Re: NetBSD 5.0 and SPARCstation 5 not a lucky combination

[Erik Fair <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>]

I've seen some video/graphics strangeness on an SS20 (SM81 85 MHz  
SuperSPARC-II CPU) with 8MB VSIMM (SX/cg14), and a SPARC LX (50 MHz  
microSPARC-I CPU) with 1MB VSIMM (cg6); any attempt to use more(1)  
makes the screen/keyboard lockup in a mode which suggests the video  
mode is mismatched to the screen size, or that some piece of GPU/fb  
config data is being scribbled on: I see three or four small copies of  
the screen in the top half of the monitor, and the lower half is a  
magnified copy of what was on the console, but garbled; there also  
appear to be giant letters in the background (larger still than the  
lower half text).

Fortunately, the system still runs, and you can ssh in to reboot it.  
There is no further response to typing blind commands that I could  
detect.

I note that wscons isn't compiled into GENERIC ... I thought that was  
supported in 5.0?

I am building 5.0_STABLE optimized for supersparc/sun4m right now (for  
old, slow systems, I find it's best to eke every cycle you can out of  
'em), and I intend to experiment further with a SPARC Classic (cg3),  
and a SunJavastation (Krups, tcx) that I have.

BTW, do we have toolchain cross-compiles working well enough that I  
could reliably build an optimized (e.g. CPUFLAGS="-mcpu=supersparc - 
mtune=supersparc") on, say, an i386? I have this vague memory of an  
issue which made that not work ...

        Erik <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>