OS X Recognizing Solaris 4 Object Files?

[rlmut]

I work for a major electronics manufacture producing Raid Mainframes. Currently we are using both PC's and Sparc Stations to test our product. I would like to trash our current two computer setups and replace them with a single Mac. I'm not a Unix person so I'm unsure if the OS X will recognise our test files. We are currently running Solaris 4.1.4. I don't know if I can get access to the uncompiled files, they come from overseas. Any help would be appreciated.

As an added bonus it would give our I.T. people a good case of heartburn putting Apple computers on their network.

 

[FattyMembrane]

exactly what kind of files are these? if it is just posix compliant c/c++/obj-c code, you should be able to compile them on osx. if you're talking about osx running precompiled sparc binaries, that will not work, you can't do that on x86 unix either.

if these are pre-made programs, they will not run on osx, but if it is well written c/c++ for posix or even xfree86, you should be able to compile it to have it work on a mac. but it sounds like getting the sourcecode may not be an option.

 

[rlmut]

Thanks for the answer. When we get them they are compiled object files. If we have trouble getting them to run we have to report it to them and they send us corrected files. But they will not give us the source code.

What made me wonder if it may work is that they have provided us with a Windows program that is using the same Solaris object files to test the PCB's. It looks like it is a scripting program that calls the object file to run the selected test. When we use the Sparc everything is done manually, telenetting to the Raid unit, running tests, etc.

Probably what I will have to do is go ahead and get a Mac in-house and see if it will work. If it does work, I can then budget for more to replace all of our test beds out. I'll have my own Apple network running within a major Japanese manufacturing company. Thanks again for the answer.

 

[FattyMembrane]

hmm... i don't know much about programming, but if you have machines running sparc and x86 to load these object files, there is a slight possibility that they may work on ppc (can anyone else help me out here?). i don't know if object files are platform specific or not (single file random number generators are about as far as i went in c programming ), but if this company is not willing to give up the source code, it will either be really difficult, or impossible to make it work on osx, which is a real shame, because the dev tools with osx are amazing and would give you lots of opportunities for expanding this project. hopefully someone who knows more about programming than i do can answer this question more fully, but in the meantime, you can always casually mention how great it would be if these guys could supply you with ppc object files as well (it's a long shot, i know ).

 

[robbieduncan]

Sparc binaries will not run on OSX without some sort of hardware emulation. Sorry. You might be able to boot Solaris (Sun Unix OS) under virual PC and run Solaris x86 binaries though...