Date: Fri, 26 Dec 97 16:05:41 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #45 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Fri, 26 Dec 97 Volume 10 : Issue 45 Today's Topics: FSTAB IPC simms, SS10 vs SS5 (3 msgs) Recycling IPCs Running Solaris R2.6 on older equipment (IPC/SS2/IPX/LX)? Solaris 2.3 printed doc. set for sale Solaris 2.6 on SS2 SS20 stuff SS5 Memory Sun monitor on PC... Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #45 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > @net-kitchen.com | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 19:47:36 +0000 From: MJ Hughes Subject: FSTAB To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Allrighty. Here is a question about getting my SUN-CD to work with my IPC. the CD shows up on probe-scsi in the PROM monitor. However, When I try and mount it, I am informed that it is not found in /etc/fstab Ive had a look at this file, and there is no mention of the CD there. It is set to SCSI ID 6, and is the caddy loading type. can anyone help? what should I put in the FSTAB file?. My problem is, that I have solaris 2.1,2.4 and 2.5 with a fully registered set of extras. However, without being able to use the CD-ROM, I cant install any of this. Thanking you in advance, OJ Hughes N. Wales. - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 15:16:21 +0100 (MET) From: Toerless Eckert Subject: IPC simms, SS10 vs SS5 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > I agree here. I remember when the 600 came out and I thought "wouldn't > it be neat if they built a 4/610?". This is basically what the SS10 is. Well, not quite. Actually i do have a Sun-4/610/412 @home. Of course it's not an official product, but my own concoction. I had a 4/110 in before and when we threw out a 4600 motherboard at work i put it into that chassis. There are a few main disadvanted to this solution over a real ss10: 1. No parallel port 2. Only 3 sbus slots free when you use 2 cpus 3. No DBRI: 16-Bit audio/ISDN I do compensate for 1. with a MCP board but 3. really hits me hard. > The SS10 was a top of the line desktop machine when it was built, and the > quality shows through well. The SS20 was also a top of the line machine, > but by that time Sun had decided that the Ultra was the way to go and > that mbus would be dead for new products. Well, i do consider the SS19, which was built by third-party companies, to be the most flexible workstation ever: It's effectively a SS20 but with ISDN still on-board (like SS10), as well as on-board audio-codec and external speakerbox capability (like the LX). If you then managed to wire the video output port of the 2nd SX-slot without loosing the 4th SBus slot, then you ended up with a machine with 4 free sbus slots, 2 CPU, 2 * SX graphics, ISDN, 16-bit audio with 2 codecs, ... Not even an Ultra-30 can top this expandability. On the other hand: A SS20 really holds record in the category "hottest workstation ever built". I've just got 51'MBus modules in my offices SS20, but except for a few RAM-slots all expansion slots are full (floppy, cd-rom, 2 * MBus, 4 * SBus, 4 * RAM, 1 * SX). Leaves nearly no room for air in the chassis. Works flawless for 5 years, even though it killed a already 2 disks probably due to overheating. > Keep in mind that a fully decked out SS10 (4 200MHz HyperSPARCs) can give > any desktop Ultra a run for its money. No SS5 will ever come close. I'm > willing to bet that in 6 months mbus modules will have dropped to half > their current price in the used market. This is only true as long as you consider only cpu-speed. Nothing matches an ultra in terms of bus-speed. And yes: doing mostly multimedia with large sets of data i can appreciate this advantage quite well. > As far as newer technology being better goes, I just retired a 4/330 at > home yesterday. This system originally retailed at around $30k in 1989, > and the fact that it was still doing useful work 8 years later is a > testament to quality engineering. I thin quality engineering isn't the most important point that made sun workstations long-lived. True, it's necessary, but's it's not sufficient. It's the fact that sun always tried to choose long-lived hardware technologies and then they mostly kept the promise not only to support them on the initial level of software but continued to support them well with never software, so that, if you neede to upgrade in functionality, but not necessarily in speed, you could stick well to older machines. This concept never existed at that level with other workstation companies and even less in the PC-market (And yes, i hate sun for nut supporting the 4600 motherboard in solaris-2.6, even though this is easy to fix ;-). - Toerless [Still only two suns@home] - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 20:35:54 -0800 (PST) From: James Lockwood Subject: IPC simms, SS10 vs SS5 To: Toerless Eckert On Sun, 21 Dec 1997, Toerless Eckert wrote: > Well, not quite. Actually i do have a Sun-4/610/412 @home. Of course it's > not an official product, but my own concoction. I had a 4/110 in before > and when we threw out a 4600 motherboard at work i put it into that > chassis. There are a few main disadvanted to this solution over a real ss10: > 1. No parallel port > 2. Only 3 sbus slots free when you use 2 cpus > 3. No DBRI: 16-Bit audio/ISDN > I do compensate for 