[indiana-discuss] OpenSolaris on really old Sun hardware?

[James Cornell]

Rand All wrote:
> I'm not quite sure where to post this, but oh well.
>
> I have some really old Sun workstations, like a SparkStation 5 and an Ultra 1.  I understand that OpenSolaris requires SPARCv9, so I see why the SS5 will never work with OS.  But what about the Ultra 1?
>
> At the moment, it doesn't meet the minimum RAM requirement, but it should be able to take up to 1G RAM.  Aside from the memory requirement, is there any compelling technical reason why OS won't run on the Ultra 1?
>
> I think it would be really cool to get a current, modern version of Solaris running on this thing, rather than being limited to Solaris9.
>
> I don't actually have any real need for this to work; I just think it might be a cool project to get it running.
>
> Any insight?
>   
It'll run on the Ultra 2 with dual 300mhz blackbird processors from my
experience, which maxes out at 2gb I believe.  The Ultra 1 is basically
half of an Ultra 2 in specs, but it's above the immediate memory and
processor revision requirement.  Disk space being the third issue that
is normal, because 9gb was a lot when such machines were common.  You
can stick 18gb u2 scsis in Ultra 2's, and probably Ultra 1's, but if not
use multiple disks because you'll need a good 9gb for a decent
experience plus room to work.

- James