[geeks] Ultra-1/170e replacement

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 01:45:12PM +0000, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Well, I'd suggest an Ultra 30 or 60, with 300 MHz (or better) CPUs -
> they are quiet, quick, and make great desktops, esp. with two high-end
> framebuffers ;^) Unfortunately, IDE drives are not supported locally,
> but maybe you could re-purpose an x86 box with IDE drives to house
> your photos/other large files... The U30/60 would allow you to reuse
> RAM/HDs from the Ultra 1. 

Can't you stick in a PCI IDE controller?  One that uses the same chip as
the U5s?

You would get much better performance with Acard adapters, or one of the
other IDE->SCSI adapters out there though, and that most certainly
works.  Usually such adapters seem to be $70ish, but sometimes they show
up for a lot less on ebay (I paid $25 for mine).

And, I believe that USB 2.0 and Firewire drives are supported.
 
> A zippy Ultra 5 or 10 (333, 400, 0r 440 MHz CPUs) would give you IDE,
> and pretty reasonable performance upgrade from a U-170/e, but is
> really a performance increment over the Ultra 1, not a *profound*
> increase. 

Yes.  I have a 270mhz U5 that I use a lot, and it was shockingly
disappointing how it performs compared to a U1.  One of these days I'll
get around to upgrading the machine.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/