[rescue] The best 'rescue' workstation

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Zach Lowry wrote:

> Anyhow, the real question is to ask what you guys run as primary
> workstations, besides PCs and Macs.

On my desk, I have a Sun AXi-based system.  I'd -like- to use my Ultra
60 (so that I could use two framebuffers), but the 300MHz US-II is not
compatible with the Creator 3D series 3 cards, so that needs to wait
until I can afford faster processors.

If Solaris starts to offend me, I'll switch to an Octane.  The Octane
has amazingly snappy video, but IRIX tends to be a more difficult
platform to which to port GNUware and other open-sores software, so
getting everything running on there that I feel I need/want is a bit of
a chore.

> I just want to discuss what systems would make really great desktop
> machines for fairly cheap, that can compete with my 1GHz PC.

It depends on how you want them to compete.  For desktop experience, you
can't beat an SGI; 2D and 3D are both really snappy, and an Octane has
decent I/O, too.  For a solid workstation, Suns are really nice.

My problem is that I can't seem to find a workstation that will happily
do 1600x1200 on two screens with decent display performance.  That's why
I keep looking at replacing whatever's on my desk at the moment with a
nice used G4 Macintosh.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "It's alright for someone to sleep past noon every
Elgin, TX         (   once in a while.  That's what it means to be a
USA                )  free human being."       --Roger Smith, The Big O