[SunRescue] Solaris 2.5.1/PPC

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Paul Khoury - Tech Support wrote:

> Heh heh heh... A flop alpha - Can anyone think of a flop SPARC? (I can't, but
> I've only been into UNIX since my junior year in HS).

Closest I can think of is the Sparc 4.  Basically a cheap, stripped down
Sparc 5 with a pathetic powersupply (didn't even retain p/s state across
power outages) and a hard drive mounting system that still makes me
shudder (bolted over the motherboard).  No onboard audio and a half-decent
onboard video (8bpp TCX).

The powersupplies and boards had a reputation for premature death.

With all that said, they were cheap.  As CSUN we got a lab full of
SS4/110's with 17" monitors for $2200/ea or so in 1996, a great deal for a
Sparc at the time.  Sparc 5's were still pushing $4k.

The E150 gets my bet for all time worst design, though.  Fairly reliable,
just terrible design.

-James