OpenBSD dropped the 32-bit sparc port after 5.9, and off the top of my head I can't think of any illumos distros that support 32-bit sparc. I haven't tested it myself, but NetBSD 10.0 _should_ work still, as there is a port for 32-bit sparc still active, albeit in Tier II support.
The main reason I haven't revisited this machine is that the only working SCSI drives I have that suit it are extremely loud. 🙃 I'll pick up a BlueSCSI at some point though, because it is not lost on me that this computer is one of the supported systems for NextSTEP. That's where we're going!
The mystery to me is still not knowing what triggered it. Glad there was nothing on it that got fried, but if it wasn't an overload then what? Did something just come loose and rattle about inside? Nothing fell out, but I guess it could have vapourised or welded itself to something.
yes, ..... that would be great. How to compile ? I always wanted to get my sparc SS5 a bit up to date with some modern OS and GUI. Solaris 9 is soooooo outdated....
You would need to compile from source, yes. I did it on my Sun Ultra 5 running OpenBSD. The guide on the CDE Sourceforge is good to follow, just make sure you have a decently modern gcc (I used gcc 8 and that worked fine, I can't speak for other compilers though).
