[comp.sys.sun] fpa in a 4/280

hudgens@ray.met.fsu.edu (Jim Hudgens) (08/03/89)

This may be a dumb question, but is there any reason to keep a fpa board
in a recently upgraded Sun4/280?  A local sales-critter says the fpa is
usable.  However, it isn't recognised on boot-up, (as in the boot message:
fpa0 at virtual e0000000) nor does there seem to be any support for the
fpa in the (old sun3) /usr/etc/fpa directory.  Is there any way to use
this board in a 4/280, or should we pull it and try to barter with it?  

    Thanks.

    Jim Hudgens
    hudgens@nu.cs.fsu.edu
    hudgens@ray.met.fsu.edu

hart@decwrl.dec.com (Howard C. Hart) (08/23/89)

In article <715@brazos.Rice.edu> hudgens@ray.met.fsu.edu (Jim Hudgens) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 91, message 13 of 16

>fpa in the (old sun3) /usr/etc/fpa directory.  Is there any way to use
>this board in a 4/280, or should we pull it and try to barter with it?  

Sell it. The latest Sun 4/280s come complete with the new FPU2 coprocessor
for floating point arithmetic. We benchmarked it at roughly twice as fast
as the fpa for those types of operations. 


Howard C. Hart                  UUCP:{sun!sunncal,pyramid}!leadsv!laic!nova!hart
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co.
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