Re: SS5 newbie
Herbert Raimund wrote: Recently I got an interesting offer, a Sparc 5 with 2 SCSI (SCA) disks, 64 MB RAM. It goes for about $ 100. So I browsed and read anything I could get on websites and HOWTOs, but there are many elementary questions left. Not knowing anything about the performance and setup of these systems I have some trivial questions: I plan to run Linux (Debian, Slackware). The Linux HOWTOs say that there are dedicated distribution for Sparcs. Sounds obvious. Though applications have to be compiled for Sparcs - is that right? How is the performance of the SS5 (TI MicroSparc II 85 Mhz). The Specs talking about 70 bogomips - thats not quite exciting compared to contemptorary systems. But how does it perform with 'modern' software? KDE? Gimp? How is the response of X11 over the sparcs graphic card? Annoying slow? Or are you even able to use xine? I have really no idea at all.. Note that your SS5 cannot use standard PC hardware, meaning that $100 had better include a Sun keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Note also that many of these old machines were never equiped with floppy or CD-ROM, meaning that you'll be learning the joy of setting up a network Linux install. Most CD-ROMs for these machines will require animal sacrifice to properly read many CD-R (burned) discs. My SS5 has a high-end "24-bit framebuffer" installed. Unfortunately, so far as I can tell, the XFree86 driver gives me 8-bit colour and one fixed resolution. That's 256 colours. That means that many modern applications will simply refuse to start and the ones that do look like a 4-year-old has mangled them with a box of crayons. Also, my SS5 is twice as fast as yours and has 3-times the RAM; yet I'd not ever consider putting KDE or Gnome on it. There simply isn't enough CPU to give the windowmanager more than the apps themselves should get. Fluxbox with a very minimal colour scheme works nicely, and even this is usually just so I can fit 4 xterms on the display rather than looking at entire VTs. And the audio chip CS4231 - are there drivers? Yes. It's only 8-bit audio though. These Sun Stations are an old dream since I work with computers and now its avalaible for such a little money. I hope theres somebody out there who can shed light on this exotic machines... If you havn't already, check out the FAQABOSS for info on these older 32bit SPARCs. http://faqaboss.sunhelp.org/ If you're willing to shell out a bit more for a slightly more modern (though genuinely drool-worthy) Sun machine, check out this site (I have no affiliation other than being a very happy customer): http://anysystem.com Now, I hope I havn't sounded like I'm trying to deter you, just making sure you know what you're getting. I'm the very proud owner of several pizzaboxes and lunchboxes, and host a few websites, mail, subversion, cvs, etc. from an Ultra 1 that has been humming along quietly for a long, long time, and I'm convinced that if I could keep a UPS under it, it'd survive a nuclear blast and keep humming reliably while crappy PC hardware melted down and died. -- - David A. Riggs
Re: Re: Ultra 5 can't start KDE
This might not be it at all, but if you have either Sun's Elite3D or Creator3D, the system might be pointing to the wrong device. On my Ultra10, I was having a bear of a time getting X to start up at all. The linux hardware detection put the Elite3D device on fb0 and the ATI Mach64 at fb1. X -config and every other method of configuration wanted to use the ATI card, but XFree wanted whatever was in the fb0 slot. Pointing X at the Elite3D did the trick. Like I said, this might not be your problem at all, but if you want to look at my config file, I'd be happy to send it to you. Regards, Ed From: Peter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 2004/06/15 Tue AM 09:02:18 EDT To: Brandon Gilliam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CC: "debian-sparc@lists.debian.org" Subject: Re: Ultra 5 can't start KDE > > I made it through the install, and everything seemed to work fine until I > attempted to start KDE via startx. My screen begins to flash and won't stop. > I can see the full KDE desktop when it flashes, but I can't do anything with > it. I have attempted to reconfigure xfree86 with dpkg-reconfigure > xserver-xfree86, but nothing I do seems to help the problem. I am using the > ATI drivers and have an old 15 inch IBM monitor (2235-00N). I looked up the > horz. and vert. freq. and configured xfree with them. I think everything is > up to date package-wise, unless I missed something in dselect. > > Anybody have any ideas? I'm not completely clueless with things Linux, but > not all that advanced either, so please give detailed instructions if you > can. Did you install x-window-system and x-window-system-core packages? I had a similar problem once and installing these packages solved the problem for me if I remember correctly. What videocard do you have? you can check with lspci. My machine lists the card as :01:02.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP (rev 5c) If you have a similar card I can send you a working XFree86Config-4 for Debian Sarge on a 17" monitor. Good luck, Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Ultra 5 can't start KDE
> > I made it through the install, and everything seemed to work fine until I > attempted to start KDE via startx. My screen begins to flash and won't stop. > I can see the full KDE desktop when it flashes, but I can't do anything with > it. I have attempted to reconfigure xfree86 with dpkg-reconfigure > xserver-xfree86, but nothing I do seems to help the problem. I am using the > ATI drivers and have an old 15 inch IBM monitor (2235-00N). I looked up the > horz. and vert. freq. and configured xfree with them. I think everything is > up to date package-wise, unless I missed something in dselect. > > Anybody have any ideas? I'm not completely clueless with things Linux, but > not all that advanced either, so please give detailed instructions if you > can. Did you install x-window-system and x-window-system-core packages? I had a similar problem once and installing these packages solved the problem for me if I remember correctly. What videocard do you have? you can check with lspci. My machine lists the card as :01:02.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP (rev 5c) If you have a similar card I can send you a working XFree86Config-4 for Debian Sarge on a 17" monitor. Good luck, Peter
