Subj : Re: Weird Sun Pricing
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : tenser
Date : Fri Feb 09 2024 02:28:07

On 05 Feb 2024 at 08:34a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...
 
 pF> I'm tempted to go back to my roots and pick up an old SUN workstation.
 pF> Always loved the hardware, and their keyboards were top-notch.
 pF> 
 pF> My desktop SUN for years was a Sparc 2 with a Weitek Power-Up CPU; I
 pF> think the aftermarket CPU doubled the clock speed. I maxxed out the RAM
 pF> and had the low-end framebuffer. 19" CRT monitor, a desk breaker.
 pF> 
 pF> Checking on the web, they're EXPENSIVE!

I ran Kerberos servers on a -2 for years; SunOS 4 was nice,
but eventually we ditched it and went with OpenBSD.  I had
something like 3 years of uptime on that box.

My desktop workstation for a while was similar: a 1+ with
maxed RAM and a big monitor.  I liked the type 4 keyboards,
but the type 5's were sort of lame.

 pF> Looking at shoebox Suns like the IPX or LX didn't reveal a lot.
 pF> 
 pF> Widening my search, Ultra 2s or Ultra 5s are available, and
 pF> significantly cheaper. They also are much more powerful systems, and I'm
 pF> pretty sure the 5 takes PCI expansion cards.

Yup.  The Ultra 5 had PCI and, I think, IDE disks.  That
was the signal that Sun had lost, for me.  I remember a
sysadmin friend showing me an Ultra 5 or 4 next to a Pentium
machine from IBM: "yup, the Sun is twice as fast, but the
PC costs a quarter what the Ultra does."  That was it: x86
was going to eat SPARC's lunch, and it did.

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