🚀 go-pugleaf

terryc <newssixspam-spam@woa.com.au> writes:

>On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:34:08 +0000, Craig Dewick wrote:


>>>  2. Some layman comparision between this system and x86 system would
>>>be better (i used all my googling skills but in vain, but always leads
>>>me into spec.org)
>> 
>> To be honest, there really isn't any concrete way to compare an arbitrary
>> Sparc-based system with an arbitrary x86-based system. The CPU architectures
>> are completely different, the system board circuitry is different, and in
>> general the entire systems are nothing at all like PC's. Some are close
>> (such as the design of the Ultra 5 and 10 systems), but still very
>> different.

>My 2c is that if you are going to go out and spend $$$ to buy hardware,
>then buy X86 system hardware rather than sun stuff. Especially if you have
>some hardware skills and can buy  yumcha x86 stuff. The parts will always
>be reuseable in other systems.

>I've just brought home a courier van full of old sun hardware and I can
>bet you, that apart from scsi stuff (hard disk, cdrom), that bugger all
>will be interchangeable. <damm, just realised there wasn't a keyboard or
>mouse in the whole van of stuff. bugger, yep the sun keyboard and mouse
>are special and there are different models.>

Since when has PC stuff been interchangable? Apart from PCI cards, and IDE
disks, nothing is interchangable, so it's no different to Sun hardware, or
HP hardware, or IBM hardware, etc. etc. At least Sun hardware lasts waaaaaay
longer in terms of useful service life than PC hardware, and not
withstanding a few notable exceptions, most Sun systems are built far more
robustly than just about any normal PC or x86-based server.

>>
>>>  3. Are all components of the system supported under Gnu/Linux
>>>(specially display)
>> 
>> Most of the current Linux flavours that have good Sparc support (Debian,
>> Gentoo, etc.) will work just fine with a wide range of Sun peripherals
>> including framebuffer/display cards. Even the open-source BSD OS's like
>> NetBSD, etc. have plenty of support for Sun cards.
>> 
>>>  4. I would be buying with a CR-ROM support, does this systems boot
>>>from CD-ROM (i am asking this coz i read somewhere that you need to boot
>>>of a serial port to kick start OS installation)
>> 
>> Yes the Ultra-60 system board firmware supports booting from a CD-ROM
>> drive.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Craig.


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