[SunRescue] SS20 (??) is it really?

[Dave McGuire]

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Chris Conn wrote:
>What is faster in terms of CPU power; my other SPARC is a SS4 110Mhz.
>This one would be 60Mhz?  Are they comparable architectures, or does one
>have an advantage?

  If it's 60MHz, it's an SM61...which should outrun an SS4/110 by a good margin.

>I knew ahead of time that this machine was MP capable, how difficult is it
>to find more Mbus processors?  Do they have to be the same?  Also, I
>noticed that this machine uses a weird SCSI connector (SCA I think its
>called).  Are there any HDs I can buy that can be used on this machine or
>do they have to be SUN-manufactured?  I guess i could use an external
>arrangement, but have no knowledge of how the machine behaves with no disk
>inside.

  Internal vs. external doesn't matter; it's the same bus electrically and
logically.  Sun doesn't manufacture drives; SCA is a "standard" (if a little
weird) physical interface for SCSI and are pretty easy to find at most of
the online drive vendors.

  I have used unmatched processors in an mbus machine in the past.  It's not
supposed to work, but if both processors have an external cache, it should work
ok.  Some operating systems may have trouble with this; I've done it under
SparcLinux.

              -Dave McGuire