On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 12:04:35 +0200, Timo Schoeler
<timo.schoeler@macfinity.net> wrote:
> hi,
> 
> i owned an Ultra 10/440 a while ago and used it as an NetBSD testbed
> (i'd like to use U2/2400, but MP is not ready yet for sparc64...).
> 
> the experiences i made show that (at least my) U10 (and the more or less
> technically identical U5) is *not* very picky on HDDs -- i ripped out
> its (original) 6,4GByte Seagate (AFAIR 7,200rpm) drive and replaced it
> with a 20Gig Maxtor and, later, a 60Gig Seagate. No problem at all :)
> 
> a few months ago there was a thread on the list on using SATA
> controllers in U5/U10 systems, which might deliver a really nice boost
> to performance ;)
> 
> (at least i kicked the U10 -- it was my last IDE machine; all others,
> even my Macs, are pure SCSI -- whatever ;)

Ok, this is encouraging. I don't have a 64 bit machine at home yet and
these Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 boxes appear to be a pretty cheap way to
get into one. And I know from the one I have at work that they run
NetBSD fairly well.

The reason I ask about changing the boot path is because my old
SparcStation 1 can take an environment variable in the firmware to
change the scsi path you want to boot. I was hoping there was some
provision to do this with an IDE card but oh well...

The all scsi thing is tempting because I have some decent scsi stuff
laying around, but even for a crusty guy like me, a 200 gig drive for
$150 is pretty nice when in scsi drives I only have 9 gig and 18 gig.

Andy