On Wed, 05 May 1999, Simon Burge wrote:
>We've got a 4/670 (I think - it may be a 690) here that was headed for
>the scrap heap.  It's got two ROSS CPU's - do these work with NetBSD
>(obviously not SMP yet)?  On the other hand, it's a little large to
>carry home under my arm...

  The SCRAP HEAP?  You've *got* to be kidding.  Rescue that machine, man. 
Depending on the CPU it may or may not work with NetBSD.  HyperSPARC support is
not quite done, I believe.

  I've got three of those machines (in 3-slot VME chassis, Sun engineers say
"no that can't work" but the people who seem to know the least about Sun
computers are Sun engineers) and they are *glorious*.  Very nice with a pair of
SM61s under StunOS.  A good friend of mine is running three or four of them with
2x 150MHz HyperSPARCs and 512mb-768mb RAM under S/Linux...those machines run
rings around pretty much anything we've got around here.

>If one were given the choice between one of these beasties and a
>sparc10, which would one choose?

  If you can find a 3-slot VME chassis (4/110-style) to run it in to save
space, I'd definitely go with the 4/600.  If I can be of any 4/600 hacking
help, contact me in private email.  At the very least, I'll probably offer to
buy that 4/600 board from you. :)

                       -Dave McGuire