> Greetings,
>
> I have a Sun Ultra 5 workstation that currently runs Gentoo Linux.  I 
> like NetBSD's software and community better than other free operating 
> systems and want to use NetBSD on my Sun.  Unfortunately, the NetBSD 
> website and numerous posts in the port-sparc64 say that X11 is not 
> supported on the Sun Ultra 5.  I have some questions about this.
>
>     1. Why doesn't X11 work?  Is it because of technical reasons,
>        lack of manpower, or both?  What needs to happen before NetBSD
>        supports X11 on these machines?  What could I (and others) do
>        to help?
>
>     2. I'm running Linux on my Ultra 5.  XFree86/X.org works for me,
>        using the 'ati' driver for the built-in framebuffer and the
>        'glint' driver for a Raptor PGX32 PCI card that I've installed
>        (although I needed to patch the 'glint' driver to correct a
>        little-endian assumption).  To what extent can these drivers be
>        ported over to NetBSD?
>
>     3. Is there still any interest in getting X11 to work on these
>        machines?  I guess that, with the availability of inexpensive,
>        powerful i386-based PCs, most people are using their Ultra 5's
>        as servers and firewalls.  Have the developers moved onto more
>        important things?
>
> Thank you for your time,
>
> Steve van Dahm
> Spartanburg, SC USA

hi steve,

there are patches available to run X AFAIR at least a 'rudimentary way' 
on U1, U2, U5/U10 and, if i'm not wrong, U30. it shouldn't be that hard 
to get it run this way...

Andrey Petrov has released these patches (see [1]).

[1] -- http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sparc64/2004/01/09/0003.html

-- 
mit vorzueglichster Hochachtung/best regards,

Timo Schoeler
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