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PC Hardware On A SPARC?

Posted by Cliff on from the can-it-be-done? dept.

Dan Eisner asks: "With the new SunBlades available for around $1000, running Sun hardware at home is finally a real option! (however if you want to get a 3D graphics card, though, it doubles the cost) Yet, there are plenty of PC-based PCI graphics cards with great performance, for as little as $100. Should it be theoretically possible to get a PC PCI video (or any type) card running on a Sparc? I know that PC-based cards expect some functionality from the BIOS, but couldn't this be emulated with a clever driver?"

"The drivers for a huge amount of cards have already been written for Linux, so it would seem to me that once someone made a port for any driver to Sparc, the same techniques could be used to port all kinds of PCI cards.

How great would it be if you could run to CompUSA, pick up any PC, PCI card, and stick it into your Linux-based Sparc at home! Has anyone ever looked into this? I couldn't find any reference to even the idea on the web..."

While a neat idea, I don't think this is as trivial as the poster makes it out to be. What do you think?

4 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. Probably by Ekman · · Score: 2
    At the hardware level, PCI compliant is PCI compliant. If a Sun box has a PCI bus then you can plug any PCI card into it. The trick is getting drivers. If you're running Solaris, this means that you're pretty much stuck with PCI cards that say they're for a Sun. I have not seen a lot of PCI video cards marketed to PC users that include Solaris drivers.

    Things are cheerier if you run Linux. According to the faq a PCI card will generally work in the UltraSparc version if it works in the i386 version. But that isn't a guarantee. Sometimes a driver writer makes assumptions about the underlying platform that don't hold for other platforms.

    You'll probably find that the biggest problem isn't individual PCI cards, but rather getting Linux to run on the thing at all. Although at under $1k this shouldn't be a problem for too long--assuming the Blade architecture is close to other UltraSparc machines, anyway.

    It would also be worth looking at NetBSD's UltraSparc port.

  2. hmmm by nomadic · · Score: 2

    While a neat idea, I don't think this is as trivial as the poster makes it out to be. What do you think?

    What do I think? Hmmmm...I think it IS that trivial..

    That aside, I wouldn't mind finding the answer myself, though openwindows on my ancient sparc probably wouldn't go much faster...

    Actually, if anyone has ANY information on what PC hardware will work on a Sun, I'd be interested to see it. I haven't been able to find much online, such as PC/Sun compatibility lists...
    --

  3. why bother by mperham · · Score: 2

    Perhaps I'm missing the point? Why bother with Sun hardware if you are just going to run linux on it? x86 is much better supported and will be faster and cheaper to upgrade. If you are going to use sun hardware, you should not be concerned about the price of a 3d card. --- add t to email

  4. I'm probably violating an NDA here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    ...so I'm posting anonymously. The 3d cards in the Sun Blades (and Ultras) don't actually use a standard PCI interface. If a third party is willing to supply 3d graphics hardware for Sun, then Sun will give them specs for a proprietary "high speed" PCI bus resulting in performance similar to AGP.