[geeks] Needed: A good sparc workstation

[Francois Dion]

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
> On Mar 8, 2009, at 3:19 PM, Francois Dion wrote:
>>> quiet so most servers don't qualify.
>>
>> You didn't say what you needed it for, but it more than likely doesn't
>> have to be under your desk. Put a sun blade 2000 in your garage or
>> elsewhere where the noise doesn't bother anyone and run SRSS. Put a
>> sunray (or three) on your desk and enjoy complete silence. The setup
>> on my desk is a 1G with a 24" monitor at 1920x1200 and a 170 (sunray
>> embedded in a 17" monitor), combined as 1 unit, controlled by one
>> smartcard and 1 keyboard/mouse. There is a limitation: the higher
>> resolution device has to be master.
>
> I've got to finish setting up my SunRays.

There are a few simple howtos floating around the web, you can get
SRSS up and running in about 30 minutes. Enable self registration once
the web console is up ( port 1661, you do have to install apache which
doesn't install by default ) or from the command line. One trick I use
is to disable the screen saver lock in .dtprofile so I can have
instant hot desking anywhere in the house with my smartcard.

>>> What is a good graphics card?
>>
>> XVR-500 or XVR-600 in PCI, XVR-1000 for a machine with UPA.
>
> FWIW, I also thought that Creator3D and Extreme3D were acceptable for
> general use.  I haven't had the chance to try a XVR-100, but any lower end
> card is absolutely terrible.  Yes PGX24, my eyes are shooting daggers at
> you.
>
> I only mention the older cards because they are more common and cheaper and
> may be better for a cheap starter.

I think I paid about $25 for an XVR-500. XVR-100 are slow. XVR-500
will also allow you to do some opengl, even on a sunray. I also have a
(very) long vga cable that goes from the v480 all the way to my scan
converter / video interface for my projector which allows me full
screen video, using the XVR-500 to speed things up. I dont know if
SRSS Xvideo extension actually uses the video card or not.

Francois