[rescue] Blade 100

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Sandwich Maker <adh at an.bradford.ma.us>
>Date: Tue Jun 13 12:24:59 CDT 2006
>To: rescue at sunhelp.org
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Blade 100

>" From: "Bryan Gurney" <arb_npx42 at comcast.net>
>" 
>" 
>" Wow, that sounds bad.  I know that the Ultra 5 has a CMD IDE controller,  
>" and it's certainly not a speed demon, but is it THIS bad as well?  I'm  
>" planning on getting my U5 running with a WD 80 GB 7200 RPM drive.
>
>afaik all ide suns up to the b100 at least have essentially this chip.

I ran a "loaded" U5 and it was pretty snappy for a desktop - opinions vary, but even Nadine commented on how reasonable Solaris 10 was on that Ultra 5. IIRC it was a 440 MHz CPU, 1 Gig of RAM, the higher-quality embedded graphic (PGX24?) and a recent vintage HD (like your planned 7200 RPM 80 Gig drive).

Now the things that helped were:
 - the machine was lightly loaded (few apps running)
 - 1 Gig RAM really helps
 - the faster drive let the interface live up to all it's (minimal) potential
 - the system was booted before Nadine saw it ;^)

Once running, the Ultra 5/10 with IDE drives are OK for single user use. For better performance, SCSI is the preferred solution - but don't forget the RAM and CPU cache.

Honestly, if I were looking for another box (and I'm not, I'm actually looking for about 10 less boxes ;^), the first thing I would look at is the cost/ability to up the RAM to a Gig (or more). U2, U30, U60 and similar machines really do provide the most bang for the buck (mainly because the bucks are so low).

I'd guess that for me the priorities in a desktop are:

 - memory
 - disk subsystem
 - CPU cache
 - speed of graphics
 - CPU speed

Lionel