I'm planning to run OPENSTEP/Mach 4.2 on a SparcStation 20, I have 192MBs of RAM in it now, is this enough or do I need to rip apart more Sun boxes to add memory to the SS20? What is the minimum amount of RAM an experienced OPENSTEPer would run with?
I'm going to use the machine mainly for fun and will run X11 on it.
Thanks for any thoughts on this!
If you think that the original machines came with much less than 128MB (like 32MB), I think you'll agree that 192MB will be plenty. Of course if you're going to use memory hungry applications (X not being one of them), then you will need more. I think you're just fine. Start installing ;)
Quote from: "dlundh"What is the minimum amount of RAM an experienced OPENSTEPer would run with?
For most the apps you'll find for OPENSTEP, 64 MB is a good minimum. I have 80 MB in my ThinkPad and 128 MB in my SPARCstation 10.
With those amounts I'm able to work on pretty large multipage layouts within Create 5.2.1 and still have a number of other apps open. For image intensive layouts of 10 pages or more I move to my PowerMac 8600/300 running Rhapsody 5.6 which has 416 MB of memory.
As I recall, OPENSTEP tops out at 512 MB of memory.
If you are at 192 MB now, I doubt you'll get any more performance out of your system by putting more memory in it. NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP apps weren't the memory hogs that todays apps are.
Sounds good. I'm having the harddrive exchanged this sunday (it wont spin up anymore the poor thing) so I guess come monday i'll be installing!
I have 256mb in my SS5 with NS3.3 and it's speedy to say the least.
In my experience my with my NeXT machines in order of fastest to slowest
1. Sun Sparcstation 5 110mhz 256mb
2. Canon object.station 486DX4-100 96mb ram
3. NeXT Turbo Dimension Cube 128mb ram 64mb Dimension ram
4. NeXTStation Turbo 128mb ram
5. NeXTStation Turbo color 128mb ram
6. NeXTStation 128mb ram (Turbo chip set mb with 25mhz chip)
6. NeXTStation 32mb ram
7. NeXTStation Color (I can't remember the ram in this one)
I would agree with the previous poster, 192mb is more than enough ram for NS.
Yay! I have it up and running and have TCP/IP up to. No I just need to figure out where I set the name server and I'm good to go. :)
Looks nice and some things are amazingly OS X-like.
seems hard to find the nextstep/openstep sun/hp version
Quote from: "dlundh"Yay! I have it up and running and have TCP/IP up to. No I just need to figure out where I set the name server and I'm good to go. :)
Looks nice and some things are amazingly OS X-like.
As in virtually every older version of UNIX, DNS server names go into a file named resolv.conf in /etc (link to /private/etc for NextStep, of course).
I'm at work (and no NeXT computer around :-( here) so can't hit my own man pages but have at look at the online ones at
http://www.vorlesungen.uni-osnabrueck.de/informatik/shellscript/Html/Man/_Man_NeXT_html/and have a look at resolver(5), that is, the page named 'resolver' in section 'man5' (and ignore the note about this file not normally being used - you very much do need it).
Cheers,
crimsonRE
I upgraded my RAM to 256 MB but I have to wonder, was there ever an OPENSTEP-version that supported SMP?
I have 2 SuperSparcs (at blazing 50MHz speed) in my machine but only one is being used right now.
Or is there a soopersikrit bootswitch to get SMP?
myhost> hostinfo
Mach kernel version:
NeXT Mach 4.2: Tue Jan 26 11:26:11 PST 1999; root(rcbuilder):Objects/mk-183.34.4.obj~2/RELEASE_SPARC
-->Kernel configured for a single processor only.<--
1 processor is physically available.
Processor type: SPARC (Generic)
Processor active: 0
Primary memory available: 256.00 megabytes.
Default processor set: 34 tasks, 70 threads, 1 processors
Load average: 0.26, Mach factor: 0.72
Sorry, SMP is not available in this old Mach kernal...
