On 17-Jun-98 nickm@mindless.com spoke unto us all:
# does an ss1+ have a built in frame buffer or would i have to buy one of those
# as well?

No.. you can find a cgthree card pretty cheap these days, but if you want
decent performance go with a cg6.  Its a *really* nice card, and its actually
speedy.. Faster video than a P-150 with a generic PCI 1MB VGA.  I *really* like
my sparc1 as an xterm.. its nice.  Just be careful.. the monitor cables for a
sparc are outrageoulsy expensive.  (50-100 bux!!)

# 1. what are the chances of getting an ss1+ on a 100baseTX network?  do i need
# an SBus card?  any idea on how much this would cost me?

You can.. don't bother.   They are outrageously expensive, and the ss1's cant
handle the speed.  I can get le0 buffer overflows on my sparc1 by just remote
displaying netscape and loading a graphical page via a 28.8.  

# 2. what about having an ss1 as a gateway box with ipf and ipnat.  it has one
# 10 mbit connection but can i add another?  via an SBus slot?  how much would
# another 10 mbit adapter cost me?

See the above.  netbsd has demonicly fast tcp on the sparc.  (my sparc 1 gets
1000Kb/s on ttcp tests, which is on par with my P-150 w/ PCI ethernet.) But the
cpu of the sparc has some trouble keeping up.  I'm not sure if it was just
forwarding packets if it could.   It would be worth a try.. but remember.. I've
seen 10baseT cards for the SBUS as high as 150 bux.  Not worth the money IMHO.

# 3. any stability problems with netbsd on ss1+'s?

My sparcs are rock solid.

# 4. i assume that it has a fast narrow scsi-2 adapter with it.  what about
# using external scsi disks?  any way to use a wide or ultra disk with an ss1?

I used a 4 gig seagate HAWK on mine externally for awhile with no problems at
all.  it was pretty quick.


---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html