Sun Netra T1 AC200 - practical questions

[Walter Hop]

Hi,

I have a practical question. I can get a used Sun Netra T1 AC200 for a
nice price and would like to know if it is realistic to run a FreeBSD
server on this hardware. I want to run just a few personal domains on it
for my family, so I won't not lose money when it has to be rebooted.

I have browsed the -sparc64 archives, but have not found much recent real
world experiences about running FreeBSD on this hardware. Documentation
is sparse, so I hope you will forgive me for asking some newbie questions
as anything sparc is new to me. Some questions are pertaining to the
Netra hardware, some to FreeBSD/sparc64 general usage:

1. Is the Netra's serial port + FreeBSD's driver usable for getting FreeBSD
   up and running through serial console? I have read some problem reports
   on google getting serial to work, but those may be outdated.

2. Will it be reasonably safe to run 5.2-RELEASE on sparc64? An i386 5.1R
   box with similar usage is now 62 days up without a glitch, are uptimes
   such as these expected?

3. Does userland and ports usually run well on sparc64, or can I expect to
   have endian related issues?

4. What is the future plan for support of low-end sparc64 in FreeBSD?
   Are there enough people interested in these setups to keep them on the
   roadmap for the near future?

5. Is my plan a bad idea for any other reason that is not apparent? 8)

Thanks in advance for helping me out!

cheers,
walter