Certainly it would be nice, but you can also have higher performance by getting the 75 or 85MHz SuperSPARC-II (versus the SS-I you have) - should still be available on occasion on eBay (& very cheap). Do your CPUs have L2 cache? Have a look at the excellent
http://mbus.sunhelp.org to find out (look under 'Modules').
crimsonRE
I'm totally unsure if my CPUs have L2 cache even with the website you pointed to. :oops:
I got a 100MB network card today and a ConServer-1053 SCSI-FWS Host Adapter for my SS20 and I have a second SS20 inbound with 2 HyperSPARC 150MHz processors and 336MB RAM (it also includes 2 50MHz CPUs).
From what I understand OPENSTEP does not run on HyperSPARCs and I feel pretty awful having 4 50MHz SuperSPARCs but no SMP support. Maybe I'll get yet another SS20 with just one SuperSparc (and maybe one of the faster ones). :)
...or maybe I can run OpenStep/Solaris on the HyperSPARCs?
The 100MB network card has a port that says MII, since it predates the Nintendo Wii by quite some time I wonder if someone knows what a Mii port is?
Quote from: "dlundh"The 100MB network card has a port that says MII, since it predates the Nintendo Wii by quite some time I wonder if someone knows what a Mii port is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Independent_Interface
you have quad sparcs in one ss20?? ill trade you a supersparc 75mhz for those dual boards ;)
A little off topic, but seeing all the Sun guys here I thought I'd ask: I'm cleaning out some of my stuff, so I was curious if there is any interest from the NeXT folk here in a working Sun Station ELC and a working Sparc Station IPX (both Lithium-battery enabled, plus various other things like keyboards, optical mice, 13w3 cable, 13w3 19" screen, CDs with software, whatever manuals I can find, maybe a SCSI tape drive, a rare Sun watch, etc) ? Not sure of a price yet, but if interested feel free to make a bid (via PM, or wait until I make an inventory and get photos and add a thread in the marketplace section). I'd give preference to SF bay area people, but I'll probably ship as well.
Quote from: "dlundh"I'm totally unsure if my CPUs have L2 cache even with the website you pointed to. :oops:
I got a 100MB network card today and a ConServer-1053 SCSI-FWS Host Adapter for my SS20 and I have a second SS20 inbound with 2 HyperSPARC 150MHz processors and 336MB RAM (it also includes 2 50MHz CPUs).
From what I understand OPENSTEP does not run on HyperSPARCs and I feel pretty awful having 4 50MHz SuperSPARCs but no SMP support. Maybe I'll get yet another SS20 with just one SuperSparc (and maybe one of the faster ones). :)
...or maybe I can run OpenStep/Solaris on the HyperSPARCs?
I can't remember if there's a way to find out even in Solaris if these processors have L2 cache. Easiest way is probably to pull out the Mbus module and get the part number - which should be on a sticker on the Mbus connect and starts with the numbers '501'.
For one of my SS20's I've got Solaris 2.8 on one disk and NextStep 3.3 on another. I've turned off automatic booting in OpenBoot, and just tell the machine at the PROM command line from which disk to boot.
I've been meaning to get OpenStep/Solaris running...and with that you obviously have SMP...
Cheers!
The 2 new 50MHz CPUs I got with my second SS20 have 2 huge blocks on them labelled "ti Super SPARC Cache Controller TMS390" and "ti Super SPARC Microprocessor TMS390" and the old board just says "Sun SuperSPARC".
I hope this means the new boards are (marginally) faster thanks to cache.
Yeah, it would make me think that these do have L2 cache - but again, the EASIEST thing to do, since you apparently have the modules out of the machine, is to look at the part number and find it in the module page of
http://mbus.sunhelp.org ... then you'll know for certain.
Quote from: "crimsonRE"Yeah, it would make me think that these do have L2 cache - but again, the EASIEST thing to do, since you apparently have the modules out of the machine, is to look at the part number and find it in the module page of http://mbus.sunhelp.org ... then you'll know for certain.
I did! :)
Turns out I was right, old cpus had no cache but the new ones have 1MB of cache.
However... No matter what CPUs I have in the machine now it hangs at Registering: kmDevice0 during boot.
I don't know
what is going on right now.
I removed an SBUS SCSI-adapter I added and now it's ok.