Subject: Re: Anyone using a sun4 vme currently with NetBSD?
To: Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org>
From: NetBSD Bob <nbsdbob@weedcon1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
List: port-sparc
Date: 09/26/2001 09:38:58
>    I was trying to get a NetBSD of any sort up on my sun4100 VME machine
>    (Call it mostly a Sun 4/110), but was not having any luck except for
>    1.2.1 and 1.3.3.  None of the 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.4.3, 1.5.1, 1.5.2 booted
>    on it.  Is anyone besides me still running a VME sun4100 cpu based
>    machine with NetBSD?  If so, what are you actually running on it, and
>    what, if anything, out of the ordinary did you have to do to get it up
>    and running.  SunOS 4.1.3U1 and OpenBSD 2.9 run fine on it.  Either
>    something strage is going on with my particular cpu, or I am missing
>    something about installing via miniroots in NetBSD.  So, out of curiosity,
>    who is actually running sun4 vme machines, these days with NetBSD?
> 
> I'v had no success running any of the 1.4 stuff or later on my 4/110,
> either...  In the 1.4 days, something was wrong with the sw driver, to the
> point that it didn't work, and lately, I have not been able to get the LAN
> stuff working, which makes diskless booting a problem.
> 
> Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org
> http://anduin.eldar.org  - & -  http://anduin.ipv6.eldar.org [IPv6 only]
> [finger brad@anduin.eldar.org for PGP public key]

OK, that makes 3 of us that seem to have these machines in one form or
another.  I seem to be the only one with drives on the machine to work
from.... (3 shoeboxes with sun0669 drives, although the scsi bus is only
strong enough to power 4 drives and one tape, unterminated, before the
bus dies).

As I understand it, 1.2.1 and 1.3.3 use the polling scsi drivers, which
work fine.  What was changed in the later drivers that might affect how
a sun4100 cpu works?

The sunhardware faq does not say much about the 4100 cpu, as regards the
scsi.

I will download the latest snap I can find and try that, tonight, and
see what happens.

Bob