Tag Archives: sparc

Change is in the air!

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Since there haven’t been any updates for a while, I figured it was time to sit down and write something.

2013 is proving to be an interesting year so far.  I have switched to a new job, with all kinds of pretty cool opportunities to expand my knowledge and experience using some new technologies, as well as honing my existing skill-set in a new environment.  Looking forward to what the rest of the year brings!

This past Black Friday’s trip to Fry’s Electronics yielded a new server for the basement.  I now have an eight-core AMD system, loaded with 32GB of RAM and a small software RAID array for local storage.  The new server is currently running Proxmox VE, and hosting a small set of virtual machines.  One of those VMs is actually my Zimbra server, which has been performing flawlessly, as well as much faster than the old physical box I used previously.

In other news, I have reacquired some domain names that I had originally registered back in 1999.  ServerUnderground is gaining a sister site, BurningServer!

BurningServer systems will be made up of my motley crew of SPARC based hardware running NetBSD.  I have to get the hardware sorted out, RAM purchased for those systems that were donated last summer, and storage set up.  It’s been pretty chilly in the basement lair this winter, so I haven’t spent a lot of time on this project yet.

Another project is to virtualize the web server currently dishing out content for this site.  I will attempt to load up a fresh VM running Ubuntu, and migrate the data over for the blog.  The older hardware will most likely be used for a NAS based off of FreeBSD so I can use ZFS.

I’m still a huge fan of the AMD Trinity line of processors!  After building the dual-core system, I ended up going all out and built a top of the line A10 based system with 16GB of RAM.  Super quiet, runs cool, and great support for the FGLRX driver under Ubuntu 12.10!

I hope to have more frequent updates on the blog in 2013 compared to last year.  That’s all for now!

More SPARC hardware!

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Thanks to a good friend who was thinking of my love for older Sun Microsystems hardware, I now have a few more SPARC based systems to add to my stable of computers!  I have gained a two more SPARCStation 20 systems (both dual CPU), two more SPARCStation 5 systems, and a SunBlade 100.

None of the systems came with RAM, so I’ll have to hit eBay and locate some used memory.

What to do with these systems?  I really need to get some kind of FreeNAS system online, and perform network based booting with all the SPARCs.  I have plenty of Fast Ethernet SBUS adapters, so I won’t be limited to 10Mbit/s for “disk” traffic.  I dare say, running off of a modern NAS setup may even be faster than most of my SPARC systems’ onboard SCSI interfaces.  It would be nice to not have to deal with old SCSI drives, the added power consumption, and the added heat as well.

With all that said, I’m considering moving this site onto a NetBSD platform, based off of the SPARC hardware.  Should be an interesting diversion from things at work, and give me some opportunities to pick up more scripting and possibly programming.

More updates to come as I play around with the hardware!  If anyone out there has RAM for SS5, SS20, Ultra2, or SunBlade 100 systems, and you’d like to donate to the cause, please let me know!

Playing with NetBSD on SPARC hardware again!

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A while back I started messing around with NetBSD on my SPARC hardware. There were lots of challenges just getting the hardware to cooperate so I could perform an installation, so I didn’t get very far with my project.

Last week I decided to take another stab at NetBSD, and also programming my own EPROM chip for my Sun Microsystems SPARCStation 2 system. I was able to locate the latest version of PROM for my hardware (version 2.9), download it, and program a new blank chip using my Willem PCB5.0 programmer.

The SPARCStation 2 originally wouldn’t boot from either the floppy disk images or the CD-ROM for NetBSD 5.0 with the original version of PROM. I managed to locate version 2.4, and found someone who could program a blank AM27C020 chip for me. After installing the new EPROM, I was able to boot off of floppy and CD-ROM to install NetBSD.

Since that time, I got sidetracked with the project (started concentrating more on off-road adventures with the Jeep). This past week, I decided to try to program my own PROM, and have both the SPARCStation 2 and the SPARCStation 20 up and running!

The goal for the SS20 is to upgrade to the -current codebase, and test out the latest multiprocessor kernels. The GENERIC.MP kernel that ships with NetBSD 5.1 wouldn’t boot, so I’ve fallen back to the GENERIC kernel for now while I update the system to -current. Once the upgrade is completed, I will attempt to get a multiprocessor kernel up and running.

The SS2 is running the standard install of NetBSD 5.1. I will attempt to keep it up to date with the stable codebase. The 2.1GB hard drive is a bit low on space after performing my initial install and downloading all the source via CVS, so I may need to dig through my hard drives and come up with a better storage solution.

Tonight I will attempt to get one of my Sun Microsystems Ultra2 workstations online with NetBSD 5.1 (sparc64 port).