I suggested you buy an Ultra1 or an Ultra10 (if you could stand IDE), but it sounds like you made a very solid choice for a platform. You also avoided the cross-platform incompatibility that can sometimes occur when compiling on an Ultra. Make sure you get the lastest firmware, and get on top of the patches for the OS. If you or your wife has a friend who can get into Access1 on Sun's site you can get these.
Much to the surprise of my wife I came stumbling in the door looking like a 20 inch Sun monitor with two legs under it and cables flying for arms. Behind that came a friend with a ( familiar to me ) pizza box computer that says SPARCstation 20 on it.
wife unit : "What the hell is that?"
me : " cumputer?"
wife : "does it run unix?" - note: my wife is a java programmer ...
me : "on both cpu's, yep, you bet"
wife : long drawn out 'ooooo' with a rising inflection -
cat jumps off couch - looks at disembodied floating monitor - hides under couch
me : "let's make room in the computer room ... this is my main machine now ...."
at this last statement my NT workstation blue screens and lets out a little whine from its scsi drive ....
OK - so here is what I actually brought home from a company called LiveWire in Toronto Canada that sells refurbished Sun stuff :
ss20 twin 60MHz cpus
twin 4.2G Sun SCSI drives
128 Meg RAM - TGX Graphics - 20 inch Sun monitor and
type 5c keyboard - optical mouse - mouse pad -
external scsi cdrom - toshiba XM-3401TA in a Sun UniPack?
The whole mess was about $5500.00 CDN = $ 3600.00 US
but $2000 was two Sun 4.2G drives
and $700 was 128Meg Ram
and $375 each for the cpu modules
and $250 for the TGX card
and $1000 for the ss20 box empty
and $1000 for the 20" Sun monitor
and $200 for the external scsi cd but thats a loaner
Dennis Clarke
ps: I'll never cross-post across that many groups again but I am getting a lot of traffic on this. Thank to everyone. I don't need an ultraSparc chip to be happy with sun hardware - at least for now.
I have been thinking about a Sun WorkStation for home for some time now.
I think that the Ultra 5 is a perfect fit for my needs/wallet but I am swimming in
part numbers and possible configurations. Here are my thoughts, so, please
have a look at this and tell me if I am in the ball park :
For performance and long term use without further upgrade:
Part # UGSS2UHC1A9PB256CP - Upgrade from SLC, ELC, IPC,
1/1+, SPARCclassic, LX, IPX, or SPARCstation 2
Sun Ultra 5 System, 333-MHz, 256-MB, 2-MB Level-II cache,
9-GB disk, 1.44-MB floppy, 32X CD, PGX24 Graphics,
100-Mb Ethernet, N. Amer. Country Kit, Solaris 7
Price Unknown!
Part # G-XDSK010A-4G
Sun StorEdge UniPack 4.2GB, 7200rpm hard drive
Price : CD 1410.00
Part # X6540A [ do I need this ? ]
Dual-Channel Single-Ended UltraSCSI Host Adapter, PCI for the Ultra
Enterprise 450, ships with 2 external ultra scsi 2m cables.
Price : CD 1305.00
Part # X1032A [ do I this instead ? ]
10/100BaseT F/W UltraSCSI PCI Adapter 1.0
Price : CD 1730.00
Part # UG-MON-19-C - Upgrade from any previous generation Sun monitor
WW agency compliance, 1.8m detachable HD-15 pin video cable,
10-language user's guide.
Price : CD 1110.00
Part # X470A [ do I need this? ]
13W3F to HD15M Video Adapter Cable
Price : CD 70.00
Now, the reason for the SCSI adapters and unipack is that the IDE drives
in the Ultra5 and Ultra10 are slow slow slow ... SCSI is best and I don't
want IDE at all. Can we build an Ultra5 with a SCSI adapter and an external
UniPack to boot from? I don't want the IDE hard disk or CDROM at all!
Do I need X1032A or X6540A? Why? What is differential SCSI?
I'm taking a shot in the dark here but that is my best guess at a
workstation. And this is from my own wallet, not some big
corporation with deep pockets. I'm willing to invest in my future
with Java and Solaris but I want my workstation my way!
Your thoughts?