Re: "State of the Union" for the port (9.3)

[vom513 <vom513%gmail.com@localhost>]

Thanks for the reply and info.  See replies below inline.

> On Dec 23, 2022, at 4:13 AM, Romain Dolbeau <romain%dolbeau.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> Le ven. 23 déc. 2022 à 09:34, vom513 <vom513%gmail.com@localhost> a écrit :
>> I have an SS20 (4m) and an IPX (4c) I’d be interested in putting NetBSD on.
> 
> Those are the same machines as the ones I used for doing NetBSD/sparc
> stuff (<https://github.com/rdolbeau/SBusFPGA>), they work rather well
> (if slowly).
> Primary SS20 is dual SM61 (SuperSPARC I, 60 MHz, 1 MiB cache), but I
> also tested that it works with dual SM512 (dual SuperSPARC I 50 MHz, 1
> MiB cache each), dual SM100 (dual SPARC, 40 MHz), and even HyperSPARC
> in heterogeneous configuration (125 & 90 MHz HyperSPARC, 256 KiB
> cache).

Very nice, gives me a confidence boost to install on these boxes.

> They usually boot from a SCSI2SD (I have V5 and V6) -  should move to
> the bootable micro-sd in the SBusFPGA but it's still somewhat of a
> moving target.

I have a ZuluSCSI in the SS20.  I love it.  Had some teeth gnashing getting the .ini right to set “disk” geometry but I got it sorted.  What a time to be alive, swapping SD cards in Sun workstations to change OSes :) 

>> I had it on the SS20 a while ago, and the one thing I remember is that my cgfourteen/ZX is only supported at an (unaccelerated) cgthree level.  I assume this is still the case ?
> 
> The on-board cg14/SX (with the appropriate VDIMM) should work in X11
> in 24 bits with acceleration, including some Xrender acceleration, and
> it's getting better
> (<http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sparc/2022/05/11/msg002494.html>).

Oh wow, that is promising.

> 
> The ZX I don't think is well supported in NetBSD. Never seen one in real life.

Foot in mouth for me :/  I don’t have a ZX (I think that’s the big double width SBUS FB ?).  I have an 8mb VSIMM in the SS20 - so cg14 / SX.  I got my *X designations mixed up...

On that note - does NetBSD support 1280x1024 with this “card” ?  I have this resolution+freq set in eeprom and under Solaris it looks much nicer than 1152 - especially on a semi-modern 4:3 LCD monitor.  Very crisp.

> 
>> Just wondering about any other “showstoppers” that might be present in 9.3 on these boxes.
> 
> Mostly using 9.0 with no issue I can think of.
> 
>> PS: Am I correct in remembering that binary packages stopped getting built for this port a ways back ?  I can certainly use pkgsrc - but with the (lack of) speed of these boxes - pre-built binaries were really nice...
> 
> I tend to rebuild packages in a QEmu NetBSD/sparc virtual machine, as
> it's much faster (I/Os!).

Oh wow, that sounds nice.  I’ll file that in my ever-growing rainy day list for something to dig into and figure out / get set up.

Perhaps a dumb question (general NetBSD question) - I see various binary packages built (even for sparc !) - and the version says 9.0.  Can these be installed on 9.3 ?  Based on how many 9.0 packages I saw - I’m guessing the package mainly cares about major rev and not minor ?