[SunRescue] SPARCserver+SSA Questions (lots :)

[Bjrn Ramqvist]

sparcy wrote:
> 
> Don't you hate it ? We have been getting a lot of new users on our system
> (I'm a HP-UX sysadm in a university hospital, Neuro Imag. dep) and they
> tend to do all the things they are not supposed to, this along with the
> usual tasks (e.g. me screwing up another root partition ;) tend to keep
> you working looooooooong hours ... it sucks :)

HP machines (along with their HP-UX) tend to swallow alot of time...

> Hmm, I don't know either, there isn't any text on them so it's hard to
> figure out from the board itself, they are 'true' heatsinks tho so
> they must be cooling something ... I did find the same things on one
> of your pictures, look at the SPARCserver_1000E_3.jpg image, the 3 shiny
> round things are the same things.

Ah. Those round things are probably just some sort of memory
managers/bridges to the XDBus and the Mbus. Some chip there probably has
something to do with Sbus connections too. Not that much to dig into,
just use the machine. :-)

> My sister has one of those digital camera things, when she gets back
> from her holiday I'll steal the thing and make some pictures myself
> of all this stuff.

I have a quite large collection of pictures I've taken from our computer
club, where all kinds of beats are living. 2 SS1000E's with 2 SSA's are
currently living there, along with a Sun 4/690MP, some Mass Storage
cabinett with 100+ GB disk and the latest thingie - a VAX 7000.

> I actually found an old price list on the SparcServer (it doesn't have a date
> on it, but it says the introduction date was '93 - so it's probably from around that
> time), I calculated what this piece I've got here went for in that time. I
> almost fell from my chair. Hold your breath: $ 111646.00 bucks. Exsquueze me
> ? you can buy a house from that kind of money (or a damn nice BMW :). And this isn't
> even with the SparcStorage Array added. Kind a neat to know that I'm typing
> on this thing with my unexperienced hands (mkfs ... heh neat, let's see what
> that does :)

Wow, heh. You'd be amazed to see the prices for the SC2000(E), which
came almost at the same time. Ofcourse it's 20 CPUs and lots of RAM, but
heck what a price. I think I saw a "$1.000.000-label" somewhere...

> > We have one Digital PC-box, and somewhere around 100+ Alphas
> > (workstations and about 10 servers), all running VMS and Medusa CAD
> > software. Infact, Digital claimed that we have Swedens biggest
> > VMS-cluster. :-)
> 
> *Wow* What the heck gets done on those things, 3D rendering ? Meduse CAD
> doesn't ring a bell, I guess a lot of CAD design is going on there.

It's CAD drawing software, used in designing parts for tanks and
armoured vehicles. We use PeeCees for the CAE engingeering work (drawing
details) and use Silicon Graphics, both Octane and Origin, for the CAE
calculations and mathmatics.

> > No problem. There aren't that many guys here with SS1000+SSAs, so it's
> > nice to be a little helpful with someone unexperienced.
> > :-)
> 
> How do you know all this stuff about the SSA ? Did you own one once ?

Research, research, research. I've came by alot of equipment for several
years through my active period in our computer club in town. We have
some Sun equipment there, for example one SS1000E with 2 x 85MHz and
128MB and one empty SS1000E. We're waiting for additional CPU's to come
by soon, hopefully. Also we have two SSA 112, but empty. :-(
We've ordered 30 1GB disks for one of the arrays, which hopefully will
arrive sometime soon.

All this gear was donated to us from Sun Microsystems themselves. A kind
of deal where we locate the equipment we want from their customers,
which are ment to go back as trade-in offers to Sun. (And thereby going
for destruction/recycling) So, instead we get newer and newer equipment
from such trade-ins, and Sun gets their share when we return old Sun3s
and SS1's.


	/Regards, Bjorn