Sparcstation and SunOS versions

[Dan Razzell]

In article <3116 at brazos.Rice.edu>, CCAT at UDESVM.BITNET (Anh-Tuan Truong) writes:
> Could anyone tell me :
>   - what is the difference between SUNos 4.0.3c ( for Sparcstation 1 )
>     and SUNOS 4.0.3 for SPARC ( SUN 4/110 )
>   - If I could install SUNOS 4.0.3c on my SUN 4/110 ?

In article <3118 at brazos.Rice.edu>, felina!pjg at relay.eu.net writes:
> My questions are:
> - Can we run SunOS 3.5 on the 3/80 ? If yes, is it binary compatible
>   with the version running on the 3/50s ?
> - Can we run SunOS Sys4 3.2 on the SparcStation ? If yes, is it binary
>   compatible with the 4/110s ?

You have probably already heard that there are significant architectural
differences between the Sparcstation and the older Sun-4 products such as
the 4/110.  From the point of view of user code, the differences are
transparent.  At kernel level, the machines are quite distinct.  A similar
story holds for the 3/80 compared to the other Sun-3 products.  The SunOS
4.0.3c release is the first one to support the sun4c Sparcstation
architecture.  The plain 4.0.3 release first introduced support for the
sun3x architecture used in the 3/80.

SunOS 4.X binaries cannot be used under SunOS 3.X. They are not downwards
compatible.

Consequently:

1) You can't run SunOS < 4.0.3 on a Sun 3/80, and you can't take 4.X code
and run it under SunOS 3.5.

2) You can't run SunOS < 4.0.3c on a Sparcstation, and you can't take 4.X
code and run it under SunOS Sys4 3.2.

3) The 4.0.3c release just adds support for the new sun4c kernel
architecture, so it is a superset of the plain 4.0.3 release. My
understanding is that the kernel itself works on both sun4 and sun4c
processors, and that system code outside the kernel which is specific to
each architecture is set up for example in /export/exec/kvm/sun4 and
/export/exec/kvm/sun4c. If your machine only needs to serve one
architecture, these will simplify to /usr/kvm.