Subject: Re: Sun 3/50 as a net peripheral
To: Kevin P. Neal <kpneal@pobox.com>
From: Clarence W. Wilkerson <wilker@MATH.Purdue.EDU>
List: port-sparc
Date: 12/01/1996 19:10:08
Thanks for responding.

1) Why did I post to port-sparc also?

The serial hardware and software on the low end sparc machines
are quite similar to the 3/50 and 3/60. Also, cheap IPC and Sparc I
bare motherboards are now available.

2) You're right. What I want are some "cheap"
network accessible serial ports and possibly parallel ports.
So booting off the net and not requiring a disk drive is nice.
Hence my question about a stripped down kernel.

3) The 3/50 and 3/60 have 2 z8530 chips, normally configured as
one giving the two serial ports, and the other giving one to the
keyboard and one to the mouse. As a peripheral, I don't see
why the mouse and keyboards couldn't be reused ( modulo hardware
interface ). Of course at $50 a CPU, it might be cheaper just to
use two CPUS if you need 4 serial ports.



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