[rescue] Question, which machine to keep, which two to go?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:57:32PM -0500, Earl Baugh wrote:

> Sun Ultra 5
> Sun Ultra 10
> Sun Blade 100
> 
> I've played a little bit with all three.  The Ultra 5 is the slowest of the
> set, but I like the form factor of either it or the Blade 100.
> So, I'm thinking either keep the Ultra 10 in the Ultra 5 case, or the Blade
> 100.  I've now experienced how bad the IDE drive controllers are
> (though the two drives I have in the Ultra 10 seem much, much better than
> anything else I've got for the Blade 100... which I've tried from
> laptop drive on up...)

The only thing you would need to swap between the 10 and the 5 is the
CPU, possibly memory, and HDs.  Also, the one advantage of the 10 case
over the 5 case is UPA graphics, but you may not care about that,
especially if you have an XVR-100.
 
> So some questions.  Obviously SCSI controller needs to be purchased.  Any
> issues with booting either of these off of that?
> Second, the 440 vs 500 Mhz CPUS...  the Ultra 10 IIi 440Mhz has 2MB cache to
> the Blade IIe 500Mhz's 256K.   Which is going to give better
> perceived performance?  Does the 2MB more than make up for the 60Mhz
> difference?

More cache makes very large difference when comparing 1M versus 2M, so I
would imagine it is even larger here.  On my Suns where I might actually
compare 2M versus 256K, there were other differences, like one being IDE
while the other had a SCSI card, so they probably aren't fair to judge
on.

Is it possible to stick a better CPU in the Blade 100?

> Obviously the Blade has USB, Smart Card and Firewire.  And the Ultra 10 has
> 1/2 the max memory (and slightly harder to find to boot).

Sticking USB 2.0 in the U5 is easy.  Adding firewire some people say is
easy, but so far I've had bad luck.

> So, I feel like I'm in a slight pickle, as I don't seem to have any bad
> choice, and nothing particular to get me off the fence between them...

So, let me throw out another option.  Instead of spending a dime on
those machines (say for a SCSI card and disk), buy yourself an Ultra 60
from someone on the list or ebay.  A dual 450 in a U60 will blow the
other three away, and they should be very cheap if you are in the US.
Then, add a cheap USB 2.0 card to the machine.  You do lose out on the
desktop form factor, but I don't consider that to be much of a loss ever
since they moved away from the ss20 and Ultra1 style chassises.