Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now SunOS for Sparc2

[Zane H. Healy]

At 2:17 PM -0500 11/13/05, Bill Pechter wrote:
>If you've got the Sparc2 box like an IPX, SLC, ELC or Sparcstation 2 
>(I've got some with the Sparc-up upgrade) you really don't do too 
>well on Solaris 2.x...
>
>SunOS 4.1.4 with the y2k patches and the updated tcp wrappers and 
>portmapper is secure enough and works well.

Ah, SunOS 4.1.4, if I had a use for such a system, I'd be tempted, I 
did like SunOS!  Though realistically, unless I needed SunOS for some 
specific reason, I'd simply load OpenBSD on the system.

>I've been pretty pleased with the reliability of the older Sun Stuff.
>I also have an UltraSparc 1E /170 and an Ultra5 that work well.

I still have a Sun Sparc 10 in production at work, and had a Sparc 2 
in production until a few months ago as the standby system.  Sadly 
sometime next year, I'm supposed to replace the 10 with a newer 
system, and retire it.

I've also got some Ultra 2's running Solaris 2.6 and 8 that are still 
in production, though the ones running 2.6 will hopefully be retired 
December 31st.

>I'd love to get some more ethernet ports on the ultra's and make 
>them firewalls under Solaris or Linux.  The old Spar2 stuff, 
>unfortunately, doesn't hold enough ram in the box to run the newer 
>Solaris 7 (2.7) stuff.

Use OpenBSD, it's seriously lightweight, you could even use a Sparc 2 
for a firewall, and have plenty of RAM free as long as you've got at 
least 64MB (I'm lucky enough to have 96MB in my Sparc 2).  I ran a 
Sparc 5 with a quad card as a firewall for a few years using OpenBSD, 
and it's still there for emergency use, just waiting to be turned 
back on.

>I still would like to have an Ultrix drive in my Vaxstation along 
>with a VAX/VMS 5 and OpenVMS 7.2...

I'd personally like to have an early version of Ultrix (V1 or V2) as 
well as VAX/VMS 4.x for one of my MicroVAX II's.  But then that would 
just be to play, as there is no way I'm using a MicroVAX II for 
serious work (though I do have a MicroVAX III that is built for 
specific job).  The MicroVAX III actually had some version of VAX/VMS 
4 on it when I got it, but the RD53 died before I could run a backup 
:^(

		Zane


-- 
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |