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Simulate SPARC machine on a x86 machine

Dear Experts,

I am trying to learn the Solaris 9 OE. However, I only have x86 machines. Are there any simulation softwares that would allow me to simulate a SPARC machine? I have VMware 4.0.....

I am a begineer at this so please give a brief description on what to do and maybe provide a few reference websites would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot,
James

liddler

Why don't you use Solaris x86? http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html#x86

PsiCop

Yeah, just get the x86 version of Solaris. Its not got all the features of the Sparc version, but if your goal is to get a solid feel for the OS, its fine.

Nukfror

IMHO - bypass the Solaris 9 x86 distro - go right for Solaris 10 x86. That version has TOO many kewl things to play with.

Nukfror

Now that I'm thinking on it - if you've got the money (and memory on your system) you could setup Solaris 10 x86 as a guest OS under Windows in VMware workstation. I have Solaris 10x86 and Win2K Pro setup under VMware under Suse 9.1 - LUV IT !!!

PsiCop

Nukfror,

You have SUSE v9.1 as a host OS and W2K and Sol 10 x86 as Guest OSes? On what hardware?

Nukfror

Toshiba Tecro 9100 with about 768MBytes of memory and a 40GByte hard drive - really wish the hard drive was larger.

Linux and Win2K are dual boot capable but the same Win2K is also setup as a guest OS within VMware. Solaris 10 x86 is a guest OS-only living in Linux flat files maintained by VMware.

PsiCop

I'm going to try to do the same thing on a Fujitsu Lifebook N5010 - 2 GB RAM and 80 GB HDD. Suse 9.1 Pro as the host OS, Sol x86, Netware v6.5 and W2K as Guests. If you want, I can go open up a Question elsewhere and we can discuss it.

Nukfror

Sure

Charley420

ASKER

I greatly appreciate everyone's response. Can anyone explain the differences are between the SPARC platform edition and x86 platform edition?

Thanks for your time,
James

liddler

Sparc is a different type of CPU chip, made by Sun.
x86 chips are made by Intel, AMD and Transmedia (sp?), these are usually the only ones that will run windows, Sparc chips generally run Solaris, but will run linux (which runs on most chips). There are other chips, Alpha (gone now, but the best ever) PowerPC (used in IBM & Mac), PA-RISC and lots of other.
So it's just one version for each chip type

Nukfror

If you are looking for "functional" differences, there really aren't any. They both behave basically the same way.

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yuzh

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PsiCop

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Charley420

ASKER

Thanks everyone for responding to the post and providing the URL to the necessary reference sites.

Regards,
James

PsiCop

Nukfror (and anyone else interested): My Question is now open at --> https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21154824/Installing-SUSE-9-1-Pro-on-Fujitsu-N5010.html

gsuressh

Hi James...
You can install/simulate solaris 9.0 Intel Edition in VMware 4.5.2 version..

Thanks & Regards,
Suresh.

Nukfror

One thing I just found out about - and its been around for a while is QEMU (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/). It supposedly supports booting Solaris x86 as a guest OS but I'm not having much luck trying to get Solaris 10 X86 rev 86 to install. CD starts booting but I get loads of PCI bus timeouts.

Anyway, you might be able to be Solaris 9 x86 to boot on this thing. I don't have the Sol9x86 install CDs at the moment to try it out.

But Solaris 10 x86 rev 69 runs just great on my laptop using VMware workstation.