powerbook duo 250 needed for loan to get supported?

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William Duke wrote:
>>William,
>> Well, I was first interested in getting it up and
reviving it to see if
>>it had the specs needed for porting to it... turns
out it has 540 mb
>>disk not 60 so nice, and has like 57 MB of ram
(don't ask me how) but
>>anyway, since it seems no devs have said "I'd
like to borrow it isn't
>>supported" I would be more than happy to put
it to greater use that way,
>>but since nobody has, I will use it through
serial.... It came w/ a nice
>>NEC monitor (I think 17") and so anyway...
long story longer... I want
>>to do it because I can.
>>
> 
> Do it because you can...   Ya know, a few years back I
did something
> just because I could, and I got myself in a whole heap
of trouble for
> it.   It turned out that there were these people that
didn't like what I
> was doing, and they took advantage of some unwritten
laws to stop me
> doing what it was that I'm doing.
> 
> Now, after several years of doing nothing, I'm ready
to do it again...
> Only this time, I'm not just doing it because I can,
I'm doing it
> because it has to be done.   And while some may see me
as the crazy one,
> most see genius, because those who are crazy enough to
think that they
> can change the world, are the ones that do.
> 
> Sorry, I had to take this opportunity to exploit an old
Apple
> commercial.
> 
> Anyway, I know what you mean.   I first started playing
with NetBSD and
> Linux for something to do...  I wanted something
different to break the
> monotiny and boredom of everyday computing existence.  
It turns out
> that I happen to prefer *nix better than anything else
that I've
> previously used, so it all worked out for the best.
> 
>

william,
 we seem like very similiar people. on another note, i am
getting a sun
sparc 5, sparc 1, and sparc 1+ for free this weekend. all
religious bsd
vs linux aside, what is the FASTEST free os for these old
beasts?
(actually i am excited about the sparc 5, it ain't that old
of a beast..
 )

nick
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Hi,

I've added port-sparc to the CC and follow ups should
probably
remove port-mac68k.

> 
> william,
>  we seem like very similiar people. on another note, i
am getting a sun
> sparc 5, sparc 1, and sparc 1+ for free this weekend.
all religious bsd
> vs linux aside, what is the FASTEST free os for these
old beasts?
> (actually i am excited about the sparc 5, it ain't
that old of a beast..
> 
)

I can't comment on the 1 or 1+, but for the 5 you have two
things to
consider.

- If it's a 170 you are going to have problems with Linux. 
Linux
2.4 kernels seem to run fine on the 70, 85, and 110mhz
MicroSparcII
chips, but the 170mhz Turbosparc gives them problems.  The
symptoms
are random hangs (at least for me) under high i/o load.  The
2.6
kernels seem broken for the moment.

- NetBSD 3.0 runs execellenty on both the 110 and 170mhz
ones.  I've
not tried the others.

- There was a problem with NetBSD ??, probably somewhere
between
1.6 and 3, where on the MicroSparcII systems (and maybe
others) you
got random segfaults/bus errors.  Probably best to not use
an earlier
NetBSD than 3.0.  I think the trigger was separate data and
instruction
caches which weren't the same size.  Ie, a line like:

cpu0: 16K instruction (32 b/l), 8K data (16 b/l): cache
enabled


in the dmesg would be a sign not to use 2.0 or 2.1 or so.

- Finally, the slightly bad news (from the NetBSD pov).  On
my 110mhz
SS4 (basically a 5 with less slots) Linux is a bit faster
doing

tar cf - | (cd blah; tar xvf -)

where the source is a nfs mounted disk and the destination
disk
is a fast local scsi disk.  It's 14000 files or so and
2.2gig
and NetBSD manages 0.905 meg/sec and linux (Debian 3.1)
manages
1.24 meg/sec.  The network interface was a hme.

In day to day use I've not found NetBSD to be faster or
slower
and have switched back to NetBSD from Linux.

I'm running NetBSD 3.0 from the install media and it's
possible that a
custom build with -mcpu=v8 would help NetBSD quite a bit.

BTW, keep in mind that OpenBSD also runs on these systems
and it may be faster and/or better.  I've not tried.

cheers

bruce

-- 
edoneelsdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Hey,

On Wednesday, May 31, 2006, at 03:42 PM, nick thompson
wrote:

> william,
>  we seem like very similiar people. on another note, i
am getting a sun
> sparc 5, sparc 1, and sparc 1+ for free this weekend.
all religious bsd
> vs linux aside, what is the FASTEST free os for these
old beasts?
> (actually i am excited about the sparc 5, it ain't
that old of a beast..
> 
)

To be honest.. usually NetBSD is just the fastest thing,
although on 
some boxes linux is pretty decent too. Usually linux just
needs more 
ram. I talk from NetBSD 1.6 and OpenBSD 3.3 experience
though, i'm not 
well informed about newer versions since I have difficulties
installing 
them (or some of my boxes are sadly unooperative lately due
to failures).

NetBSD 3.0 on my IIci doesn't feel fast as 1.6 but I can't
say if it is 
the kernel or the userland.. I know I have almost 4 times
the ram than 
at my 1.6 times so I expected it to be better...


On old sparc boxes NetBSD is very fast. But Linux will run
on your sparc 
5 decently too, so it is really up to you. And to what
hardware and os 
combinations are supported in your case.
Also bear in mind that generally I found porting and
compiling stuff on 
linux is easier (due to people writing crappy stuff). So if
you need to 
go beyond what the base OS offers you..

Have fun,
   Riccardo