[rescue] Ultra SPARC purchase

[Lionel Peterson]

--- Steve Sandau <ssandau at bath.tmac.com> wrote:
> I've decided (with my wife's help ;) ) that it's time to graduate to
> an Ultra of some sort. I currently use, as workstations, a 110MHz
> SPARC 5 at home, and a dual 85MHz SPARC 20 at work. They're just a

> I have seen Ultra 5s on eBay for $200 BIN with 256M (or more) and a
> 4G drive. For basic workstation use (mail, browsing, light compiling
> and possibly a test installation of Oracle) is it worth spending more
> money to get a 10 or a 30??

I would suggest (money no issue) the following:

E250 (just plain rocks, but find a lesser box as console/desktop)
Ultra 60 (yea right!) SMP, dual SCSI, dual-head, 16 memory slots PCI
Ultra 2 (I love SMP!) SMP, single SCSI, single creator, 16 memory slots
SBUS
Ultra 30 single SCSI, dual-head, 16 memory slots, PCI
Ultra 5/10 (must be REAL nice config, but preferences vary) look for
cache, SCSI, and framebuffer
Ultra 1 (170e or 200e only) DAMN CHEAP these days.

Anything less, while quite servicable, I would not spend any real money
on. The most expensive system on that list is around $600, and the
lowest machine is closer to $100 (except for Ultra 5/10s, I am not
familiar with their current value.)

> Opinions? I think wome of this had been discussed here fiarly
> recently. Forgivce the repetition, but I didn't have any money then.
> ;)

Opinions are never a problem.

=====
Lionel

"Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten
programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software"
Bill Gates, in "An OpenLetter to Hobbyists" dated February 3, 1976