Re: sparc boxes

[Michael Bacarella <mbac@nyct.net>]

> I've noticed that older sparc boxes are going for
> reasonable prices on ebay.  I've been running Debian
> on Intel HW for sometime now, and would like to hack
> on some Risc equipment, maybe some of the older sparc
> equipment would play well (and Debian runs on it).
> Problem is I know nothing about Sun equipment and
> don't know what to look for and what to avoid.  Can
> anyone give me some advise here?  Also which of the
> sparc models are 64 bit (don't think any of them have
> hit ebay yet?).

Just sharing my experience the benefit of all who might be looking to try 
Debian Linux on a Sparc for the first time:

I bought a SparcStation Classic from workstation.net awhile ago that
didn't have a floppy drive, or a cd-rom drive. The only possible contact
it had with the outside world was through ethernet. Netbooting an image
via the PROM was fairly snappy and Debian was the obvious choice here.

This isn't the first piece of Sun hardware that I've bought either,
btw. One thing I've found about their hardware is that it's very
picky. Sparcs don't boot unless you have both a (non-standard) Sun
keyboard and mouse connected, and I've found their keyboards to be low
quality in terms of durability. Perhaps it's because I bought used
equipment, but I hear this a lot from people in corporate/university
settings. YMMV.

This could be a little suprising to someone who has only used ia86
hardware (such as myself). If possible, buy everything you can in a single
package because it's far more expensive to hunt down individual pieces
for something like Sun hardware.

Also, workstation.net is a great company to deal with and I was very
pleased with both their prices and quality of service. Also, If you're not
interested in running X, I'd recommend the 19" B&W monitors,
workstation.net only charged me $10 for one (with purchase of sparc) and
they're great if you like working from the command-line.

This is probably off-topic. Let me know if this is was unappreciated. :)

-MB