From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 13 21:54:07 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9B236B7C for ; Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:54:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jrisom@gmail.com) Received: from mail-ia0-x22b.google.com (ia-in-x022b.1e100.net [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4001:c02::22b]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 67A771C1 for ; Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:54:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-ia0-f171.google.com with SMTP id z13so1678257iaz.16 for ; Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:54:07 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=x-received:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject :references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=tBWwlFAHQZqBdjLMNcAodD2tA24+2fqmhayX+LnToHU=; b=JXKnO5d6fzVyYvMoecM+hILASAXpKxsKickHfBPwT/INqLP93oDtbMq3nxr1MArhTx u9+6lbMYar7h2rGr0TCBjkvpsKOM/CoEyQKh3H6AFcz9uLd3ymOzDRd2Rbn010HW79JV FSgkyrgmLzE3KaovY4gJm4jUcglXgVLklY5cyeOl+NDxZs1Y7hYSgGJvWNHRG2UKZRPQ 0ljMC/wOj6SXS+tvAxurHY/bLlmbQlo/uOw46PLXM/QsKfDYXkfVtm6HJzeT71RE/bQQ ktQdbNNCYatzip794RbxdjknwbVsyTci4/YvgEVgVGodjPL6A6beTY1EIrJFOCes21fo KfMA== X-Received: by 10.50.236.65 with SMTP id us1mr14019895igc.100.1360792446938; Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:54:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.14] (c-98-212-197-211.hsd1.il.comcast.net. [98.212.197.211]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id mj6sm38822301igc.9.2013.02.13.13.54.05 (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:54:05 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <511C0B75.2050401@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:53:57 -0600 From: Joshua Isom User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130107 Thunderbird/17.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Obscure platform testbed References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:54:07 -0000 On 2/12/2013 10:20 AM, Kevin Day wrote: > > I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, so if you know of anyone who may be interested in this please forward to them. Right now my company (your.org) does the free amd64/i386 VMs for FreeBSD developers. > > For an unrelated project, we're trying to build a testbed of many of the more obscure *nix boxes, both running their native OS and a modern OS. As an example, we've now got two SGI O2 R10K boxes, one running IRIX and one running NetBSD. We're planning on doing the same for Sparc64(Solaris and FreeBSD), VAX, ARM, etc. Where possible we'll have NFS mounted home directories and NIS to have shared logins across the "cluster". > > First, would any of you find this useful? If this is really only useful for us, I won't bother trying to make this scale beyond our own need for this. If this is popular enough to warrant the extra time, it wouldn't be much more work to make this available to any developer who could use it. > > Second, do any of you have older non-intel boxes that are just gathering dust, that are complete enough to install an OS and plug into ethernet? If it's otherwise heading to a dumpster one day, we'd happily pay for shipping to put it to good/public use. > > -- Kevin > I imagine your request would be more geared towards porters than hackers. What you're creating would be of more use to someone developing portable software. I wouldn't personally use it, but people trying to develop for *nix but not just linux would need something. As for non-intel boxes, you're probably better off with emulators that support networking. Older processors are horribly power efficient by todays standards, and a lot of the interesting systems have emulators available.