[rescue] fastest Ultra 5 marketed by Sun?

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org>
>Date: 2007/07/21 Sat PM 03:55:58 CDT
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] fastest Ultra 5 marketed by Sun?

>On Saturday 21 July 2007 16:34, Robert Darlington wrote:
>> So what are the motivations for running something like an Ultra 5 or
>> 10 as compared to an Ultra 2?  The most obvious feature of the U2 is
>> that they use two CPUs.  What do the U5 and 10 have going for them?
>> (Certainly not IDE! -hehehehe).  I remember my old employer was
>> tossing the U2 systems not realizing that they were dual CPU systems
>> and were keeping the U10 systems.
>
>Size, weight, power usage, just to name 3 reasons.  Oh and the PCI 
>bus...  Dual CPUs don't always get you much of an advantage, especially 
>on single-user workstations.

As a guy with too many U2s in the garage, I agree - but an Ultra 2 has a few nice things going for it:

It can accomodate up to 2 Gigs of RAM (U5/U10 can only take 1 Gig).

It has built-in SCSI for better performance (SCSI can be added to U5/U10 with a $25-40 add-in PCI card & drive).

Dual CPUs - as noted, may not be that big a win for single-user desktop, but an Ultra 2 with dual 300 MHz CPUs, each with 2 Meg cache may actually be cheaper than a 440 MHz, 2 Meg cache CPU upgrade for an Ultra 5/10.

HD15 (VGA) video connector on the U5/U10, don't need a Sun monitor/adapter like on a TGX/Creator/Elite framebuffer.

You can make a U5/10 very nice, if you have all the bits (U10 is best, as you can add a vastly upgraded video framebuffer, like an Elite 3D-6m, have easy room for dual SCSI HDs, a PCI SCSI card, and even another 1 or 4 port PCI ethernet card, depending on application and need...

>And, for most people, the benefit of cheap IDE drives outweighs the IDE 
>vs SCSI performance difference.

I'm going to try an add-in SATA controller, and have an Ultra 5/10 boot off the IDE and use the SATA for storage - could be interesting...

Lionel