[rescue] Re: Ultra?

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, Robert Novak wrote:

> PCI is fine. There aren't a lot of PC-ish qualities to an Ultra 30 (or
> 60).

Seconded (well, thirded).  A good PCI implementation is faster than Sbus,
and you can use some inexpensive commodity cards to good effect.  Future
Sbus products and support are essentially dead, so new cards that come out
are only going to be available in PCI (and the SunPCi cards are a dramatic
improvement over the Sbus SunPC units).

The Ultra 30 is certainly not "PC-ish".  As I remember, it was the first
machine supporting 64-bit/66MHz PCI to ship in quantity, from any vendor.
The Ultra 60 is basically a 30 with a second processor slot and SCSI
chain, plus the ability to use bigger cache CPU modules.

U2 vs U30 would be a tough choice.  If I thought I needed more CPU power,
I'd steer towards the U2.  If I thought I needed more I/O (especially SCSI
channels), I'd steer towards the U30.  If I thought I needed better/faster
graphics, I'd steer towards the U30 (it's the only one on the list with
two UPA slave slots for framebuffers).

I would only get a U5 or U10 if I got an absolutely terrific deal, or
planned on shoving a huge IDE drive in there for cheap storage.  They are
lousy by comparison.  The U1 isn't a bad box but is showing its age.

> One other type of system to consider is the AXi-based system. Some (myself
> included) have called it "what the Ultra 10 should have been"... it's a
> U10-class Sun OEM board with SCSI, pretty much. You should be able to find
> a complete system on ebay for $300-500 and you can expand later to a
> 440mhz cpu, while having the comfort of SCSI.

Basically a U10 with dual onboard UW SCSI, more PCI slots (6 on 2 busses),
ATX form factor, the ability to use PS/2 keyboards and mice (as well as
Sun ones) and no onboard audio.  Oh, and subtlely different RAM
compatibility.

-James