[rescue] Processor choice

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net>
>Date: 2006/08/19 Sat AM 12:31:44 CDT
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Processor choice

>On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 03:30:19PM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> Now as a guy in NJ with a stack of Ultra 2 systems, I'd be happy to 
>> put together something for little $$ (well under three-figures ;^), but 
>> the advice is solid no matter the source of the system.
>
>I finally gutted-for-parts-and-RAM and tossed out seven of my U2s, because 
>I didn't/don't have the time to pack and ship them, and nobody local or nearby
>wanted them.. I kept two of them though, "just in case".
>
>My main headless "beater box" at work is now a U10/333 with 1G of RAM and 
>SCSI HD/DVDROM.  It's an LDAP slave replica server, Jumpstart server, Squid
>proxy, etc, etc, etc...

These boxes were just so appealing, I couldn't say no. A couple were complete, a couple were missing HDs, and some had framebuffers. The processors were either 167 MHz UltraSPARC Is (that are not supported by Solaris 10) or 300 MHz UltraSPARC IIs. The RAM was an unknown, since I didn't remember the part numbers for various size RAM DIMMs, but happily to my suprise, I think I got either 16 or 20 128 Meg DIMMs, along with a bunch of 64 and 32 Meg DIMMs. Some of the machines had add-in SBUS cards, like fast Ethernet & SCSI or FC-AL (with to little GBICs installed I guess, they slide into the cards and "convert" a single small connector to dual optical connectors). The five of them cost me $10/each.

An Ultra 5 with 2x 64 Meg DIMMs, an IDE drive and an (assumed) low-end processor was $5, as was the previously offered Ultra 1-170e with the dead NVRAM.

I also got a Dell Optiplex GX100 "SFF" PC (Celeron 566 MHz, 256 Meg RAM, and 10 Gig HD) for $16 - these run Ubuntu linux well, and will likely be used as a small Astrisk/VoIP machine.

Ultra 2s with dual 300 MHz CPUs are still quite workable machines, especially with 2 Gigs of RAM installed ;^) - but these five bring my total up to about 7 Ultra 2s, and I'd be hard-pressed to find use for more than say two, plus maybe a spare...

A while back I asked about pointers on setting up an install server, and the insructions you linked to worked out well. My beater box right now is an Ultra 10 with 440 MHz CPU, 1024 Meg RAM, and a bid IDE drive. I bought some Symbios 2810 cards and SCSI cabling, but I'm not in a rush to upgrade the box just yet, as it is working just fine for me now...

Lionel