[rescue] Sun 3/60

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:

> The answer is to buy a $269.99 PDC (piece-o del crappo) PC from TigerDirect
> that will completely run rings around that old 3/60 in every way.  Then
> install NetBSD or OpenBSD and publicly announce your disdain for the SunOS
> 4.x K&R (not ANSI) compiler.

Sun had an ANSI compiler available for 4.x available since the earliest
days of same.  It worked quite well.  The bundled compiler was only useful
for rebuilding the kernel and bootstrapping other compilers.  It was
certainly never promoted as part of a useful development environment.

(warning, rant ahead)

The argument that "XYZ is better because you can run gcc on it" doesn't
hold much water when you're been able to run gcc on all the platforms in
question.  For that matter, gcc is hardly a panacea, it still doesn't
optimize well on UltraSparc compared to the
Forte/Workshop/name-of-the-week Sun compilers.  I have seen portions of my
code literally double in speed just from switching compilers on identical
hardware (and then double again with VIS handcoding, but I digress).
On m68k it does quite well.

In any event (bringing us back to Rescue) we don't in general run Sun
hardware because of excellent price/MIP.  We run it because of higher
reliability, scalability, platform stability (ever tried to get an exact
PC replacement part 5 years down the line?), and serial consoles (ok, so
x86 is finally catching up here).  In most cases the TCO (god I hate that
term) really is dominated by service and support costs rather than the
purchase price of the equipment.

I've been tempted towards PC's many times over the years both
professionally and personally.  The bang for the buck is extremely
appealing, but every time I've tried them out I've been burned.  Right now
if I had $270 to spend on a system and didn't need CPU speed at the
expense of everything else, I'd pick up a nice SS5 or SS20, install it
somewhere and forget about it.

-James [in a PC free zone except for the laptop and SunPCi card]