SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45

[Zane H. Healy]

At 11:54 PM -0700 8/3/09, jim s wrote:
>Zane H. Healy wrote:
>>At 12:14 AM -0400 8/4/09, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
>>>Looking for 'best' desktop Sparc.... assume it would be one of these
>>>three, no ?
>>
>>Take a look at the heat output.  My current desktop Sparc is a 
>>SunBlade 1000, one slight problem it puts out so much heat I can 
>>only use it in the Winter.  I don't have that problem with the 
>>Ultra 60/2450.
>>
>>At the same time I'm having a hard time justifying a Sparc anymore. 
>>What's the point, as much as I love Solaris, now that Oracle owns 
>>Sun I really have to question how long Solaris will be around. 
>>Just get a Nehalem based PC or Mac, personally I'm trying to figure 
>>out how to afford a Nehalem based Mac Pro.
>>
>>Zane
>
>Zane, Curtis,
>Since I have several of the video and keyboard converters, I swear 
>by the Ultra 5's and 10's  I had one of the Blade 100's but can't 
>see that they are that much better than the 5's.  I suppose that if 
>Sun has knocked them out of the Solaris support roadmap, I'll be 
>criticized for this posting, but the 2.9 I have works fine for these 
>machines.  And they are dirt cheap.  With 2.9 (and sort of with 2.8) 
>you can put as large a disk as you like, and except for using the 
>sun keyboard connection and mouse they are just fine.  As I said, I 
>ended up with a deal on converters, so I can kvm one w/o any 
>problem.  I have 4 or 5 of the 5's and their size and power 
>consumption is just fine.
>
>I agree that the macos may be where I go with Zane though, but am 
>waiting to see where the next spin of macos goes (sorry for the 
>current discussion).
>Jim

Jim,
I actually think you have the right idea here.  I'm not sure the 
current status of the "10 year" rule, and personally I view any 
desktop Sparc system as a "Classic", but realistically the older 
machines have some real benefit here.  I personally dislike the Ultra 
5's and 10's, as well as the SunBlade 100's and 150's, though I'd 
love to get OpenBSD running on an Ultra 5 or SunBlade 100/150.  In my 
opinion one of the best Sparc desktops is the Ultra 60, but I say 
that without having used a SB 2000, 2500, or Ultra 45.  The SB1000's 
are quite simply to *HOT*.  For size and power consumption the 
U5/U10/SB100/SB150 win hands down.

I'm also extremely fond of the Sparc 5, Sparc 20, Ultra 1E, and Ultra 2.

For the past several years I've found that Mac OS X meets most of my 
needs for UNIX at home.  As a result my Linux, IRIX, and Solaris 
systems typically sit idle.

Zane


-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
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