[rescue] Sun Ultra 60> 2 Gb Memory ?

[Lionel Peterson]

Aside from curiosity, which I fully support, is there a reason to try and force a U60 to have greater than 2 GB of RAM? All the OS choices and applications I'm aware of for that machine happily run in 2 GB or less. I know today $50 Raspberry Pis have 4 Gigs of RAM and quad GHz CPUs, but do the Solaris distributions that the U60 supports benefit from more RAM?

I think you'd be better served focusing your energy on 'collecting' an UltraSPARC box built to accommodate more RAM (and faster drives & CPUs), but that's just my opinion.

Ken

> On May 7, 2022, at 14:11, Chris Quayle <syseng at gfsys.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> Today's Topics:
>> 
>>    1. Re: Sun Ultra 60>  2 Gb Memory ? (Ethan Hawke)
>> 
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 13:11:02 +1000
>> From: Ethan Hawke<ehawk at ember.systems>
>> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
>> Subject: Re: [rescue] Sun Ultra 60>  2 Gb Memory ?
>> Message-ID:<1adcbcd9-6b24-fb4c-0834-a79f5ebc42be at ember.systems>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>> 
>> The DSC (Memory Controller in the U2) can only address up to 2GB of
>> total memory, I would guess that 256MB SIMMs would be treated as 128MB
>> as the extra addressing pins would probably be grounded.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Ethan
> 
> 
>> 
>>> On 5/7/22 04:22, Mark M wrote:
>>> There were 256MB Dimms of that type (200pin), but were only ever
>>> certified for U80 and E450s.
>>> 
>>> The handbook memory compatibility matrix actually notes that they do
>>> work in e60s but there's an obp bank limit of .5G.
>>> 
>>> All that said, I've never tried, but would, if my machines weren't in
>>> storage at the moment.
>>> 
>>> -mark
>>> 
> 
> Thanks for the replies. If you think that 2Gb is a signed 32 bit number,
> the 2Gb limit would make sense, but if 256 works in a U80, I wonder if
> the obp firmware could be hacked to allow more than 0.5Gb per bank ?.
> Don't have a U80, but it follows on from the U60, perhaps just an
> upgrade ?. Ideal would be if the MB is the same ohysical size, but not
> exactly thick on the ground.
> 
> May just buy 4 x 256 dimms to see what obp thinks it's looking at...
> 
> Chris
> 
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