Subject: Re: ELC support broken?
To: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
From: Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 03/08/2000 01:26:08
On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Greywolf wrote:

> It almost seems to be SS1/SS1+-class specific.  I will hazard you will
> have this problem on an IPC that someone might be able to lend you
> (if i could, I'd do it -- don't have one), and I will bet equal money
> that it does NOT happen on the SPARCstation 2.

I've got an IPC I can make available, with console, and an SS20 to
build stuff on and boot it from should you get into a situation
requiring a netboot. Unfortunately the NVRAM battery is dead which
means you have to reprogram it on every power cycle, but that's
not too hard. (If someone knows where to get a new NVRAM chip
cheaply, I'd welcome the info--I'm not sure I want to spend
$25 to fix this problem.)

> Oh, and I'd like to ask a question here:  What's the difference between
> a SPARCstation 2 and a SPARCstation IPX?  I seem to remember some of my
> favourite buzzwords ("cache" and "contexts") being bandied about in
> a comparison between the two.  It can't be the on-chip cache, since
> a PoweruP goes into either an IPX or a SS2, so that would leave the
> number of contexts it can handle (which is done...where?), or the
> amount of L2 cache (which is on that chip to the left of the CPU on
> an IPX).

This seems odd, since the CPUs in an SS2 and IPX are different,
according to the Sun hardware FAQ. Anyway, the SS2 has sixteen
hardware contexts, the IPX has eight. Both have 64K of cache.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   917 532 4208   http://www.netbsd.org
      «Quand on veut un mouton, c'est la preuve qu'on existe.»