[rescue] good sources for USIII + systems

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>> I think that probably has something to do with economies of scale.
>> Anyway, I just picked up a F6800 for $8000 with 48GB RAM and 24
>> processors, and I consider that to be a pretty good deal.
> 
> I hope that wasn't for home.  If it was, put the machine on a UPS, and 
> don't ever turn it off.

No, not for home.  I wish!  It's kept in a datacenter with UPS, 
generator backup and private cooling.

> We've got 5 F6800s at work (fully loaded USIII's), and each time there's 
> a power outage, and sometime when we shut them down, at least one 
> processor gets marked 'bad' coming up.   That means that you need 
> someone from Sun with their encryption key to give you a processor 
> unlock code, which is time and date (and IIRC processor serial #) 
> specific.  You can probably trick the date/time part of it, but still, 
> we've had way more issues with them than, say, our p690 regattas.

I'd absolutely *love* to have a p690, but they're at least an order of 
magnitude more money, AFAICT.

Peace...  Sridhar