> I unearthed a Solbourne S4000 (ROM 1.1B) running an ancient version
> of SunOS.  I'd like to get NetBSD/sparc running on it.  However, it
> seems as if this is not going to be an easy task.  I loaded the 15May
> snapshot onto a spare DEC RZ26 and tried to boot off of it.  It complained
> that the entry point overlapped the PROM and aborted the boot.

first of all, i believe solbourne cannot run real sunos. their OS,
called OS/MP, is a modified version of sunos. i've been told the
machines have quite a different io architecture. months ago i
communicated with someone who indicated the information we'd need is
under non-disclosure.

> Looking through the NetBSD kernel sources my current guess is that my
> efforts are doomed to failure.  

you won't get it to boot now. perhaps it could be made to work, but i
don't know who's going to do that work.

> OS/MP 4.0Da_Export (GENERIC/root) #16: Mon Apr 15 09:08:37 1991 
>  Copyright (c) 1989, 1990 Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Solbourne Computer, Inc.

> enabling ECC

ecc memory. neat. sun4/200's have that too, but i bet it is different.

> si0: 20MHz WD33C93A ucode 9: synch: offset 12: 5.0Mb/sec

different scsi controller chip. quite likely the dma architecture
is also different.

> zs1 at obio 0x80004000 pri 3 
> zs0 at obio 0x80008000 pri 3 

same serial chips. that would make it easier to develop.

> ei0 at obio 0x40000030 pri 6 

ei? likely a different ethernet chip. no idea what this would be.  it
is not likely to be intel ethernet, or they would have left it's name
as "ie".

> sga0 at sbus 0x30000000 pri 6 
> sga0: sga20 resolution 1152 x 900

i bet their video cards are very similar.