*BSD News Article 44143


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From: imp@village.org (Warner Losh)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: Does NetBSD support for multi-CPU (Sparc ) ?
Date: 16 May 1995 22:47:13 -0600
Organization: The Village
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <3pbv4h$4h9@rover.village.org>
References: <3p9j29$23v@netnews.ntu.edu.tw> <3pasbr$olv@park.uvsc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rover.village.org

In article <3pasbr$olv@park.uvsc.edu>,
Terry Lambert  <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote:
>Clearly not a hobby machine.  For that kind of money, the OS
>is a small ticket item.  I expect any work on something like
>that will be done on a university campus where they have one
>just lying around.  Once done, I expect it to have a limited
>appeal, since the OS cost is so relatively small compared to
>the hardware cost itself.

You also have the problem that many of the MP sparc machines were made
just down the road from me at my former place of employment, who has
since gone out of the hardware buisiness.  Finding documenation
sufficient to the task would be quite hard indeed.  You might get
lucky and find a site that has source to OS/MP and use that, but then
you'd likely not be able to redistribute the free OS with source.

However, there are many changes to the kernel that will likely work
with any SMP machine, so it wouldn't be totally a wasted project.  Who
knows, maybe the SMP Comaq machines will be quite popular and become
cheep.

I do agree that MP Sparc hardware is still esoteric enough to be
costly on the open market.

Warner
-- 
Warner Losh		"VMS Forever"	home: imp@village.org
TIA Development Engineer		work: imp@marketplace.com