Sun Ultra Sparc 30

[thehog]

Hi,

I am about to buy a Sun Ultra Sparc 30. The machine has a main 300 MHz processor and an extra 300 MHz (co) processor, 2x4 GB SCSI disks and 1 GB RAM.

I am not sure whether to really buy it (approx. USD 150). Will Gentoo run on it and will I be able to run Xorg, KDE/Gnome, Firefox, OpenOffice etc. to a reasonable degree?

Anyone has experience with such a machine?

Thanks for answering.

[tomk]

Moved from Kernel & Hardware to Gentoo on Sparc, you should get more help here.

[sblaineyuk]

According to the Sun Service Manual it is a uniprocessor machine... so not sure what you mean by co-processor.

I have a similar system, it's a Netra 1125 - essentially a rackmount Ultra60 - with 2x440mhz CPUs and 1GB of RAM. It handles Gnome, Firefox and Openoffice okay. Sometimes I get jerky video playback through Xine or Mplayer. And, it does take a lone time to compile stuff, I didn't time it but I think it took over 24hrs to compile Openoffice.

[flak7]

Hi,

I am about to buy a Sun Ultra Sparc 30. The machine has a main 300 MHz processor and an extra 300 MHz (co) processor, 2x4 GB SCSI disks and 1 GB RAM.

300Mhz UltraSparc II processor L2=2MB
1GB 60ns RAM
40MB/s SCSI
supports up to 2 graphical cards

RAM and disks are O.K. the question is will 300Mhz/L2=2MB be enough. Note: you will not be able to upgrade CPU. U30 supports only 250Mhz/L2=1MB & 300Mhz/L2=2MB processors.


300Mhz coprocessor? You mean doughter board (SunPCi card, "Sun penguin card")? It is used to run second OS not boast performence of workstation. You will not be able to operate it with Gentoo, though Solaris can use it to run Red Hat Enterprise or Windows on it.
Look here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-447822.html

[thehog]

I found the 2nd CPU on the U30 suspicous indeed The current owner just told me that Solaris runs on only 1 proc and that the 2nd proc is used for running a user (CAD) application. The amount of RAM is enormeous for this machine, but disks are on the small side. Although the 300MHz Ultra is 64bit RISC and runs SCSI, I guess that it may be outperformed by my EPIA Nehemiah 1GHz. So, I might be better off not buying this thing... too bad.

Thanks for the replies

[flak7]

I found the 2nd CPU on the U30 suspicous indeed The current owner just told me that Solaris runs on only 1 proc and that the 2nd proc is used for running a user (CAD) application. The amount of RAM is enormeous for this machine, but disks are on the small side. Although the 300MHz Ultra is 64bit RISC and runs SCSI, I guess that it may be outperformed by my EPIA Nehemiah 1GHz. So, I might be better off not buying this thing... too bad.

Thanks for the replies

I heard a gossip on this forum that:

UltraSparcII = Pentium 3,
1MHz = 2MHz

So UltraSparcII 300MHz = PentiumIII 600MHz
Though I can not tell you if this is true. I am running poor UltraSparcIIi (note the "i") + 384 RAM and IDE(PIO only) disks.

With SCSI and 1GB RAM (SPARCs love RAM) it is not bad. But you will not be able to get better CPU.

[Weeve]

I've run Gentoo on an Ultra 30 in the past and it works just fine. As others in this thread have mentioned, it only supports one UltraSPARC processor. The co-processor could be a SunPCI board which is essentially an x86 machine on a PCI card (with a complete set of outputs on the back for video, audio, etc). However chances are whatever this co-processor is would not be supported under anything but Solaris.