[SunRescue] Upgrading a Sparc 10

[James Lockwood]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Bob wrote:

> I was thinking Dual SM71s, but have also been reading up about ROSS
> hypersparc proccessors, and they seem pretty impressive, but are they
> for the price?  and while on the topic of processors, should I even
> consider getting a dual processor mbus card?, would that make my life
> easier when I need to upgrade to quad processors (or by that time ultra
> 1's 2's should be a decent price?)
> So basically asking, which configuration (processor type/speed) would
> give me the best bang for my buck? (poor college student here)

Probably either a single SM61/SM71 or something around a 90MHz HyperSparc.
If you can find faster CPU's at a killer price it's worth upgrading but
this is still not common.

The only way to get 4 CPU's in a SS10/SS20 is to have two dual processor
mbus cards.  That said they are in general not worth it.  For what you
would pay for a nice one (say, dual 125MHz HyperSparcs) you can buy an
Ultra which will have comparable aggregate CPU performance and will walk
all over it in memory bus bandwidth.

> The memory will need upgrading, but I was also wondering If I should
> just get the plain old Sparc 10 memory, or get the memory thats
> compatible with the 20 , and ultra 1 &2? I mean, with technology moving
> as fast as it currently is, when it comes time to upgrade up to a higher
> system, would I want to upgrade to an ultra 1 or 2?
> Im thinking adding 128 megs to it...making it a total of 192 megs, which
> should be sufficient?

Get SS20/Ultra spec RAM.  The same RAM is also usable in the Ultra 1, 2,
20, 30, 60, 80, 220, 250, 420 and 450.  If you upgrade to one of these in
the future (I expect prices on the U30's and U60's to fall more soon)
you'll be glad to be able to transplant RAM.

Some SS10 RAM will work in these systems as well, it's just that they
weren't rated to the same speed as SS20/Ultra memory.

> Another thing is, though on the bottom of my priority list for
> upgrades... I noticed my Sparc 10 board (just changed it...) is capable
> of taking VSIMMS, but in order to use it, I would need a cg14 / SX

No, it's not.  The slot extensions you see are for NVSIMMs which contain
nonvolatile battery-backed RAM for disk acceleration.  The cg14/SX is not
a card, it's built onto the motherboard circuitry of the SS10SX and SS20.

> I guess while on the topic of upgrading my sparc 10, would it be more
> feisable to just sell it as it is now on E-bay, save my upgrade money
> and save up a bit more and buy an Ultra?

If you want to learn Solaris, it's worth putting a bit of money into it.
I wouldn't put more than $100 or so (other than memory) into it as you'll
never get it back out.

-James