[comp.sys.hp] HP's 9000/300 upgrade offer - good value?

T.J.Chown@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Tim Chown) (06/26/91)

HP (UK) are doing a promotion at the moment whereby they will upgrade
a 9000/300 by putting in a 68040 processor, give the machine a
total of 16Mb internal memory and add a standard SCSI port (amongst
a few other things).  Has anyone else had experiences of such a
deal?  We have been quoted #2200 (UK pounds) to do two such machines.
Is the 68040 significantly faster than the 68020?

Many thanks for any comments/views,

	Tim

hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) (06/27/91)

In article <24254.9106261450@marr.ecs.soton.ac.uk> T.J.Chown@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Tim Chown) writes:

>>   HP (UK) are doing a promotion at the moment whereby they will upgrade
>>   a 9000/300 by putting in a 68040 processor, give the machine a
>>   total of 16Mb internal memory and add a standard SCSI port (amongst
>>   a few other things).  Has anyone else had experiences of such a
>>   deal?  We have been quoted #2200 (UK pounds) to do two such machines.
>>   Is the 68040 significantly faster than the 68020?
The 68040 is faster than the 68030 at 50 MHz (at least on my NeXT), so
that is not the problem.
We got a similar offer here (About $ 4500 before discounts) for  370
-> 380 with 16 MB. 
I am tempted (provided we get the usual University discount) to take
the offer, and then wait for the next generation of snakes for the
next step.
I would be interesting to hear form people who have upgraded,
particularly as to how such a system behaves in a mixed cluster with
68030 machines -- given the fact that some of the floating-point stuff
did not fit on the '040, and has to be done in software. 



Greetings,
Hardy 
			  -------****-------
Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy);  Department of Physics, University of California
Irvine CA 92717; (714) 856 5543; hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu or MMAYER@UCI.BITNET