, and
NetBSD/sparc64 on the uniprocessor Ultras.  After a while this got
annoying and everything got moved to Debian linux.  After quite a
short time that got even more annoying so most everything is back to
NetBSD/sparc except for the 2 CPU ultra and one SS20 which both run
Debian for testing.

It's not likely rational, but, the system I'm typing this from is a
SparcStation 4.  I like it very much for 99% of the work I do since it
takes little power and is quiet.  Most of the other Sparcs stay off
until I need them to keep the power consumption down.

The sparc linux folks do some things better than NetBSD.  Firefox
works (because the Ultras run in 32 bit mode among other things).
Multiprocessor Ultras work.  Gcc 3.4 seems to be a good choice for
Sparcs.

And they get a lot of things wrong.  The 2.4 kernel is old and that's
the only one that starts to work.  2.6 (and then pick the sub version
number) seems to be completely random. Multiple disks on an ESP seem
to fail under load (with 2.6) sometimes corrupting the data.
Hypersparcs might or might not work, depending on the amount of memory
and other unknown things.  Dual hypersparcs will not work.
Turbosparcs randomally hang as well.  And with Debian there is talk of
dropping sparc support and/or dropping sun4m systems since they can't
seem to get them to work with 2.6.??.

So, for now, I'm happy with NetBSD/sparc, and, I thank very much all
of you that support it and keep it working.

cheers

bruce


On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 12:40:53AM +0000, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> In article <20060518121607.GC13456@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG>,
> Bruce O'Neel <edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I installed NetBSD/Sparc 3.0 on my Ultra 10 last night (yes, sparc, not sparc64)
> >and there is an amusing glitch.  The Sparc MAKEDEV, somewhat sensibly, doesn't 
> >create the /dev/*wd* devices.  Not too many sparc32s with IDE devices I guess.
> >Of course the Ultra 10 was grumpy without these devices.  Maybe MAKEDEV
> >could make them?
> >
> 
> I think you can run sparc64 on it. Why don't you?
> 
> christos
> 

-- 
edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org