Re: Anyone have working pre-v8 machines?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> My theory is that there are no working v7 machines out there any
> more, and if there are, they are permanently turned off.  My last
> SparcStation 2 died many years ago (and I didn't bother to repair
> whatever broke).

> Anyone here actually using a pre v8 machine?

At the moment they happen to be turned off, but I've got three SS2s I
could lay hands on in less than a minute, and some SS1+es and likely
even a SS1 or two.  (I suspect it'd take more like five minutes to get
one of them booted, assuming of course that they still work, because my
netboot server machine is also turned off right now.)  I'm not sure
what's v7 and what's not, but I've also got a number of lunchbox
machines - IPX, LX, Classic - though it's been quite a while since they
were turned on.

Is that reason enough to keep the code?  I'm not the person who has to
make that call.  But if you (where "you" means not just Martin Husemann
but anyone working on support for such SPARCs) wants, I'd be happy to
set one up with serial console, with console and Ethernet VPNed to
wherever is useful for you.  I've netbooted SPARCs over such setups
before - it's slow, but it works.  (And the relevant VPN software is
known to work cross-platform - I'm using it now between Linux(!) and
home, so a NetBSD version should be no problem, even if it's one I
don't run.)

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B