Thanks for the tip Martin, Looking at the page it seems I have the following, which is indeed sun4m: -
SPARCstation 4 Processor(s): MicroSPARC II @ 70MHz Bus: SBus, 1 slot Architecture: sun4m Notes: Optional 16-bit audio, onboard framebuffer. All, I have since tried to upgrade my kernel to the kernel-image-2.4.27-2-sparc32_2.4.27-2_sparc.deb package but had a kernel panic, unable to mount root fs error on the reboot. I think this could be a silo.conf error. I did add the initrd line to silo.conf but I didn't include a root=/dev/sda1 line. I had a look around for a decent (full and complete) example of a silo.conf file but couldn't find one on the net. I was hoping that upgrading the kernel would allow me to move to the new stable 'sarge' release. Any good pointers? Once again though, getting my box back to a decent version of woody was not straight forward, I had to edit my source.list before completing the install as the floppy disks always point to stable, which of course is now 'sarge'. I tried getting the floppy rescue and driver files over the net thinking they may have been updated, but alas no. Cheers all, Steve -----Original Message----- From: Martin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 June 2005 21:14 To: Debian Sparc Subject: RE: Debian on Sparc 4 > I think the SPARC 4 is a sun4m architecture although I am no guru on > SUN architecture at all. It is a sun4m machine. For hardware info for this generation of machine, this site: http://www.sunhelp.org/faq/sunref1.html is good (IMHO). > I don't know the differences between c and m but I > think the sun4c is the SPARC 1 and 2. They are a different abstract architecture, more critically sun4m machines use SPARC v8 processors rather then SPARC v7 in sun4c machines (I can't think of an exception - although there might be one). This only matters as SPARC v8 has unsigned int multiply and divides (as well as atomic swap I believe) which has to be emulated on SPARC v7 machines. In short, for a few key apps (such as ssh, GPG and libc), having support for SPARC v7 processors slows down the code on faster machines, thus (and as sun4c machines are getting quite old) there is limited support for them in Debian 3.1. > I shall have to take a closer > look at this although looking at the SUN site I am sure it is sun4m. > I shall see if sarge supports it. Perhaps the sun4m can use a => > 2.4.21 kernel and then be upgraded to sarge. I believe sarge on sun4m is viable, not sure about the status of 2.6 kernels on sun4m machines, know there used to be at least some bugs on SMP, check the archives and http://sparclinux.mit.edu/sparc/ if you have problems with it. HTH Cheers, - Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]