[OpenIndiana-discuss] Suitable Dev box to replace Ultra 80

[Peter Firmstone]

I've used Sparc since the 90's, in my undergrad university days, I used 
to log in remotely to the University network, using a Sparc Classic, I 
never suffered the consequences of MS Word documents becoming corrupted, 
or the other PC reliability issues and had the benefit of additional 
account privileges (unofficially) like untimed internet access, only 
because the sysadmin used sparc and all the important infrastructure at 
the Uni was sparc or Unix based.

I'm somewhat afraid of using Intel hardware, especially on the internet, 
due to the bios and network hardware security issues that OS's can't 
prevent.

OpenBoot is far more powerful than typical x86 bios.

It would be nice to have a Niagara dev box, for multi threading 
development. 

How portable is Openindiana, from what I can tell it's intel only?

How easy is Openindiana to build, do you think there would be enough 
interest in a sparc port?

Or perhaps an ARM64 port?  Arm seems to have much greater economy of 
scale and could displace x86 the same way x86 displaced the big Unix 
vendors (well actually it was more like top brass knee jerk reactions, 
like Alpha's untimely and premature death).  Unlike Intel, anyone can 
license arm (or sparc for that matter, but ARM has the numbers).

If Openindiana was to support ARM64 some time in future, now would be 
the time to start, while hardware vendors are looking to enter new markets.

Cheers,

Peter.

>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:22:40 -0500
> From: Daniel Kjar <dkjar at elmira.edu>
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
> 	<openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Suitable Dev box to replace Ultra
> 	80
> Message-ID: <4F1D5F20.6010802 at elmira.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> If you like old sun hardware you could pick up an ultra 40 or 20 used.  
> I put a 3ghz dual core in my ultra 20 and 8 gbs of ram + 4 hard drives.  
> The 40 has much better options.  I also have a 4x2 core (885s I believe) 
> v40z with 32gb of ram I picked up for 500 dollars a couple years ago.  
> That is my openindiana sunray server.  Follow the instructions on the 
> sunray users forum and it works great.  No kiosks though.  Sadly I have 
> had to retire my old blade1000 due to the same kind of stuff you 
> mention.  I use the ultra 20 as a file server and my desktop.  08:21am  
> up 61 days 21:53
>
>
>
> On 01/22/12 12:16 AM, Peter Firmstone wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've got a Grandfathers Axe, Ultra 80, 4 CPU, 4GB Ram, 4 x 2.5" SAS 
>> Drives, 2 x 3.5" SCSI, 2x XVR-1000's and dual 24" LCD Monitors.  I had 
>> been waiting for Sun to release a new sparc workstation, but it never 
>> happened.
>>
>> Its a Java dev box, all round work computer (with sunray clients), has 
>> a zone with a web server, online since 2005.
>>
>> I recently noticed that JDK1.7 isn't supported on my release of 
>> Solaris 10, I'm guessing it isn't on Openindiana either ;), but better 
>> to have community support than nothing at all!
>>
>> I also participate in the Apache River project, once I replace this 
>> workstation, our software will no longer be tested on Solaris Sparc, 
>> so support for that OS / Hardware combo will be dropped.
>>
>> What's the best (Rock solid) CPU / Motherboard / ECC Ram / Hardware to 
>> run Openindiana with?  Can Openindiana server thin clients eg ltsp?
>>
>> Where do you order Openindiania DVD's?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Peter.
>>
>>
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