Re: SPARC packages availability for 9.0 and install report

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hello,

On Thu, 7 May 2020 11:53:04 +0200
Romain Dolbeau <romain%dolbeau.org@localhost> wrote:

> Do yourself a favor - try to get a couple of SM61 for the SS20. They
> will be much faster than any non-cached module, compatible with every
> OS, and there's still some to be found. And they are a whole lot more
> reliable than the SM71. SM81 are too hot for my taste (and rare, as
> well).

Yeah, SM81s get hot, but seem to be fine in my ss20. I seem to remember
that one of the improvements on the ss20 vs. the ss10 was better
airflow. Then again, they're the only significant heat source in mine.
That said, I've seen quite a few 125MHz HyperSPARCs on ebay - they
don't get too hot and don't need a fancy 'new' non-sun ROM. It's the
higher end hypersparcs that are ridiculously expensive.

> Very old hard drives will be unreliable; newer SCA drives will fit an
> SS20 but may run too hot.

All my 32bit SPARCs run from external wide-SCSI drives these days:
- HME/fas, and isp ( 'antares' ) cards are fairly easy to find, if
  you're lucky you might score an isp that supports UW-SCSI. Got one in
  my U1, cost me $5 or somesuch, gets about 36MB/s.
- keeps hot drives out of the main case if you have hot CPUs.
- many recent SCA drives don't run reliably ( or at all ) on 8bit
  buses, I had no issues running those on fast/wide SCSI.

have fun
Michael