Hi all. I just got a SPARCstation 20 up and running with a fresh install of Solaris 2.6. I'm quickly learning this is going to be an uphill battle to do anything productive lol. Any recommendations on an OS that is still actively updated for sparc32? I know Linux and OpenBSD stopped supporting. It looks like NetBSD might be my best option? Curious to hear any recommendations. (BTW- I got this up and running with a netboot install from a Raspberry Pi and my god was there some hidden knowledge needed. I can share the details if anyone is interested.)
If you don't want current updates there are more options. I recommend neglecting any current maintenance, because this is really old hardware. NetBSD should in theory work, but the quality has suffered over several years now. There is no real guarantee that current NetBSD will even boot. The old days of NetBSD supporting everything but your kitchen toaster are long gone.
When you look at older systems, then you could have a fun retro machine. NEXTSTEP or Openstep might be nice (single CPU SuperSPARC only). Good candidates for older Sun systems are Solaris 2.4 or SunOS 4.1.4. You won't be doing anything productive either, but you will have a fun restoration project.
Yeah, I'd just go with SunOS or NeXTSTEP. Plenty of fun to be had with those.
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Thanks for the input. Sounds like OPENSTEP would be fun to take a look at. I have dual 125 MHz hyperSparcs in there now, but could swap in a SuperSPARC I have. Maybe I'll just pass on the NetBSD as yeah I'd be surprised if it was being well maintained...
One other question for ya, the full install of Solaris 2.6 came with no compiler (?!) -- any pointers on where to go for a compiler? gcc I assume?
(This post was last modified: 12-27-2020, 06:05 AM by agentb.)
(12-28-2020, 12:37 PM)escimo Wrote: E.g. Sun WorkShop Compilers 4.2 (WorkShop for Solaris 2.x) or Sun WorkShop 5.0 with non-expiring DEMO licenses from archive.org
very good point and I also second the choice of Solaris 2.4. That would really be an age-appropriate version for a 20, especially with dual HyperSPARCs.
(12-27-2020, 05:20 AM)agentb Wrote: Thanks for the input. Sounds like OPENSTEP would be fun to take a look at. I have dual 125 MHz hyperSparcs in there now, but could swap in a SuperSPARC I have. Maybe I'll just pass on the NetBSD as yeah I'd be surprised if it was being well maintained...
One other question for ya, the full install of Solaris 2.6 came with no compiler (?!) -- any pointers on where to go for a compiler? gcc I assume?
