[Sunhelp] HW Questions

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian P. Hinz [mailto:bhinz at chipmunk.nsc.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 7:21 AM
> To: sunhelp at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [Sunhelp] HW Questions
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have a few questions, mostly hardware related. I'm pretty 
> new to Sun HW so 
> plese excuse the ignorance.
> 
> 1) I have two boxes at my disposal, a SS10 and a SS5. all 
> things being equal 
> (memory, etc.), which is faster? it seems to me that there 
> are a variety of 
> different processor speeds that were available.  How do I 
> determine which one 
> each machine has?

Well, uhm, all other things aren't equal?  You could have a single SM40 in
your SS10, and a 170MHz TurboSPARC in the SS5, and the SS5 would be much
faster using the same ammount of ram and the same disk.  On the other hand,
if you've got quad 200MHz hyperSPARCs in the SS10, it's going to be a heck
of a lot faster than the SS5, no matter what processor it has.  I think that
those machines will respond to the "module-info" command at the OK prompt
(hit stop-a).  You could also open the boxes and look for the part numbers
in the SHR.  

> 
> 2) Each machine seems to use a different type of memory. The 
> SS5 memory appears 
> to be normal DRAM, while the SS10 is a rather tall DRAM that 
> I haven't 
> encountered before. What is this correct type of memory to 
> use in each machine?

I always just go to www.memoryx.com or call out memory vendor from work and
tell them that I need ram for a SPARC whatever.  www.memoryx.com has that
stuff listed on their website.

> 
> 3) The SS5 does not have a network card. Can the card from 
> the SS10 be swapped 
> if it turns out that the 5 is faster or are there differences 
> in the bus that 
> would prevent this.

The SS5 does have a network card, on the motherboard.  Unfortunately, I
don't see any info in the SHR on the SS5, except one small section in part1.
It probably has an AUI connector on the back, either a D-sub 15 pin
connector, or the smaller condensed AUI 26-pin connector, or maybe an RJ45.
Both machines should have onboard 10Mbit half duplex ethernet.  If you have
an SBUS ethernet card in the SS10 it can easily go into the SS5.

> 4) Lastly, I am using CAD software on the SS10 right now that 
> gobbles up memory. 
> I usually end up running out and swapping large amounts of 
> memory. Closing the 
> program does not seem to free up memory so how can I do this manually?

Depends, what OS are you running?  Lots of people complain about this
"problem" with Linux.  They close some application that was eating up 29MB
of ram, and they get 2 MB back.  THIS IS GOOD.  It's keeping parts of that
program loaded into ram until that RAM is needed by something else, thus
speeding execution of that program if you run it again.  I don't know that
much about memory management in Solaris, sorry.  If you're hitting swap a
lot, get more ram.  
	Greg