[Sunhelp] Sun Sparc 2

[patl at Phoenix.Volant.ORG]

On 25-Aug-00 at 11:11, Mike (tseng_mike at yahoo.com) wrote:
> I'm buying the machine to learn about sparc and solaris. More towards 
> networking and programming than graphics manipulation. What I would 
> like to know is the time it will take to do normal networking task and
> maybe small web/dns/ftp server for 3-4 computers. Also is the CDE for 
> solaris usable, or is it too slow like running X on 486.

CDE is fairly usable on the SS2; as long as you keep your load
average fairly small.  (To prevent paging.)  It should be a reasonable
machine for basic networking and DNS/FTP/IMAP/HTTP etc. servers for a
small site.  (I wouldn't put big audio or video files on the Web server
though...)

You definately want to get more disk space though.  If you have a
spare sled and the short ribbon and power cables, you could try
adding another internal drive; but be aware that many higher-capacity
drives run too hot for that location.  An external box is probably
your best bet.  In either case, it is narrow SCSI-II.

If you can find a cheap CG6 or CG6+ framebuffer, it might improve
graphics performance over the CG3.  Another alternative, if you
have a FreeBSD or Linux box, is to display remotely.  That should
cut down on the working set in the SS2 and let you run larger apps
or higher load averages.  (There are also X11 servers for Windows;
but I have no idea whether there are any free or cheap ones; or
how well they actually work.)



-Pat