Opinions of Solbourne

[Dave Hiebeler]

munnari!natmlab.dms.oz.au!ronb at uunet.uu.net (Ron Baxter) writes:
>However, we have just seem some specs for this Solbourne Computer (just
>announced, I believe) which has a Fujitsu SPARC CPU together with
>SunOS/SunView/NeWS etc licensed from Sun.  So it looks like an
>alternative.
>...
>So if anyone has investigated it, or had hands on experience, or stories
>to tell that may allay my fears (or reinforce them) I would be very
>grateful for the information.

We have been testing a Solbourne here for some time now.  I don't have any
info on the installation stuff, or serial lines, but I can give you a
general user's point of view.

When the thing was up and running, I FTP'd a set of programs that I had
written, over to the Solbourne.  The programs were: A moderately-sized set
of fairly portable C programs, and a program that uses BSD sockets to
allow clients to call up and run these other programs and do a few other
things.  I FTP'd the _executables_ over from a Sun-4/260, and ran them on
the Solbourne without a single problem.

Also, I sent over a SunView program that I had written on some Sun-3's.  I
FTP'd the source to the Solbourne, and compiled them there, with no
trouble at all.  The SunView program also uses sockets to call up machines
to run things.  (The SunView program is basically a remote user-interface
for my other set of programs).

So at least BSD sockets work fine, from my point of view.  I've also sent
over misc. other programs, sometimes just sending the binary over from a
Sun-4, other times sending source.  I haven't had any trouble.

Also, for those who recall the "cellsim" package which was mentioned here
a while ago:  I compiled that on the Solbourne.  It worked fine, although
a couple of times I got Panic reboots with a "Mouse overrun error".  I'm
not sure where that came from, and I haven't tested the program on a Real
Sun-4 yet, but I suspect a Sun-4 will have the same error.

I ran X-windows on the Solbourne a couple of times, because I have a
program I grabbed from somewhere that runs in color X.  The program ran
fine, and so did X as far as I could tell, but I'm not really familiar
with X.

I haven't tried out NeWS.

(Since I wrote this a few weeks ago, I have started using X-windows, and
it seems to be just fine.  No problems that I can think of.)

I hope that info helps you out somewhat...

Dave Hiebeler             Internet: hiebeler at cs.rpi.edu  (preferred address)
Computer Science Dept.            hiebeler%cs.rpi.edu at itsgw.rpi.edu
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
Troy, NY 12180-3590