[geeks] Solaris 9 changes

[Mike F]

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Scott Howard wrote:
> 
>> Yup. I went looking once to find out why, and there was a semi-sane
>> reason for it, although I've completely forgotten what it was!
> 
> 
> Did it have something to do with Cray using them in the J90s (and
> possibly SV1s) as system controllers?
> 
>> Nope. S10 will no longer boot on an UltraSPARC-I at all. There's a check
>> in the boot code which stops it. See my previous msg for more details.
> 
> 
> That doesn't seem like it'd be hard at all to defeat.  Probably one
> could just replace a comparison with a nop in the kernel.  But then
> you'd have to redo it everytime you got a new patchset and it'd only be
> a matter of time before software targeted at S10 would assume US-II.
> 
> Oh well, I need an excuse to upgrade my Ultra 1Es to Netra T1s, anyway.  :)

Is it just me, or does it seem like Ultra 1 prices (on ebay and 
elsewhere) have very recently fallen through the floor? I wonder if this 
is related to Solaris 10 dropping UltraSPARC 1 support? I wouldn't mind 
acquiring a couple of Ultra 1s now that they're so cheap, but if they 
won't run Solaris 10, it makes them much less attractive.
- Mike