[SunRescue] Really Big Hardware That Makes Noise And Takes Up Space

[Dave McGuire]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, Dan Jameyson wrote:
>I have about 4'x6' in my home office that I'd like to fill with the
>largest, most physically impressive, old (or just plain cheap) and
>neatest Sun hardware... something that screams "Look at me, I'm *NOT*
>PnP and you can't buy me at CompUSA!" However, it still must be
>functional as a unix (ie, actually serve some sort of purpose and
>fulfill some sort of use) system. I don't know much about older sun
>hardware, except for some of the resources I've seen on the sunhelp.org
>page... so could someone out there give me some pointers on what "Big
>Stuff" is out there? I also saw one of those "big" reel tape drives at
>Weirdstuff a year or so ago; all I remember is that it said Sun on it -
>what the heck are those... I want one and I want to use it --- it's just
>so 20th century!

  The tape drive you're talking about is the Fujitsu M2444AC.  One of the
heaviest 9-track drives I've ever had to move.  What great drives!

  On that subject...though not as visually impressive, if one needs 9-track
capability (which many folks do, despite the widespread belief that 9-track is
"dead") I wholeheartedly recommend the HP 88780.  It's much smaller than a big
Fujitsu (about 7" tall in a rack), autoloading, SCSI, and some versions have
caches and hardware compression.  They're showing up more and more frequently
on the surplus market, and are nearly to the point where they're affordable to
almost anyone.

                          -Dave McGuire