NT for SPARC processors

[Master_T]

Hello everybody,

I bought an old sun Ultra 5 workstation a couple of days ago; I was wondering about installing NT for SPARC on it (according to Wikipedia, NT4 was released in several version complied for SPARC, ALPHA, MIPS and x86 architectures), but I can't find it anywhere, not even trought my MSDN subscription.

Anyone to help me?

[nmX.Memnoch]

SPARC support was never publicly released (as stated in the Wikipedia article). Most NT4 deployments were done on either x86 or DEC Alpha.

[cluberti]

And as good as the DEC was, it was still 32bit on a 64bit processor (boo) . But yes, SPARC was an OEM release, mostly Integraph as the vendor. Also note that even if you do manage to get your hands on a SPARC version of NT4, there won't be any easily available service packs and updates (those were only released for the DEC and x86 - for all other architectures, it was up to the OEM to port and recompile, from what I remember.

However, a good debian sparc install for the Ultra5 might be a good choice .

[nmX.Memnoch]

And as good as the DEC was, it was still 32bit on a 64bit processor (boo) .

Yeah, but they were still PDQ!

[cluberti]

True. Although considering they couldn't really run anything not inbox, that's not much use .

[nmX.Memnoch]

Couldn't they be used as PDCs/BDCs and file servers? But yeah, their use was limited since the full BackOffice suite wasn't ported (IIRC).

[cluberti]

Yes, and correct . Used them for homebrew apps anyway.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Sometimes I wish DEC had kept Alpha and Microsoft would've continued support...

When I was stationed in South Korea there was another gentleman who had a Digital box running NT 3.51. That was absolutely one of the fastest NT 3.51 boxes I'd ever seen...and it was running all of a 486/DX2 66! I don't recall how much RAM it had, but I do remember that it had a SCSI drive subsystem.