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cdewick@lios.apana.org.au (Craig Dewick) writes:

>aka SunOS 5.6

>4/6xx boards can run SunOS 5.6 (aka Solaris 2.6) with some kernel fiddling
>to remove the machine type check. There's no VME support as of 5.6, so it
>makes a 4/6xx into a very capable single-board Sun-4m machine with lots of
>Sbus slots. And one good thing is that 4/6xx's use standard 4 meg, 30 pin
>parity SIMM's.

But 16 in a bank :-)

In SunOS 5.7, you'll probably have a much harder time to get it running,
as all the IPI/VME stuff is really totally removed.

>Another limitation, besides the lack of VME support (but who really needs
>that these days anyway?), is that you can't use the older types of Mbus CPU
>modules since SunOS 5.6 dropped support for them too. Things like the SM-5x
>and SM-6x modules do generally work (not all variants of each though), but
>not the older SM-100's.

And that can't be tweaked back in, as there's no support for those CPUs
in the kernel anymore.

>I don't however have a record of what needs to be done with the kernel to
>disable the 4/6xx system checking routine. Does anyone have a saved copy of
>the news article(s) which detailed what to do to make SunOS 5.6 work on
>4/6xx boards?

Dejanews.

>I presume the Sun-4c will be dropped, since they are getting very old now
>(but still extremely useful) compared to all the Ultrasparc models being
>released.

sun4c is still alive and kicking in SunOS 5.7


Some framebuffer have been dropped (*ZX, cgeight, cgfour, and Sbus bwtwos
[ but the ELC still works and there's bwtwo driver still present])

Using 5.6 drivers under 5.7 will more likely fail than ever before, as
SunOS 5.7 drops support for non-MT drivers.  (I.e., simple tricks as doing
forward copies of the GS/GT drivers as possible before are even less likely
to work than before)


Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions.  They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.