README file for Series5.
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Written by Tristan Gingold 1997 (gingold@email.enst.fr)

This file contains comments about the work I did in 1997.
These comments are written from remindings, so they are not accurate.

Series5 was a computer shipped by Solbourne from October 1989 on.
However, Solbourne hardware activities are now ended.

The Series5 is the second model from Solbourne, after Series4.
It was powered by a 33 Mhz Cypress Sparc and a Weitek Abacus 3171 fpu.

The model I have (Series5 model 800 with 2 SMD disks) has 2 cpus.
In fact, Solbourne Computer was the first to offer a multiprocessor Sparc
machine, which was software compatible with SunOS.

However, it is not hardware compatible.

The SMP servers are based on CPU, memory and I/O cards that connect to a
common backplane bus, the KBUS.  It is a proprietary 64-bit bus.
The I/O cards also provides a bridge to a VME bus, on which a Xylogics card
is connected.

Device drivers:
* zs: (ttya/ttyb) ttya is the console.  At this time, there is a software bug
      which sometimes hangs the console (but not the system).
* le: (ethernet).  Seems to be fully ok, used for loading the kernel and
      as the main diskless interface.
* xd: (Sylogucs 753 SMD disk controller).  Seems ok.  The driver was based
      on sparc/dev/xd.c, but modified (the genuine bad144 code was too buggy
      for me).
* si: (WD33C93A SCSI): At least inquire is working, but no more.
* kbd, bwtwo, ms: there is no drivers, since I have no screen, no mouse and
      no keyboard.

Note that only one processor can work. (Snif !)

At this time, I can boot the system and get the login prompt on the console,
and via telnet.
The kernel sometimes crash, so there is still some work to do.

************
The Series5 kernel was cross-build with a gcc configured for SunOs on a
i386-linux host. (!!!)
The binary should be fully compatible with the Sparc one.  So, there is no
binary distribution.
Kernel files come from sparc, pmax (for pmap.c), mvme68k (sbic*.c), pc532...