Sparcstation 20: From OpenBSD to Solaris

This post began its life as a comment on the previous Sparcstation 20 entry, and true to the way I overwrite even a comment, it works well enough as a standalone entry.

And thus, here it is in that form:

I've discovered that NetBSD doesn't run so well on the Sparcstation 20 (50 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM). The install went fine, but the X configuration was less than optimal. Console messages continued to appear on the X screen, and I could tell that, among other things perhaps, the horizontal sync and/or vertical refresh might have been just a bit off. I imagine that if I take the xorg.conf information from OpenBSD and use it for NetBSD, all issues will be solved.

But when NetBSD's 32-bit Sparc packages for Firefox and Seamonkey (precompiled packages, NOT ports) wouldn't install, and then the Geany package did install but ran so slowly as to be unusable, I decided to go in a different direction.

Thus far, that direction is a reinstall of OpenBSD. I haven't tried any ports yet, but all the packages I have installed — a few GUI editors (nedit, which I quite like, and another I can't remember), plus the Dillo browser, which in all fairness ran great in NetBSD, too — did work.

Now that I'm running not the box's original, jet-plane-noisy 2 GB Seagate hard drive but a super-cheap-on-eBay 35 GB Hitachi SCSI drive that's pleasantly quiet, maybe the installation of an OpenBSD port of a "modern" Web browser will work. Maybe not. I'll also try to roll Abiword onto the box, as well as Geany (for comparison's sake, if anything else).

And there's always Solaris.

I know there are Solaris-compatible packages for just about everything, so if I can't manage to get Seamonkey or Firefox installed from OpenBSD's ports with the extra disk space, my next move will be installing Solaris 9 (I got an unopened box of the software for $1 — yep, that little, plus shipping — on eBay) and see how that OS runs on the box.

One thing: Sound on the 32-bit Sparc platform doesn't work in OpenBSD. It does in NetBSD. Of course it does in Solaris, since Sun's OS was written with the Sparc in mind.

It may be that Solaris is the best OS for desktop use on the Sparc 20. Probably the best thing to do is get a CPU module faster then the current 50 MHz processor I'm now running, and also upping the memory to the max of 512 MB (right now I have the 128 MB the box had when I got it).

But make no mistake, for sheer out-of-the-box configuration on a Sparcstation 20 (sound nothwithstanding), OpenBSD is way ahead of NetBSD.

My next line of attack is trying a few (or more) OpenBSD ports. Even if this experiment goes well, I'll have to roll Solaris 9 onto the Sparc 20 before I decide on any long-term OS for the box.

Before I finish this entry, it's worth pointing out that Debian Etch for Sparc boots but won't install. It hangs when trying to load the CD driver. I don't know if the Sparc port of Debian is broken for EVERY 32-bit Sparc model, but it sure doesn't work for the Sparcstation 20.

Image above right: This isn't my Sparc; it's a Sparcstation 5 from http://www.computermuseum.org.uk. They look exactly alike (and in many ways are).