[OpenIndiana-discuss] oi or hipster for ultra5?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> Hi,
>   My Solaris 11 install is getting a little long in the tooth and I still
> use this poor old machine kind of a lot for small development, pdp11
> emulation and its real serial ports, etc.  I would like to keep it because
> it's pretty low power, reliable as dirt, and still supports the very
> comfortable Sun type 4 unix keyboard, which I still feel a little paralyzed
> trying to do without.  I'm running into problems with new software (CSW, in
> particular) wanting more recent libs than the OS has.  So I guess (*sigh*)
> it's time to update the OS bits.
>
>   Is it feasible to install Hipster or OI on such a meagerly appointed
> machine?  I don't even have a dvd player; just cd.
>
> SunOS beep 5.11 snv_65 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10
> Memory size: 256 Megabytes

An Ultra 5 is a SPARC system.
No one builds OpenIndiana for SPARC.

The two Illumos distributions for SPARC that I know of are OpenSXCE and 
Tribblix.

Another option would be to use Solaris 11 Express if it still exists 
anywhere - it's old, but not as old as snv_65.  I think it still had 
sun4u support, but I could be mistaken. Solaris 11 itself no longer 
supports sun4u systems except the Sun/Fujitsu M-series 
(M3000/4000/5000/8000/9000).

Do you have to stick with SPARC? Your Ultra 5 is going to be way slower 
than any current (and many old) x86 systems, which are supported by all 
the Illumos distributions.

-- 
Andrew