3 Aug
2009
3 Aug
'09
9:14 p.m.
Might be pushing 'classic' a bit.... as the 'oldest' of these three
is only 7 years old.... so... if these aren't 'classic' enough yet...
please forgive me :-)
So.... which one is best in your opinion ?
The 2000 takes UltraSparc III, 8MB cache (at 200mhz bus), the
2500 and U45 use UltraSparc IIIi, 1MB cache on chip (but how are
the cycles to it ?)
Beyond that, memory tech differs... 2000 takes ?, the 2500 takes
ECC DDR266, and the U45 ECC DDR333. The 2000 and 2500 do
SCSI, while the U45 does SAS/SATA.
But beyond that, how is reliability, how is USIII vs USIIIi performance ?
The 2000 will do vertical UPA, right ? (I have some C3D cards from
U60) The 2500 looks like fastest slot is 64 bit 66mhz 3.3V PCI (so
what Sun GFX cards go in there?). And the U45 has PCI-X and PCIe x16.
(I assume graphics there is usually via the PCIe x16, right ?
Looking for 'best' desktop Sparc.... assume it would be one of these
three, no ?
Thanks,
-- Curt
3 Aug
3 Aug
10:01 p.m.
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 H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
11:54 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
At 12:14 AM -0400 8/4/09, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
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
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
4 Aug
4 Aug
7:58 a.m.
At 11:54 PM -0700 8/3/09, jim s wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
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 |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
At 12:14 AM -0400 8/4/09, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.
wrote:
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 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 
4:31 p.m.
Zane said:
"At the same time I'm having a hard time
justifying a Sparc anymore."
This reminds me of a sad but true story -
When I was a lad (198? or so), I was working for a small scale PC
company here in Australia. I was close friends with people who worked
at the local university. In this day, the 386 was brand new, and that's
what we were flogging. My friends at the uni had a problem... A hidden
line removal in some of their Autocad drawings was taking days to
complete, and they asked a simple question "Doug, should we get one of
those 386 machines, or should we get a Sun workstation?" Given that the
delays were in the order of days, I recommended that they go for the
fastest Sun machine they could get, knowing that there was a version of
Autocad available for that platform........
A few months later, they were very happy with their decision. So happy
in fact that when the sales rep from our company was visiting them, they
mentioned how happy they were with my advice. The rep came back to the
shop at the speed of light, and almost got me sacked. The simple
message from my employer was that the ONLY product that I would
recommend was one that they sold..... Even on my own time.....
I didn't stay there for much longer after that.
Yep - there once was a time when there was a massive difference between
platforms. Much of that has probably gone now.
10 Sep
10 Sep
12:10 p.m.
It really depends on which trade off's you want. I personally would go
with an Ultra 45 as SCSI is on its way out and you will be able to get
SATA drives most likely for longer down the road. The larger CPU cache
and UPA slot on the SB2000 can make it slightly faster depending on the
application,
-
Tad
*
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:15 AM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45
Might be pushing 'classic' a bit.... as the 'oldest' of these three
is only 7 years old.... so... if these aren't 'classic' enough yet...
please forgive me :-)
So.... which one is best in your opinion ?
The 2000 takes UltraSparc III, 8MB cache (at 200mhz bus), the
2500 and U45 use UltraSparc IIIi, 1MB cache on chip (but how are
the cycles to it ?)
Beyond that, memory tech differs... 2000 takes ?, the 2500 takes
ECC DDR266, and the U45 ECC DDR333. The 2000 and 2500 do
SCSI, while the U45 does SAS/SATA.
But beyond that, how is reliability, how is USIII vs USIIIi performance
?
The 2000 will do vertical UPA, right ? (I have some C3D cards from
U60) The 2500 looks like fastest slot is 64 bit 66mhz 3.3V PCI (so
what Sun GFX cards go in there?). And the U45 has PCI-X and PCIe x16.
(I assume graphics there is usually via the PCIe x16, right ?
Looking for 'best' desktop Sparc.... assume it would be one of these
three, no ?
Thanks,
-- Curt
5582
days inactive
5619
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
doug＠stillhq.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jws＠jwsss.com -
rescue＠hawkmountain.net -
tad＠rave.com