1. with a MCP board but 3. really hits me hard. Yah, the sbus ISDN cards are no longer getting produced, and are already getting hard to find. The big (in fact, really the only) advantage to the 4600 is the VME support. And maybe the memory expansion capabilities, using 16mb SIMMs you could fit something like a gig on the 64-SIMM memory expansion board, couldn't you? In any event, the 4600 is certainly more of a direct ancestor of the SS10 than, say, the LX (I'd say the SS10 is about 70% 4600 + 30% LX). Certainly they were targetted at the same market. Somebody _threw out_ a 4600 board? *boggle* Tell me when I can come clean out your dumpsters. :) > Well, i do consider the SS19, which was built by third-party companies, > to be the most flexible workstation ever: It's effectively a SS20 but with > ISDN still on-board (like SS10), as well as on-board audio-codec and external > speakerbox capability (like the LX). If you then managed to wire the video > output port of the 2nd SX-slot without loosing the 4th SBus slot, then > you ended up with a machine with 4 free sbus slots, 2 CPU, 2 * SX graphics, > ISDN, 16-bit audio with 2 codecs, ... Not even an Ultra-30 can top this > expandability. Hrm, interesting. Sort of like a SS20 blended with the LX. True, the Ultra-30 can't top this, but the 30 wasn't really designed as an expandability monster, it's a single-CPU graphics workhorse. Look for some more offerings from Sun in January that help to fill in the Ultra line where the 1 and the 2 are. > On the other hand: A SS20 really holds record in the category "hottest > workstation ever built". I've just got 51'MBus modules in my offices SS20, > but except for a few RAM-slots all expansion slots are full (floppy, cd-rom, > 2 * MBus, 4 * SBus, 4 * RAM, 1 * SX). Leaves nearly no room for air in > the chassis. Works flawless for 5 years, even though it killed a already > 2 disks probably due to overheating. Yow. I prefer to err on the side of caution, I normally don't use internal disks in pizzabox sparcs that are acting as servers. I've seen too many meltdowns. > > Keep in mind that a fully decked out SS10 (4 200MHz HyperSPARCs) can give > > any desktop Ultra a run for its money. No SS5 will ever come close. I'm > > willing to bet that in 6 months mbus modules will have dropped to half > > their current price in the used market. > > This is only true as long as you consider only cpu-speed. Nothing matches > an ultra in terms of bus-speed. And yes: doing mostly multimedia with > large sets of data i can appreciate this advantage quite well. Very true. The UE450 is a great example of this, it has comparable CPU performance to comparably priced midrange PC servers, but the bus bandwidth completely blows them away. They're a real bargain starting at $14k. Certainly a high-end SS10 or SS20 (or 4600, for that matter) will easily beat out any SS5. > I thin quality engineering isn't the most important point that made sun > workstations long-lived. True, it's necessary, but's it's not sufficient. > It's the fact that sun always tried to choose long-lived > hardware technologies and then they mostly kept the promise not only to > support them on the initial level of software but continued to support them > well with never software, so that, if you neede to upgrade in functionality, > but not necessarily in speed, you could stick well to older machines. > This concept never existed at that level with other workstation companies > and even less in the PC-market (And yes, i hate sun for nut supporting > the 4600 motherboard in solaris-2.6, even though this is easy to fix ;-). True, just as I dislike the fact that support for my GT was dropped after 2.4 (sure, it's got lousy performance, but at least it's 24-bit) and the fact that my 4/300's and 4/400 were dropped after 2.4. This promise of continuing support is probably why Suns depreciate so slowly. SS2's and SS10's still command a healthy price, even though both have not been made for several years. You can still run useful work on a SS2 if you give it enough memory. > - Toerless [Still only two suns@home] -James [6 now, and I just gave 2 away. SS10/61, SS2, 4xSS1+] - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 17:26:42 +0100 (MET) From: Toerless Eckert Subject: IPC simms, SS10 vs SS5 To: james@vaneyck.Gii.Getty.EDU (James Lockwood) > Yah, the sbus ISDN cards are no longer getting produced, and are already > getting hard to find. The big (in fact, really the only) advantage to the I didn't knew that. I thought they were still in production. Basically i think ISDN belongs on the motherboard, but then: a) you only need it in home-machines and sun never tried hard to get into that business (maybe except for the LX). b) It really was a big problem to get approvals for ISDN for every machine in every country in europe. Being an old router-fan i only preferred built-in-isdn in a workstation because if the potential advantage of not running IP, but some native ISDN protocols too. Nowaydays i'd always use a BiNTEC-Brick router (ethernet/ISDN) for this purpose: They are the only ISDN routers known to me that provide transparent D/B-Channel access via TCP, so that you can have all those nice applications like phone-responder and mailbox running on your workstation without having ISDN in the workstation itself. > 4600 is the VME support. And maybe the memory expansion capabilities, > using 16mb SIMMs you could fit something like a gig on the 64-SIMM memory > expansion board, couldn't you? Only with those chassis that support the memory-expansion bus of the 4600. Not with a Sun-4/110 mchassis. > In any event, the 4600 is certainly more of a direct ancestor of the SS10 > than, say, the LX (I'd say the SS10 is about 70% 4600 + 30% LX). > Certainly they were targetted at the same market. I'd rather think the 4600 was thought as the final upgrade to VME-Bus servers. > Somebody _threw out_ a 4600 board? *boggle* Tell me when I can come > clean out your dumpsters. :) They got a 4100 motherboard in return. Looks neat in the 690 chassis when we return that to sun. We do get 10% discount on a new server when we return a working old server. Well, it's working ;-)) > expandability monster, it's a single-CPU graphics workhorse. Look for > some more offerings from Sun in January that help to fill in the Ultra > line where the 1 and the 2 are. I only hear all type of terrible rumors, like Sparc motherboars with an added Intel-CPU and the like. Let's see what really happens ;-)) > > On the other hand: A SS20 really holds record in the category "hottest > > workstation ever built". I've just got 51'MBus modules in my offices SS20, > > but except for a few RAM-slots all expansion slots are full (floppy, cd-rom, > > 2 * MBus, 4 * SBus, 4 * RAM, 1 * SX). Leaves nearly no room for air in > > the chassis. Works flawless for 5 years, even though it killed a already > > 2 disks probably due to overheating. > > Yow. I prefer to err on the side of caution, I normally don't use internal > disks in pizzabox sparcs that are acting as servers. I've seen too many > meltdowns. > True, just as I dislike the fact that support for my GT was dropped after > 2.4 (sure, it's got lousy performance, but at least it's 24-bit) and the > fact that my 4/300's and 4/400 were dropped after 2.4. One advantage of being at a university is official access to solaris sources So it's no problem to get these kind of problems fixed if one could find time to do it ;-)). > This promise of continuing support is probably why Suns depreciate so > slowly. SS2's and SS10's still command a healthy price, even though both > have not been made for several years. You can still run useful work on a > SS2 if you give it enough memory. A friend just upgraded to a 80Mhz CPU on his SS2 and seems very lucky with it. Would be interesting to compare that to a SS5. Toerless - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 06:15:12 EST From: "Harry Regan" Subject: Recycling IPCs To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Seasons Greetings to all... I'd like a quick opinion: In a recent office move, my employer found two "retired" SparcStation IPC machines. One is dead-- no signs of life at all. The other works but appears to have hard disk problems (it complains about not being able to mount a partition). I expressed an interest in them and have been asked put in a bid. Does anyone out there have an idea what a "reasonable offer" for these things would be? Assuming I get these guys and get at least one running, is there anywhere I can get a reasonable (i.e. cheap) copy of SunOS or Solaris? The working machine appears to be running SunOS 4.x, but again, a portion of the hard disk space is gone... Does anyone out there have hardware/technical manuals for the IPC that they are willing to part with? Thanks in advance... ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 15:29:47 -0800 (PST) From: James Lockwood Subject: Running Solaris R2.6 on older equipment (IPC/SS2/IPX/LX)? To: Dwight McKay Ken Hansen wrote: > Hello, > I am curious if anyone has run Solaris R2.6 on older Sun > equipment (IPC/SS2/IPX/LX) - if so, has performance improved vs. > Solaris 2.6 and/or SunOS 4.1.X? I am considering going to Solaris > R2.6 for the new goodies, but curious if it will make these > machines *even* slower. Well, I'm biased, since this message is going out to the world courtesy of a SS1+ running 2.6 (it's my firewall/PPP gateway box). It runs Squid, IPfilter, and a bunch of other miscellaneous daemons and goes like a champ. My gut feeling on speed (which is backed up by lmbench numbers) is that with enough memory, Solaris 2.6 is faster on the same hardware than SunOS 4.1.x. Memory is the key, I wouldn't think of running a Solaris 2.6 machine with less than 32mb, and for many activities (especially heavy X use) I'd want at least 48mb. At work I have an LX running 2.6 for a light perl developer (with 48mb) and at home my wife uses my old SS2 running 2.6 (with 64mb). No complaints on speed. The SS1+'s I have running 2.6 are a little sluggish, but no more so than the same hardware running SunOS 4. My advice to you is to try it and find out, but stuff as much memory as you can in the machines first. You'll be happy you did. -James ============================================================================= James D. Lockwood The Getty Information Institute System Administrator 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 300 james@gii.getty.edu Los Angeles, CA 90049-1680 - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 13:34:58 -0800 (PST) From: rodgers@cgl.ucsf.EDU Subject: Solaris 2.3 printed doc. set for sale To: Suns-at-Home@ecn.purdue.edu Dear Fellow Netizens, We have two nearly complete sets of printed Sun Solaris 2.3 manuals for sale: These are in mint condition, many of them still in their original shrink-wrap bundles. Although we will consider selling them singly, we would prefer to sell them as sets. Send me email if you want a complete list of the individual documents in the sets. We are asking $150 per set. The books (weighing approx. 65 lbs. per set) can be shipped by any means specified by the buyer, who will be expected to cover shipping costs. Regards, Rick Rodgers (rodgers@maxwell.ucsf.edu) - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 09:12:34 -0600 From: Gregory M Polanski Subject: Solaris 2.6 on SS2 To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Solaris 2.6 is definitely faster than other Solaris 2.x. The SS2 does fine. There is a patch for the cgsix video card that solves a problem cause by power saving. _______________________________________________________________ Greg Polanski greg_polanski@adc.com ADC Telecommunications, Inc. MS 254 612-946-2270 PO Box 1101 612-946-3910 FAX Minneapolis, MN 55440-1101 _______________________________________________________________ - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 21:42:56 -0500 From: William Lloyd Subject: SS20 stuff To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I just bought a SS20 at an auction. It replaces my aging IPX/weitek that I've had for the last few years. Unfortunately, things at auction are rarely marked, and lack any documentation. So after 1 month, I'm still struggling to figure out which model I actually came away with. It certainly feels a lot faster than my IPX, but that's not saying much. I suspect it's the lowest end SS20. dmesg shows me the following cpu0: TI,TMS390Z55 (mid 8 impl 0x0 ver 0x3 clock 50 MHz) I'm guessing then that I have a 51 single module. I'm not going to upgrade the cpu for the moment, but certainly in the spring I'll look at it. I don't want to end up buying something below what I have now. The other question is about the built in SX support. I assume that if I have the motherboard video connector I have the Sx builtin. I know that I don't have the VRAM installed. Everywhere I've looked for the VRAM is incredibly expensive. Most prices seem to be $1000USD for the 8MB. Currently I have the TGX card. Sunexpress seems to sell it for the reasonable sum of $4500 or something. I looked around hoping they had an equivilant, but can't find anything. Is there a reasonable source for this? For anybody that keeps tabs, I paid $2100CAD ($1500USD) for the machine with 48MB ram, 2x1G disks, TGX, and 20" multisync monitor. -bill -- William Lloyd (wlloyd@mpd.ca) | - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 12:17:44 -0800 (PST) From: Curt Sampson Subject: SS5 Memory To: Suns at Home I've got an SS5/70 with a single 32 MB DIMM in it right now. I really need to add another 32 MB to it. The computer shops around here sell 32 MB "ECC" DIMMs, used in high-end PC motherboards, for around Cdn$125 each, which is considerably cheaper that even third-party RAM specific for Suns. I'm wondering if this memory will work in my SS5, in the same way that standard parity 72-pin SIMMs work in my IPX, or if I really do need to go out and buy "Sun-specific" memory. Can anyone help me out here? cjs Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite mist, software reverberates Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 09:52:46 -0800 (PST) From: Kwoody Subject: Sun monitor on PC... To: SUNS-AT-HOME I know Ive seen this before somewhere... I have a spare GDM-1604A15 sun monitor. I have a dx2/66 with an ATI-Mach32 w/2 megs running FreeBSD. Is this card enough to run this sun monitor? I'm thinking not as my 3/60's boot up default in 1115x900 (or something like that) in monochrome. And I think the best this card can do is 1024x768. Sort of a waste. I'll have to dig out the manuals and see I guess. Anyway if its possible where would one get a set of cables to run this monitor off this card/pc? thanks. kwoody@citytel.net - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 15:03:38 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V10 #45 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com On Sat, Dec 20, 1997 at 08:35:22AM -0400, Dwight McKay wrote: > Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 14:23:47 -0500 > From: Ken Hansen > Subject: Running Solaris R2.6 on older equipment (IPC/SS2/IPX/LX)? > To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > > Hello, > I am curious if anyone has run Solaris R2.6 on older Sun > equipment (IPC/SS2/IPX/LX) - if so, has performance improved vs. > Solaris 2.6 and/or SunOS 4.1.X? I am considering going to Solaris > R2.6 for the new goodies, but curious if it will make these > machines *even* slower. I installed 2.6 on one of my home Sparc 2s after a disk failure. The speed seems to be the same, except for a bad motif shared lib bug that makes some windows come up very slowly (it's very evident in nedit). It's still OK for basic text-oriented stuff, but netscape 3.x is getting to be slow enough for me to consider upgrading to something faster. Now the only question is, what? The new features are nice, especially the dhcp client (I have a cable modem and needed dhcp to do things right). Jeff - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************