[rescue] [geeks] Last Call - Ultra 5/10 parts

[Jonathan Katz]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Patrick Finnegan
<pat at computer-refuge.org>wrote:

> If anyone says PCI systems were cheap, flimsy, not over-engineered, and
> that the PCI cards were unreliable, may I present to you a V880?


Up until the Ultra 5/Ultra 10 line, all Sun gear was made (assembled) in
the USA. The U5/U10 were made in the Philippines(?) and some early revs had
issues, which gave the PCI-based Sun gear a bad name. Even by purists
internal to Sun they were frowned upon, especially as they ditched SCSI for
IDE at that low-end workstaiton-level. They were also made with
new/different materials than the Sun pizza/lunch-boxes that everyone was
used to, and they did feel more flimsy. The U30/U60s were still assembled
in the USA and felt more solid (and were PCI-based.) By the time the 220R
and 420R were shipped (rack-mount version of the U60) Sun had refined their
PCI systems, and the cases/setup were truly industrial and amazing (and
heavy!)


> I've got 3
> of them sitting around that need to go away.  They ran for about a decade,
>

My wife would kill both of us. I still need to come up and visit your
warehouse/storage :)