On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 08:47:34PM +1000, Q89029292 wrote: > On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Ragga Muffin wrote: > > Can someone clarify me how the Debian Sparc tree can support > > both sun4c and sun4m architectures ? > > AFAIK, in SunOS binaries are not interchangeable between 4c and 4m... > > Fair dinkum, I didn't know that, with linux I swapped a disk between a > Classic and an IPX and it just worked.
Generally the SPARC chips are upward compatible. (Sun4c->Sun4m->Sun4u *) It is possible to compile a program using extension available to Sun4m machines that won't work on a Sun4c machine, but I don't think I have seen anyone do this - nor would you gain that much benefit.. This holds true for the Sun4u (UltraSPARC), but this does happen sometimes as you can get a bigger benefit using the Ultra extensions. > N.B. linux seems to run SunOS binaries well too. This is done though a system call emulation layer. > Are you sure its the SunOS binaries or is it kernel level code > optimisations that are different? I've never seen any vendors offering two > differing types of binaries for SunOS are you sure? Correct, userland binaries are not usually optimised for specific chips (afaik none of the distributions do it) Jim * Technically this is more a SPARC architecture thing (SPARC v7, 8, 8+, 9) rather than a system architecture Sun4c Sun4m Sun4u. -- Jim Mintha Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] System Administrator Work: +31 20 525-4919 Informatiseringscentrum Home: +31 20 662-3892 University of Amsterdam Debian GNU/Linux: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _There are always Possibilities_ http://jim.ultralinux.org