Date: Sat, 2 Jul 88 09:31:12 EST From: Dwight D. McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@mckay.UUCP Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V1 #17 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 2 Jul 88 Volume 1 : Issue 17 Today's Topics: Maxtor SCSI drives on suns modem info my new toy... my new toy... (V1N16) Suns-at-Home Digest V1 #16 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @ea.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!mckay!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Jun 88 16:01:46 From: Ravi Kulkarni Subject: Maxtor SCSI drives on suns To: suns-at-home@ea.ecn.purdue.edu Has anybody tested the Maxtor XT4380S or XT8760S scsi drives with SUN 3/60,3/50,386i or even the vme based scsi interface? I am considering attaching one of these to my sun and would like to know if anybody has had experience with them. I have managed to test the CDC Wren IV 300Mbyte drives and they work well, but I am interested in the higher capacity that the Maxtor XT8760S provides. CDC also has the Wren V 638Mbyte drives but they are not shipping until late summer. Thanks for any info. ----- ARPA: ravi@eneevax.umd.edu UUCP: ...!mimsy!eneevax!ravi ------------------------------ Date: 29 Jun 88 8:54 +0200 From: pur-ee!relay.cs.net!wyle%lavi.uucp Subject: modem info To: suns-at-home%ea.ecn.purdue.edu@relay.cs.net >Errors-To: wyle@solaris.uucp >X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (Vers 6.2 5/11/88) Doug Bryan (v.1 i.16) says: >I would appreciate any recommendations/ideas on: > 1. 2400 baud modems > 2. file transfer programs > 3. terminal emulators I don't claim to understand much about the US modem standards, etc. but I have recently been investigating modems for here in Switzerland. Most of the 2400 Baud modems are based on the Rockwell Chip set; some are much more noise-immune than others. They range in price from $140 to $250 mail-order. Because of the expense in telephone bills and frustration, it's usually worth getting one with better noise immunity and paying the extra $20. kermit is not as good as tip(1) and vt100tool for terminal emulation. uucp is a very good file transfer program because you can compress(1) the files at one end, uucp them across, then uncompress them at the other end. uucp uses sliding windows and is much much faster than kermit while still error free. I have an e-mail based file transfer system based on tarmail(l) which tar(1)s directory(ies) and/or file(s) then compresses the tar file, then split(1)s the pieces, and mails them to their destination. It always sends a join program to re-assemble the pieces. Let me know if you want the program. I recommend having your boss's machine at home run uucp and poll systems at night whence he wants files and mail. If the communication lines are good and the files are small, tip's ~t(ake) and ~p(ut) commands are very fast (but not error-free). Kermit is also satisfactory, but not optimal. Any news on the new 68030-based mini-sun for at-home market? What about sparc-intosh? Cheers, -Mitch -Mitchell F. Wyle wyle@ethz.uucp Institut fuer Informatik wyle%ifi.ethz.ch@relay.cs.net ETH Zentrum 8092 Zuerich, Switzerland +41 1 256-5237 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Jun 88 08:48:19 PDT From: pur-ee!coherent.com!celeste (Celeste C. Stokely) Subject: my new toy... To: Suns-at-Home@ea.ecn.purdue.edu >>I have agreed to buy a Sun 2/120 (fully loaded) for my personal machine,.... >>* The machine has both an SMD and SCSI controller board. Can one machine >> mount both SMD and SCSI disks? Is there a list of the SCSI and SMD >> drives that the Sun controller supports? Yes, one machine can mount both types. Sorry, I don't have a list, but I'm sure that someone on this list does. [see next the two messages --ddm] >>* how many people use a Sun 2 as a server for a Sun 3/50 or 3/60? With >> what success? Whew, I wouldn't do that. A 2/120 is a really, really slow Sun. A 3/60 would definately swamp it, and a 3/50 just might swamp it, too. You ALWAYS want your server to be as fast as the client, preferably faster, especially if it has more than 1 client. On the whole, you should think long and hard before you pay money for a used 2/120. Unless you're buying it ridiculously cheap, you may regret it. A 2/120 is not the most reliable Sun ever built. I once saw one go up in smoke (pretty spectacular!). This is not to say that your 2/120 won't give you years of usefulness. I personally just am not impressed with their speed, memory capacity, or hardware reliability. These opinions belong only to me, of course. ..Celeste Stokely Coherent Thought Inc. UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!celeste Domain: celeste@coherent.com Internet: coherent!celeste@ames.arpa or ...@sun.com or ...