Re-visiting the SUN-2 emulator: Adding SLiRP!

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While I’ve covered Brad Parker (lisper)’s ‘emulator-sun-2‘ before, booting into SunOS isn’t anything that new.

However, with the latest updates, from github, adding in a prior botched attempt, and some messing around, and finally, I got it to ping at first, then it was a matter of where to place the ‘slirp tick’. I first though putting it on the interface poll was a good spot, but for some reason the machine causes a deadlock/stall on boot before the PROM can even initialize. I’m not sure why. Searching further I found a good timer portion and injected the code. And sure enough I was greeted with the login banner:

I’ve been able to paste in about 100kb of a uuencoded tar file, and it didn’t lock the VM, and I was able to uudecode it, and actually build the source (Infotaskforce ’87 if anyone cares). So I’m at the point I think it’s stable enough to shove into the world, although I guess until I revisit it again.

You can download it on sourceforge: sun2.zip

2 thoughts on “Re-visiting the SUN-2 emulator: Adding SLiRP!”

  1. I have read about an upgrade kit for Sun-1. I found this USENET post about a Sun-1.5.

    Mark Callow
    Aug 8, 1984, 2:05:37 PM

    These benchmarks would have been interesting but I have to treat them
    as questionable due to the claim of running them on a Sun-1 under
    4.2BSD. There is no such beast (unless you did it yourself; if so
    I like to know how you dealt with page faults).

    You might have a Sun-1.5 running 4.1c (which Sun have referred to
    as the Berkeley Beta Release of 4.2). The Sun-1.5 is very slow
    due to an additional wait state Sun had to add. The 4.1c release
    (Sun 0.4) is very unloved around here. People found it slow and
    liable to crash.

    Now a Sun-2 running 4.2 (Sun Release 1.1) is a very different proposition.
    It is fast (Our users perceive it as twice as fast as Sun1.5/4.1c). It
    is also reliable. It would make a very nice personal computer.
    —
    From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
    m…@qubix.UUCP, qubix!m…@decwrl.ARPA
    …{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!qubix!msc, …{amd,ihnp4,ittvax}!qubix!msc

    “Nothing shocks me. I’m an Engineer.”

  2. Some more about a Sun-1.5

    Subject: Re: Performance of VAX/780/750, Pyramid & Sun
    From: er…@milo.uucp
    To: net.works
    Date: Aug 11, 1984, 5:49:02 PM

    I must beg to differ. I currently have on loan a Sun-1 from Sun
    which has 4.2 running on it. It may no longer be a product, but it does
    exist.
    —
    eric
    …!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric

    —————-

    Subject: Re: Performance of VAX/780/750, Pyramid & Sun
    From: Tim Mann
    To: net.works
    Date: Aug 14, 1984, 4:17:12 PM

    I think that people are confusing the difference between Sun-1 and Sun-2
    with the difference between the Sun Model 100 and 120. The Model 100 is the
    old style unit with the black and white metal case and the backplane under
    the monitor. These originally came with Sun-1 processors, but can be
    upgraded to be Sun-2’s. The Model 120 is the new style with the grey
    plastic case and the backplane in a separate box. Model 120’s all have
    Sun-2 processors. Around here we talk about the Sun-1/100, the Sun-2/100,
    and the Sun-2/120 to make the distinction clear. (We’ll ignore the 150 and
    170 for now.)
    At any rate, 4.2 Unix runs only on Sun-2 processors, and definitely not on
    Sun-1’s. (To further confuse the issue, there were some “Sun-1.5”
    processors shipped which ran 4.1c Unix. These should all have been upgraded
    to Sun-2’s by this time.)

    –Tim

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