On Jan 30, 2008, at 7:45 PM, scott wrote:

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> If MHz are the issue ... you can get SUN NETRA T1 machine off ebay  
> from
> 50-300$ depending on its age and ingredients.  These used Netra's  
> range
> from 400M-1.2G Hz. These are 1U units.  They offer far greater
> performance bang then x86's at at like MHz.

Just to keep people informed: Netra T1 is LOUD. I mean, shockingly so.  
I can hear mine through the house, easily. It's also, easily, one of  
the loudest systems in the colo right now.

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> They run openBSD well, but there were some chicken and egg  
> installation
> difficulty stories around (boot/install from CD not working) but all
> seems prior to 4.x.  Not sure ... perhaps others can advise.  I've  
> only
> ever seen them running.

Lacking both cd and floppy in mine, I found that netbooting bsd.rd  
worked.  It's documented in diskless(8), and vaguely covered by  
INSTALL.sparc64. Note that you don't need to follow every single step,  
since you're mainly just looking to bootstrap the loader and the  
kernel from the tftp server.

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> Perhaps the Netra's will serve your cause.

Never know. I like them.