...and meanwhile back in Gotham City, "Christian Johansson" (cjn) wrote:
> > > Qty 2   Solbourne Series 5/500 Chassis CPU I/O Video 64MB RAMea
> > > Qty 1   Solbourne Series 4/500 Chassis CPU I/O Video 32MB RAM
> > > Qty 1   Solbourne Model 810 SCSI Expansion Unit
> > 
> > These are kbus machines, so no, NetBSD won't run on them.  The only thing
> > they run is OS/MP.
> > 
> > There is basic initial support for them, I believe, but nobody has ever
> > been motivated enough to finish it.
> 
> How much more work would it be to finish it? I have 2 series 900 
> machines here: one with 6 33Mhz cpu's and one with 4 50Mhz cpu's. 
> Both have 768Mb of RAM. They currently run OS/MP 4.1C but I would 
> love to see NetBSD run on them...

It would not be insignificant, but I have access to enough hardware and
old Solbourne personnel that I've considered starting it myself.

I have to admit that the hardware is really great.  I've got a 5/500 with
a 5E cpu and 160M of RAM, an extra series 5 cpu, and a 21' color monitor
which I use as an extra seat whenever someone is visiting and needs to
send email, and I have to admit that it's nicer than my PC.  It also
does all my home backups, since it has a 2G exabyte...  Fortunately, too,
the university where I work/study has the largest collection of running
Solbourne hardware in the world, as far as we know, and since the Solbourne
development facility was just up the road a ways from Boulder, I have
sushi with many of them on a regular basis, now that they're all working
at Sun (in Broomfield, down the road in the other direction).

Now I'm curious.  I'll dig up an S/4000 from work and see if I can't
make some progress on it, at least find out how much more work would be
required.

~james