[geeks] Good Used Unix Workstation

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 6 Jul 2003, Aaron Finley wrote:

> I'm going to need a new computer. I've sold off all my old workstations to
> make money to buy a new one. Need a new machine mostly for general computing.
>
> I've got about $4-$5k to spend.

That'll buy you a really nice used deskside SGI Onyx2, if you hunt
around.  It'll also come really close to buying you a brand-new IBM p615
server with entry-level graphics.

Used Unix kit pretty-much (for me) breaks down like this:

  SGI: sexy OS, bad-ass hardware, living in the past, and cheap.
  Sun: bog-standard OS, solid (but not stunning) hardware, cutting-edge,
       and cheap.
  HP:  OS from hell, bad-ass hardware, and obscure.
  IBM: Totally alien reimplementation of Unix, EXTREMELY fast hardware,
       equally suit-friendly and geek-friendly mentality, and cheap if
       you know what you're looking for.
  DEC: Tru64 blows (but VMS is interesting, if the polar-opposite of
       Unix), fast but quirky hardware, uncertain future, and cheap.
Apple: I really hate calling MacOS X Unix.  It's OpenStep through and
       through, but it will run every Unix app I've tossed at it, and
       the native GUI is really, really slick.  The hardware is
       decidedly PC-ish on the G3s and early G4s.  They're also the only
       vendor with cheap-enough new offerings that you can afford a
       kick-ass brand new system with warranty on $5k.

> Sun Blade 1000 2x 750 ... This seems to be the perfect computer but appears
> to be very hard to find for a reasonable price.

You want the 2000.  The machines are virtually identical except for
minor differences to support newer CPUs.

> Sun Blade 150 ... Looks like a nice computer but I think the value for
> money on the used ones is poor, dosen't look too durable.

Eh, they're okay.  They're very PC-like, though.  Also, Sun's IDE sucks
rocks even more than most other vendors' IDE, so you'd want to gut all
that IDE crap and replace it with SCSI.  You also don't have UPA, so
you'd be stuck with Sun's less-than-stellar PCI video cards.

> SGI Octane2 2x 400 w/ V8 ... A nice computer, I've owned several SGIs, but
> there's nothing new about them, and I don't see much visual arts in my
> future, and any programs that aren't in visual arts on SGIs are usually
> rather old.

All the commercial apps?  Probably.  But I don't run any commercial
software on my SGIs aside from the SGI development suite.  My SGIs are
my favorite, and my 1x195MHz Octane still impresses me on a daily basis
with what it can gleefully accomplish.

My recommendation would be to get several smallish machines:  A decent
Octane (2xR12k is cheap enough these days), a decent Sun (U60 or so),
and an Apple (Used PBG4 or new Power Mac G5) for all those Microsoft
Office documents that you'll invariably have to digest during college.

The system I took to college in 1998 was a single SPARCstation LX
running Solaris 2.6.  I also brought along a PC for desktop things
because I hadn't properly assimilated Unix into my brain at that point.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Leave your lawsuits at home.  I have guns."
Elgin, TX          (                      --"Kountry" Mike Lundgren