[Geeks] Sun Kit is just BETTER

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Peter L. Wargo wrote:

> > SparcStation 4.  Ok, it was cheap.  The "workstation" power supply was
> > absolute garbage though and didn't retain power state.
>
> Aggh!  I hate these still!

Their only saving grace was cost.  I remember getting labs of these things
for $2600/ea with 17" monitor at the time when an equivalent SS5 was $5k+.

The hard drive mounting was just STUPID.  Ditto lack of CDROM cable
standard.

>
> > Ultra 150.  Bill knows why.
>
> Hmmm...

It's our new server!  Hot swappable drives with a bay in the front (well,
except for the boot disk.  Why would you ever need to get at it?).  Nifty
front panel display of system status (that was nigh useless).  Lovingly
handcrafted from closed-cell foam!  Wheels sticking out to the sides so
you couldn't mount them next to each other.  An _external_ connection to
the disk bays using a short external SCSI cable (though this saved me once
when I had to cross-connect the drives from an E150 to an E450 next to
it).

> 2/50 (Pizza-box VME Sun-2.  'Nuff said.)

Funky to be sure.

> 386i (What a total waste!)

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  They were reasonably priced and
promised interoperability with the x86 world.

> 3/80 (Why was it even released?)

3/80 may have been a bad marketing decision, but it was kind of like the
SS5/170.  Sun wanted to produce a solution for those people who were stuck
with sun3 for legacy reasons.  Physically it was a pretty neat little box.
Much much cheaper to manufacture than the 3/60, which Sun had sold in
droves.

Fortunately Sun made the sun3/sun4 transition nearly seamless so very few
people stayed behind for long.  If SPARC had taken longer to catch on then
the 3/80 would have probably been a good bet.

-James