Subject: Re: Sun 3/80 questions
To: None <jmalone@tovaris.com>
From: Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. <bsd@hawkmountain.net>
List: port-sun3
Date: 06/03/2003 18:38:01
>Delivered-To: port-sun3@netbsd.org
>From: "Josh Malone" <jmalone@tovaris.com>
>To: rmk@rmkhome.com
>CC: port-sun3@netbsd.org
>Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:45:20 -0400 (EDT)
>Subject: Re: Sun 3/80 questions
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>You think that's bad?
>
>	I have a sun 3/50 with a mere 8 megs.  It's only
>running 1.4.something but it handles itself for serving a tiny bit of dns.
>It takes a while to log in since it's running standalone on an external
>SCSI drive (net-booted would be quicker - swapping to ethernet is faster
>than disk on this box), hence I hardly ever jump on.

Wonder what my Sun2/120 will be like ? :-) ... I think it has only 4 meg
of ram :-)

>
>	I brought it to an installfest a year ago though and it got some
>laughs by passers-by (and some groans from anyone who tried to log in to
>the demo account).  I think I've got a picture of it running that somebody
>took during the 'fest.  It won the 'most archaic hardware' award (much to
>the disappointment of the girl who brought the 486 laptop).

oh.. poor girl.. who'd think a 486 laptop was archaic...  a 3/50 is for
sure !  My sun2/120 would be too....  My Altos 886 probably even more
(although I know that one isn't supported by NetBSD :-) ).

>
>	Once you're logged in, though, you can actually use it without too
>much pain.  Makes a good case for 'telnet' though.  *chuckle*

hmmm... I'd imagine ssh probably would give it fits....  but I'd imagine
the biggest problem is the qty or ram.  keep the I/O down, and the memory
use low enough and it would probably work better than expected.

One thing I'm seeing with my 3/80 is that the disk I/O on these things is
reaaly ssslllooowww......  

Using:

dd if=/dev/zero of=10megilfe bs=1024k count=10

I got 807K /sec

dd if=10megfile of=/dev/null bs=1024k

I got 1.3M /sec

So... that is a crude test...

The same test to a NFS share off of a tmpfs filesytem (on an Ultra 60)
showed 308K /sec write, 410K /sec read... and off a disk filessytem
(again on an Ultra 60), 314K / sec write, 302K /sec read.

Odd... I'd have though with a switched network (the U160 is 100Mbit)
that is idle I'd have though that pushing closer to 1M /sec would have
been feasable....

So... with this crude test anyway, the 3/80 appears faster with a local
disk, despite the fact that the transfer rates are around 10% of 
the max theoretical for narrow SCSI.

-- Curt

>
>				-Josh
>
>On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Rick Kelly wrote:
>
>> Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. said:
>>
>> >Wonder how NetBSD (or SunOS 4.1.1_U1) will be on my Sun 3/50 :-)
>> >(at least it has the aftermarket upgrade to 12 Meg of RAM !  woo hoo !)
>>
>> I've got a 3/50 that runs -current. Clearpoint memory upgrade. I never tried
>> to run X on it. Won't run GENERIC because of the memory hole at 4 megs.
>> I used a modified install kernel. It's quite slow, and doesn't have the
>> muscle to run ssh v2.
>>
>> I have a 3/80 running 1.6.1 with patches to get ipfilter working.
>>
>> I also have a number of 3/50 and 3/60 boxes, and a 3/110.
>>
>> --
>> Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com
>>
>>
>
>-------- In God we trust...everything else we use X.509 ---------
>Joshua Malone,  Systems Administrator    Phone: 434-245-5300 x119
>      Tovaris IP, LC                       Fax: 434-245-5301
>      www.tovaris.com                     jmalone@tovaris.com