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SPARC LT

MrImprovement said:
The reason I say 1.6.1 is because that is a solid release (I am told) and it was during the time when SPARC 32bit was heavily used, so all parts of the kernel and drivers will have been tested.
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if you know of a url for the 1.6.2 sparc iso I'd love a link (1.6.2 was the last release before 2.0). I went looking some time back and never found one. I have a 2.0 iso but didnt find any of the 1.6 sparc iso's.
 
Other than a few exceptions I doubt there's anything 1.6.2 will support that 10.1 won't, as well as every version in between. SPARC is one of the better supported vintage platforms on NetBSD and other than some drivers for obscure hardware suffering bit rot and SMP stability with HyperSPARCS the port has never had any major issues.
 
tokenalt said:
Other than a few exceptions I doubt there's anything 1.6.2 will support that 10.1 won't, as well as every version in between. SPARC is one of the better supported vintage platforms on NetBSD and other than some drivers for obscure hardware suffering bit rot and SMP stability with HyperSPARCS the port has never had any major issues.
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I found that the 9.x running on an IPX was sluggish; they had switched to using PAM for login and logging in at the console was taking like 6-10 seconds; a performance regression they may have caught since, but which would not be in earlier versions.
 
I did find 1.5.2 on archive org but its not a solely bootable iso for sparc you have to do the miniroot thing or floppy boot etc.

archive.org

NetBSD 1.5.2 : Wasabi Systems, Inc. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

NetBSD 1.5.2Wasabi Systems ReleaseCD1: arm32, i386, macppc, sparc, sparc64CD2: alpha, amiga, arc, atari, cobalt, hp300, hpcmips, mac68k, mvme68k, news68k,...
archive.org

and after some digging, 1.6.1

archive.org

Linux & C. Magazine - n. 34 [NetBSD 1.6.1 - Libranet Linux 2.7] : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Linux & C. - Italian magazine dedicated to Open Source Software (mostly Linux)Issue 34 CoverdiscCD1 - NetBSD 1.6.1CD2 - Libranet Linux 2.7
archive.org
 
MrImprovement said:
I found that the 9.x running on an IPX was sluggish; they had switched to using PAM for login and logging in at the console was taking like 6-10 seconds; a performance regression they may have caught since, but which would not be in earlier versions.
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A performance regression certainly, but not a bug. It's just the price you pay for running a modern OS on 34 year old hardware. That said 10.x does perform a little better.
 
MrImprovement said:
you could try to see if you could boot an earlier version of NetBSD, like 1.6.1 on it, just to see what is detected and what it does not see in terms of devices. The reason I say 1.6.1 is because that is a solid release (I am told) and it was during the time when SPARC 32bit was heavily used, so all parts of the kernel and drivers will have been tested.
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I tried booting from the following iso image, but unfortunately it did not work.
https://archive.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/iso/1.6.2/sparccd.iso
 

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tokenalt said:
What version is the ROM? If it's OpenBoot 2.x then can you show us the device tree and the .attributes of some of the major components such as the memory controller and sbus controller. Also can you try other versions of NetBSD as well as some versions of SunOS/Solaris?
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ROM Rev. 2.2R2
I have tried various versions of SunOS, Solaris, and NetBSD and none of them would boot.
SPARC LT requires the dedicated OS that supports TSB. However, I have heard that SPARCstation LT can run regular Soralis, and I would like to confirm that this is true.
 

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