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hw-tph
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Joined: 08 Jan 2004
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Location: Uppsala, Sweden

PostPosted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 7:50 pm    Post subject: Newbie to Sparcs: Pitfalls? Reply with quote

Hi all. I have at last managed to get a hold of a real computer - I am picking up my first Sun box later this week, an Ultra 10 with 256MB RAM. I will get keyboard, mouse and a video adapter to go with it.

Is there something in particular I should watch out for? Also I do have some specific questions about it:

  • How big IDE disks does the Ultra5/10 recognize? Is there still a 137GB limit?
  • Is the Creator3D video card fully supported with high resolution framebuffer and flawless X.org performance?
  • Does the onboard sound work? If not, can I use a PC soundcard? SB Lives seem not to work, according to my searches in this forum.
  • I have heard that 2.6 kernels are not recommended for the SPARC at this time. Is this still true? I have been running 2.6 since the late 2.5 days on my PC computers and never had any problems so it would feel a tad awkward to revert to 2.4 for the Ultra.

Thank you for any input.

Håkan
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Toady
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 8:10 am    Post subject: Re: Newbie to Sparcs: Pitfalls? Reply with quote

hw-tph wrote:
Hi all. I have at last managed to get a hold of a real computer - I am picking up my first Sun box later this week, an Ultra 10 with 256MB RAM. I will get keyboard, mouse and a video adapter to go with it.

Is there something in particular I should watch out for? Also I do have some specific questions about it:

  • How big IDE disks does the Ultra5/10 recognize? Is there still a 137GB limit?
  • Is the Creator3D video card fully supported with high resolution framebuffer and flawless X.org performance?
  • Does the onboard sound work? If not, can I use a PC soundcard? SB Lives seem not to work, according to my searches in this forum.
  • I have heard that 2.6 kernels are not recommended for the SPARC at this time. Is this still true? I have been running 2.6 since the late 2.5 days on my PC computers and never had any problems so it would feel a tad awkward to revert to 2.4 for the Ultra.

Thank you for any input.

Håkan


You might be dissapointed by the speed, I know I was - but in fairness this is mostly down to the rubbish IDE chipset - If you really are going to use this machine daily then look at getting a SCSI card that you can boot off and dump IDE altogehter.

Compared with computers of today any Ultra 10 will not feel that snappy, as a home server / firewall they arent to bad tho.
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GenTimJS
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Joined: 03 May 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 7:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

# How big IDE disks does the Ultra5/10 recognize? Is there still a 137GB limit?
-Yes. Its a chipset thing with the 5/10


# Is the Creator3D video card fully supported with high resolution framebuffer and flawless X.org performance?
-Kinda. Dont expect hardware accelleration.

# Does the onboard sound work? If not, can I use a PC soundcard? SB Lives seem not to work, according to my searches in this forum.
-Not with a 2.6 kernel

# I have heard that 2.6 kernels are not recommended for the SPARC at this time. Is this still true? I have been running 2.6 since the late 2.5 days on my PC computers and never had any problems so it would feel a tad awkward to revert to 2.4 for the Ultra.
-Run 2.4 if you want sound.


The speed on these is dog slow (I've ran a few ultra5s) compared to other sparc systems, and this is mostly due to the 10-cent IDE chip in them.. the performance will suffer greatly due to the slow IDE bus in the system. I'm told they arent so bad with a pci scsi controller *shrugs*

Overall, the 5/10 is a good intro to sparc and with 256 or more megs of ram can function as a "passable" desktop for basic use. Dont plan to replace the opteron on your desk with this box, but you can safely replace that PII system with it.
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Ferris
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Three comments:
Creator3D is supported on U10/xorg-x11. In your xorg.conf file, screen "Depth 24" is a mandatory option because that is the only depth it supports. The Creator driver (sunffb) takes its resolution from however you set it up in the boot prom (OBP); the Creator tries to match your monitor to one of its supported resolutions, with certain defaults built in. You can force specific resolutions, if you wish, but make sure to pick something your monitor supports --- if you get it wrong, ffb will use it anyway, but your monitor will stay black, catch fire, or whatever. You can download Sun's Frame Buffer Handbook at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0438?q=Handbook+for+Sun+Frame+Buffers&s=t&a=load --- this has a nice summary about Creator3D resolutions and so on. Just ignore the Solaris-specific bits.

xorg-x11 does not support DRM acceleration for Creator. Current kernels don't support it either. In xorg, it is not possible to get proper font rendering if DRM is in use, so the DRI is disabled. Other than that, the sunffb driver drives Creator as fast as Creator can go.

Current kernel-2.6.xx versions are believed to be stable on U10; I can't speak to sound support.

Hope this is of some use,
Regards,
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hw-tph
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 10:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you all for your insightful input. I'm looking forward to getting my Ultra10 (and already eyeing compatible SCSI cards).


Håkan
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