[rescue] HPPA hardware question (forwarded from another list)

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On 5/29/07, Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> > Near as I can figure, that makes it a >seven year old l-class box that
> > can only run hpux.  Ebay reveals very little about l-class HP 9000 -
> > there's a lot of three with no procs for $200 and fresh mobo's for
> > $600.  I suspect we'd be fools to take this gift, especially if we
> > grew to rely on it.  No-one here knows HPUX, where do you get parts,
> > etc.
> >
> > If we want obsolete I think we're better off with a fully-equipped sun
> > 4500 for $1000 than this thing for free.   Opinions?

1.  It can run HPUX and it can also run Linux.

2.  It will completely spank a fully-equipped E4500 for CPU or
memory-bound tasks, and probably for IO tasks as well.  Easily double
the memory bandwidth of E4500.

3.  You have to be willing to put up with HP's design choices, which
include odd booting, heavy steel in the chassis (a pain to move
around), heavy duty power supplies.

There will be not too many PCI cards that will work with this system,
I think, except perhaps under Linux (though I am not too sure how
cross-platform Linux's device drivers are).

--Patrick