Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC

On 8/30/25 03:40, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On Fri, 2025-08-29 at 18:41 -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:
>> I will hunt around and see what I have laying about in a back room.
>> I know I have old Netra X1 stuff and maybe a few other units with very
>> old UltraSPARC processors in them. They will be horrifically slow.
>> The SPARC M7 or M8 will be a unicorn. Heard of only in myth.
> 
> While I don't assume you have a SPARC M7-compatible machine, I think
> chances are good you might have a T1 machine. As a bonus, a test on
> an UltraSPARC I or II is very welcome as well.
> 
...

> Still, it would be nice to have testing on real machines of these types:
> 
> - UltraSPARC I or II

Found one of these units :

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_II#UltraSPARC_IIe


Resetting...

Processor Speed = [Speed Jumper = 5] 500 MHz
Baud rate is 9600
8 Data bits, 1 stop bits, no parity (configured from lom)

Firmware CORE  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
@(#) core 1.0.18 2002/05/23 18:22
Software Power ON
Verifying NVRAM...Done
Bootmode is 0
MCR0 = 36a0bc04
MCR1 = c0804000
MCR2 = ff0bbbb
MCR3 = 3ff
Ecache Size = 256 KB
Clearing E$ Tags Done
Clearing I/D TLBs Done
Probing memory
Done
MEMBASE=0x60000000
MEMSIZE=0x10000000
Clearing memory...Done
Turning ON MMUs Done
Copy ROM to RAM (154720 bytes) Done
Orig PC=0x1fff0007edc  New PC=0xf0f07f34
Processor Speed=500MHz
Looking for Dropin FVM ... found
Decompressing Client Done
Transferring control to Client...
Reset Control: BXIR:0 BPOR:0 SXIR:0 SPOR:1 POR:0
Probing upa at 1f,0 pci
Probing upa at 0,0 SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIe (256 Kb)
Loading Support Packages: kbd-translator
Loading onboard drivers:
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 7  isa dma rtc power SUNW,lomh serial serial
    flashprom
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 3  pmu i2c temperature dimm dimm dimm dimm
    i2c-nvram idprom motherboard-fru ppm beep fan-control
lomp
Probing Memory Bank #0 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #1 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #2 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #3 256 Megabytes
ChassisSerialNumber 51592229
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 7
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 3
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device c  ethernet
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 5  ethernet
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device a  usb
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device d  ide disk cdrom
todm5819 Sun Netra X1 (UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 4.0, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #51592229.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:13:3c:25, Host ID: 83133c25.


This will be horrific in terms of speed but it seems to be a variant of
the UltraSPARC II.  They are dirt cheap and on eBay for silly prices.

With luck I can netboot the installer image. Seems to be an IDE bus
inside the thing. Who knows ... maybe an IDE DVD drive will boot.