Re: Fwd: SS20 Experiances?

[Jon Buller <jon%bullers.net@localhost>]

Sanford Barton wrote:

> Was thinking about throwing a new drive in my SS20 to try NetBSD 4 or
> 5.  Was wondering if anyone is using my config (or close) could give
> me a general idea of the end result.  My system has 2 x 200Mhz ROSS
> processors (RT626) or I can put in 2 x SM81. I also have 448mb RAM and
> CG-14 with 8mb VSIMM.

Here's a couple of quick notes...  I've got a few, one has a pair of
SM71s and the others have single SM71s.  The dual once was running
with an SM71 and an SM81, but unnoticed dust clogged up the fans and
cooked the SM81.

> So can anyone tell me what sort of system can be achieved with the
> later incarnations of NetBSD?  I see there is a non-accelerated cg14
> driver.  Anyone use it and can you appraise the performance compared
> to the Solaris driver in 24 bit X?

Mine have keyboards and a monitor, but are primarily things like mail,
web, and name servers, (or spares if those fail) so I can't speak to a
lot of video usage or the speed of desktop redrawing.  I should probably
convert them to serial consoles some day...

> I also see the SMP is available now on the SS20.  Is that hard to get
> working and does it perform well?  Can it be used with the 4.x release
> or is it a 5.0 only feature?

Actually, at the moment it is a 4.x only feature.  Some of the SMP
internals were reworked for 5.0 and the sparc port has had some issues
with it.  I've seen some progress reported, but it's still not back to
the way it was.  Last I heard it crashes going up to multi-user instead
of when probing the CPUs, but I'm not really "in the loop" on that.

One other problem you will probably see if you try 5.0 is that there
were some problems with the way wscons was turned on and the previous
console code was left.  The way you will experience that is the install
kernel images will ignore the keyboard after asking you what language
you want the messages in.  If you take a 4.x system and upgrade it by
hand, you will get farther, but the video drivers, even the well used
cg6, will spew on themselves.  -current is fixed now, I just verified
the install kernels yesterday.  (Serial consoles did not have any of
these problems, just the SMP ones...)

So, if you really need both processors, go with a 4.x system for now,
otherwise, you can run either 4.x or -current.

Good luck, I hope I saved you from wasting a little time and some
confusion, let me (or us) know what you decide, and how it works.

Jon