@uunet.uu.net VOX: 415-493-8805 SNAIL:3350 W. Bayshore Rd. #205, Palo Alto CA 94303 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1988 10:40-EDT From: pur-ee!k.gp.cs.cmu.edu!David.Maynard Subject: my new toy... (V1N16) To: ken@gatech.edu, suns-at-home@ea.ecn.purdue.edu > The machine has both an SMD and SCSI controller board. Can one machine > mount both SMD and SCSI disks? Is there a list of the SCSI and SMD > drives that the Sun controller supports? There shouldn't be any problem using both SMD and SCSI disks on the system. SMD disks are generally faster and harder to find good deals on. The question of what disks are supported depends on what you mean by 'supported.' Typically, Sun will only guarantee combinations that they (used to) ship. For SCSI disks, you can probably use most reasonably fast ST-506 disks with the Adaptec converter board. The only trick is knowing what parameters to tell diag (geometry, write precomp., interleave....). I have known Adcomp to have pretty good deals on ST-506 drives. Some of the surplus PC dealers will also have pretty good deals on 50 and 85Mb drives. > What does SunOS 4.0 give you that 3.5 does not? Which is better to > run on a Sun 2 (4MB)? Does 4.0 have as many bugs as i have heard > roumoured? I have heard suggestions that you probably wouldn't want to run 4.0 on a Sun-2 (although you can). Personally, I am sticking with 3.5 for a long time. [see below for more on SunOS 4.0 on a Sun-2 --ddm] > How much success have people had running some of the larger Sun > programs, such as X Windows 11.2, Kyoto Common Lisp, ObjTalk, GNU, > etc.? Are there any Sun programs that arent source compatable with > the Sun 3? My only experience is GNU Emacs. I haven't had any problems. It isn't as fast as running on a Sun-3, but at least the disks are local. > Is there an acceptable alternative memory board for the 2? I would > like to free up some slots by replacing the 1MB Sun boards with 2MB > or 4MB boards... I believe that Clearpoint sells Sun-2 memories. I haven't checked in detail, but vaguely remember the ads. I always wanted to ask them whether they maintained the 0 wait-state performance on their 2 and 4Mb boards. I think that the Sun-2 MMU only makes enough address bits available early in the cycle to address 64Kb parts using the RAS/CAS trick. You would need to use faster memory parts to maintain 0 wait states with 256Kb memory chips. > How environment sensitive are the 2's? The Sun 3 is awfully sensitive > to temperature... You should definitely be careful about overheating, especially with a failrly full card cage. Some of the older 120 pedestals had overheating problems which Sun corrected by reversing the air flow and taking out the air filters. As a result, you need to blow out the pedestal regularly. Also make sure that no cables are obstructing the air flow across the top or bottom of the card cage. > Has anyone had any repairs done to their Sun by a company called Apex? > What were your experiences, good or bad? I have never had anything repaired by them so I don't know ANYTHING for sure. With that caveat, my only reaction is that their published repair prices seemed high. I am confident that their prices are lower than Sun's, but there were a few boards which I can buy new on the surplus market for less money than they wanted to fix them (mainly the low-cost adapter boards). I honestly don't know of any alternative repair sites though. --- David P. Maynard (dpm@cs.cmu.edu) Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 --- Any opinions expressed are mine only. I haven't asked the ECE department or CMU what they think. --- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Jun 88 18:24:42 PDT From: pur-ee!omepd.ecn.purdue.edu!mipos3!intel.com!ogcvax!cvedc!exc!markh (Mark A. Holm) Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V1 #16 To: cvedc!ogcvax!omepd!mipos3!intelca!pur-ee!mckay!ogcvax!omepd!pur-ee!mckay!Suns-at-Home [NOTE: I've editting out parts of this posting to avoid overlap with the two] [previous postings on the same topic. Deletions are maked by "..." --ddm ] [...] > * The machine has both an SMD and SCSI controller board. Can one machine > mount both SMD and SCSI disks? Is there a list of the SCSI and SMD > drives that the Sun controller supports? I have set up several different systems with this configuration. The Only consideration is that xy0 be the boot disk as the 120 does not have an eeprom to permanently change the boot device. Diag will give you the list of currently supported drives, plus you can choose "other" and define your own. > > * What does SunOS 4.0 give you that 3.5 does not? Which is better to > run on a Sun 2 (4MB)? Does 4.0 have as many bugs as i have heard > roumoured? No, No, No!! I am currently running 4.0 on a 2/120 equivelant at work and it is s o s l o w. My current impression of 4.0 on 010 multi-bus is that it is a half step above a single tasking machine. This only seems to be an effect of running under suntools, remote logins seem par or a little faster. If you insist check to make sure that j701 is installed (lower left quadrant) on the cpu, otherwise 4.0 will not boot. I have not found any old executables that will not run, but I haven't had a chance to try anything socket based yet. [...] =========================================================================== Mark Holm ..tektronix!ogcvax!cvedc!exc!markh Exceptions ..tektronix!tessi!exc!markh 126 NE Grant Phone (503)648-8307 Hillsboro, Oregon 97124 Messages only until after 6:00 PM One cannot accomplish the impossible, without first attempting the absurd! ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************