19 Aug
2011
19 Aug
'11
12:48 p.m.
On 08/19/2011 12:04 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
This thread is timely - I have been offered an Ultra 5
to pick up this
weekend. I don't know anything about it except that it will come with
Solaris 8 media.
I'm already on the Suns-at-Home list, but I'm curious if anyone here
has any recommended upgrades (specific models of PCI SCSI or video
cards, in particular). I'm hoping it has the max 512MB of RAM, but if
not, I'll probably want to seek that upgrade out too.
If it all pans out, I'll probably retire my old SPARC5 that I've been
using on and off as a Solaris nest for 10 years.
First, be aware that the Ultra5 and Ultra10 systems are garbage.
They are essentially PCs with low-end UltraSPARC CPUs in them. This
system will NOT be up to the standard of quality that you've come to
expect from Sun based on your SPARCstation-5.
There is one processor module that I consider "useful" on those
systems; it's a 440MHz CPU with 2MB of cache. The others (all of them I
think) have tiny-to-the-point-of-being-useless caches and are very, very
slow.
You'll definitely want to put a SCSI host adapter in there. The
onboard IDE controller is slower than pissing tar. The right SCSI host
adapter is a Symbios sym22801; they are supported by OBP for booting and
are good performers.
If you're serious about replacing your SPARCstation-5 with a new(er)
64-bit Sun system, I strongly recommend against the Ultra5, even if it
is free. Be aware that the Ultra10 is essentially the same machine in a
different chassis. I'd point you in the direction of something like an
Ultra60, which is (IMO) one of the finest workstation-class systems Sun
has ever built. They can easily be found as freebies nowadays, will run
rings around an Ultra5 of any configuration, and are built like tanks.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL