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Hello all,

Are there any third party PCI USB/IEEE 1394 boards that are known to
work with solaris/sparc? I've recently appropriated an ultra 60 and
will soon appropriate an e220r (the latter to replace a Netra X1 because
i want *gasp* expandability -- NO, Rich, I am not stealing *every* page
from your playbook ). Unfortunately, I am actually using the one of
USB ports in the Netra X1 for my printer.

I know sun makes part number 375-3140 (which has IEEE 1394 and USB ports
on it), but I cannot find that anywhere besides in PCI slot 0 on a
SB1500 or SB2500. (And as much as I would like to, yanking a PCI card
out of some poor professor's 1500 is not among the allowable options )

Cheers,


--
Coy Hile
hile@cse.psu.edu

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004, Coy Hile wrote:

> Are there any third party PCI USB/IEEE 1394 boards that are known to
> work with solaris/sparc? I've recently appropriated an ultra 60 and

According to Sun's IO technologies page, the Belkin and IO Gear
ones work. Do NOT try one with a VIA chip set: it won't work.

Many '1394 cards have sockets that can foul on the bit of metal
between PCI slots (e.g., the IOGear one), but the Belkin one
looks OK.

So, the card to try is the Belkin F5U508. They're a bit pricy,
but the best stuff always is... Anyway, that card has at least
two of each, and I'm ordering mine from an Ebay vendor next week.

Note that I've not actually tried it yet (I'll confirm my results
here later), but it IS reported to work.

> will soon appropriate an e220r (the latter to replace a Netra X1 because
> i want *gasp* expandability -- NO, Rich, I am not stealing *every* page

:-)

As I type, I'm installing Solaris 9 on my E220R. They're very
nice machines. Noisy buggers, though. Hopefully the fans'll
slow down (and therefore be less noisy) once Solaris is up and
running.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, author of "Solaris Systems Programming",
published in August 2004.

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Rich Teer wrote:
> As I type, I'm installing Solaris 9 on my E220R. They're very
> nice machines. Noisy buggers, though. Hopefully the fans'll
> slow down (and therefore be less noisy) once Solaris is up and
> running.
>

S9? Not Express? I'm surprised you can live without Zones and DTrace -
after all, they will be core components of your next book, I assume ;-)

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, Beardy wrote:

> S9? Not Express? I'm surprised you can live without Zones and DTrace -
> after all, they will be core components of your next book, I assume ;-)

You assume correctly!

I installed S9 for a number of reasons:

* This will be my main production server, and I have a rule
about not using pre-FCS OSes on those, no moatter how tempting
it may be!

* I need to be able to run sunpci 2.3.2 on this machine, which
panics S10 build 63!

If it wasn't for the kernel panic, I'd be very tempted to run S10
on this machine. Maybe it'll be fixed in the next build...

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, author of "Solaris Systems Programming",
published in August 2004.

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Rich Teer wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, Beardy wrote:
>
>
>>S9? Not Express? I'm surprised you can live without Zones and DTrace -
>>after all, they will be core components of your next book, I assume ;-)
>
>
> You assume correctly!

;-)

> I installed S9 for a number of reasons:
>
> * This will be my main production server, and I have a rule
> about not using pre-FCS OSes on those, no moatter how tempting
> it may be!

Agreed 100+% - what you gain in stability/supportability you lose in
fun. Although it is obv only a temporary loss.

> * I need to be able to run sunpci 2.3.2 on this machine, which
> panics S10 build 63!
>
> If it wasn't for the kernel panic, I'd be very tempted to run S10
> on this machine. Maybe it'll be fixed in the next build...
>

I don't know SunPCI, and I assume (again - it'll be the death of me)
that sunsolve / support contracts have not narrowed down the cause of
the panic...? Well build_next should be out in a week or so (if the
hiccups are ironed), so with luck.....


Beardy.

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:

>As I type, I'm installing Solaris 9 on my E220R. They're very
>nice machines. Noisy buggers, though. Hopefully the fans'll
>slow down (and therefore be less noisy) once Solaris is up and
>running.

Lol I have a clone Ultra 2 based on the PCI version of the Ultra-2
SparcEngine system board and the fans in that machine are like turbo-charged
vacuum cleaners!

I'm going to change all the fans for slower, but more efficient ones and
quiten the machine down.

Also, getting back to the subject of this thread, I'm trying out various
generic PCI USB and firewire cards in my machines at the moment. I'll be
putting one generic PCI USB and one generic PCI fireware card into the Ultra
2 clone machine later today to see what Sun's drivers think. I don't know if
the USB card will do anything, but I have a firewire card in this machine
(Ultra 60) and the drivers picked it up on a re-config boot without any
hassles.

I don't yet have a digital camera with firewire though so I'm not able to
try and get any data transfer over the firewire ports happening at the
moment...

Regards,

Craig.
--
Email by Craig Dewick (tm). Home page at "lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick".
"cdewick@poison.lios.apana.org.au" or "cdewick@poison.sunshack.org".
Explore and enjoy my public-domain Sun Microsystems technical data archive
at "www.sunshack.org" or "www.sunshack.info".