[Suns-at-Home] sbus 10/100 ethernet cards

[John DiMarco]

In message <32793E399570D511842A0002B35B4AD923C118@ICTI_MAIL>you write:
>Oh, I understand why people would want them (lower cost, etc. as you mentioned
>), but did their sales numbers really increase enough to justify carrying two 
>incompatible models of *nearly* the same power?

The U1E series (Electron) was what Sun originally wanted (and designed):
fast, and (for the first time ever for Sun on the desktop) 64-bit CPU, UPA
slot, fast ethernet, wide SCSI.  The problem was the price: it was expensive
to make.   Fast ethernet, wide SCSI, and (the brand new) UPA was expensive in
1997.  That was fine for high-end workstations, but what to do in the
midrange?  The SS20 was as expensive (or more expensive) to make, and it was
slower.  The SS4/SS5 was far too slow.  Sun had to find a way to make a
version of the U1E that was cheaper to make, and so they designed the Neutron
(U1) to fill the midrange gap.  Sun saved money (a significant amount for the
time) by leaving out some of the more expensive items (FWSCSI, FE, UPA), and
it still managed to make a machine that outperformed the SS20s it was
replacing.

The leaving out of the pricier items wasn't as severe a hardship as you might
think.  If somebody wanted FWSCSI and FE, Sun sold the Swift SBUS card with
one of each on it, and the U1 had an extra SBUS slot to put it in -- just add
a Swift and your U1 was as capable or more than the U1E (UPA slot excepted).

Yes, as time passed, the U1E became cheaper to make, as fast ethernet became
as inexpensive as ethernet, as wide scsi became as inexpensive as narrow, and
as Sun gained experience making UPA.  But by then Sun was going through
another transition: SBUS was making way for PCI, and PCs were applying
serious price pressures on the low end: Darwin (Ultra 5/10) was about to
replace both the U1E and the U1 "before their time".  In some ways, it's a
pity: both Electron and Neutron were solid boards, and if history had been
different, we could have seen U1/250E to U1/480E systems that would have been
in many ways superior to the Ultra 5 and 10 (though more expensive).

Regards,

John
--
John DiMarco <jdd@cs.toronto.edu>                         Office: SF2101
CSLab Systems Manager                                     Phone: 416-978-5300
University of Toronto                                     Fax:   416-978-1931
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