[SunRescue] Q: Regarding Sun Educator promo Ultra 5 system

[nick at ns.snowman.net]

I have a couple of Ultra systems at work with IDE disks, and they're all
in the process of dieing.  Of about 10 total 8 have already died, and the
ninth is on it's way.  The educational offer is a great deal, but the
first second you can, swap that ide drive out for either another ide
drive, or better yet, a nice scsi one.
	Nick

On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Pres. Dan Jameyson wrote:

> I took up Sun on their education discount about this time last year. I'm
> very happy with the Ultra 5 I got... does 24b color at 1152x900, great
> as a general word processing workstationish machine. I also use it as a
> general unix system for the usual services and a small dbase (yes,
> genuine old school dbase) setup.
> 
> If you're into programming (I'm only a hobbist-level programmer), I
> suppose the sparcv9 64bit arch would be fun.
> 
> It is an awesome deal... however:
> 
> 1) I got the 333mhz with the larger cache rather than the 360mhz with
> the tiny cache. At these speeds, cache is a lot more significant than a
> mere 27 mhz. If they still offer the 333, try and get that.
> 
> 2) The IDE disks really suck up performance potential. I haven't had the
> time to do it yet, but the system would seriously FLY with UW SCSI. It
> wouldn't be a cheap upgrade, and you'd have to plan on using mostly
> external scsi stuff.
> 
> I had always wanted to go in with Sun's more modern equipment since the
> UltraSPARC came about. Getting this Ultra 5 changed my life for the
> better; it introduced me to a world beyond the Linux/BSD PC and got me
> hooked on Solaris for good.
> 
> I'm not one to make emotionally based decisions... but having your own
> Ultra 5 is one of those little extra things you can feel good about when
> you wake up in the morning. ;)
> 
> -Dan
> 
> -- 
> Dan Jameyson (jameyson at amist.org)                    www.amist.org
> President and Chairman of the Board of Directors
> American Institute of Science and Technology          PO BOX 27934
> A California Public Benefit Corporation     Concord, CA 94527-0934
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