berger@datacube.UUCP (04/21/87)
/* Written 1:44 am Apr 17, 1987 by ram@nucsrl.UUCP in comp.unix.questions */
Well for academics, SUN 3/50 comes really cheap......
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Would somebody summarize about prices for disk drives, tape drives
etc to go with SUN and post or email to me.
/* End of text from comp.unix.questions */
Yes now that the LIST price of a diskless node Sun 3/50 with a SCSI port
is $5k, and if you have access to getting a volume discount, it goes to under
$4k! The problem is finding inexpensive SCSI disks to go with it.
Does anyone know of any alternatives available that are comparable to the
prices for Disks for Mac's or IBM PC's? I'd like something in the 140 Meg
range......
This would be an excellent platform for everyone to start working on their
applications to run under the X-Window System :-)
Bob Berger
Datacube Inc. Systems / Software Group 4 Dearborn Rd. Peabody, Ma 01960
VOICE: 617-535-6644; FAX: (617) 535-5643; TWX: (710) 347-0125
UUCP: ihnp4!datacube!berger
{seismo,cbosgd,cuae2,mit-eddie}!mirror!datacube!bergermkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Michael Khaw) (04/25/87)
Pardon my ignorance of SCSI, but what would prevent a Mac/IBM SCSI disk drive
from working with a Sun-3?
Mike Khaw
--
internet: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
usenet: {hplabs|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|sri-unix}!mkhaw%teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
USnail: Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) (04/26/87)
. . > Would somebody summarize about prices for disk drives, tape drives > etc to go with SUN and post or email to me. > /* End of text from comp.unix.questions */ > > Yes now that the LIST price of a diskless node Sun 3/50 with a SCSI port > is $5k, and if you have access to getting a volume discount, it goes to under > $4k! The problem is finding inexpensive SCSI disks to go with it. > > Does anyone know of any alternatives available that are comparable to the > prices for Disks for Mac's or IBM PC's? I'd like something in the 140 Meg > range...... > It seems to me that someone in this group posted a message saying that the SUN scsi controller was an Adaptec 4000 series board. These are available for $135 and will control two st506/412 drives; the number of heads, tracks etc. are programmable. So for $135 + price of a disk from the PC world (e.g. 70mb, 28ms for $900) you have a scsi drive. Of course you have to get someone to format the drive and put the system on it for you but if you already have SUNs around that shouldn't be too hard. john *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** -- {watmath,seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!fornax!sfulccr!chapman or ...!ubc-vision!sfucmpt!chapman
haas@msudoc.UUCP (05/05/87)
The Sun that I am using has a 240 MByte (280 MByte unformatted) Maxtor XT-3280 on it. We bought it from Delta Microsystems. They include the appropriate cable and a formatting program so that you can plug it in to a 3/50 and run. It does not include a tape drive, so you have to configure the system with another system. I have never tried to run my machine independently of the rest of the network. I still boot off a diskfull server with an eagle. In general the system seems the same or a little faster with a local Maxtor as compared to a remote eagle. There are some benchmarks later in this posting with numbers. Here are the particulars: The drive costs about $4200. It is sold by: Delta Microsystems Rt. 1 Box 129 C Brentwood, CA 94513 (415) 833-2980 It is about 10 inches wide by 6 inches high by 13 inches deep. The shipping weight was 21 lbs. When formatted there are 475800 sectors available to Unix (237.9 MBytes). The average access time is 30 msec. I ran the benchmarks from: Kridle, R., McKusick K., Performance Effects of Disk Subsystem Choices for Vax Systems Running 4.2BSD UNIX, In USENIX Summer 83 Conference Proceedings, July 1983, pp. 155-169. They sequentially read or write an 8MByte file with 4k or 8k blocks. Here are the results of the Csh time command for each benchmark. I ran each test three times and took the best one, on a mostly idle system. Sun 3/50 with Maxtor drive: write_8192 0.0u 8.6s 1:02 13% 0+1k 14+1785io 0pf+0w read_8192 0.0u 5.1s 0:31 16% 0+1k 1026+1io 0pf+0w rewrite_8192 0.0u 6.4s 1:17 8% 0+1k 492+1025io 0pf+0w write_4096 0.0u 9.6s 1:00 15% 0+0k 11+1701io 0pf+0w Sun 3/50 to 3/180 nfs server with Fujitsu Eagle: write_8192 0.0u 7.1s 3:15 3% 0+1k 1+1025io 0pf+0w read_8192 0.0u 5.9s 0:32 18% 0+1k 1028+1io 0pf+0w rewrite_8192 0.0u 10.0s 1:44 9% 0+1k 3+1025io 0pf+0w write_4096 0.2u 9.6s 2:51 5% 0+0k 1027+1025io 0pf+0w Sun 3/180 with Fujitsu Eagle: write_8192 0.0u 6.1s 0:13 44% 0+1k 11+1048io 0pf+0w read_8192 0.1u 3.3s 0:21 16% 0+1k 1027+1io 0pf+0w rewrite_8192 0.0u 3.7s 0:15 24% 0+1k 25+1025io 0pf+0w write_4096 0.1u 7.3s 0:14 51% 0+0k 10+1043io 0pf+0w On a real program which was bound by paging speed (it was only reading memory not writing it), it ran about 20% faster with the local disk than over the ethernet. I am willing to run benchmarks that are mailed to me. I can mail the benchmark programs to anyone who is interested. They are quite small. At some point we will go to the effort of hooking up a couple diskless 3/50's to the diskfull one and see how it behaves as a server. Judging by the elapsed time, I would guess it would only be good for two or maybe three clients. --- disclaimer: I am only a customer of Delta Microsystems, however the paperwork is still being processed, so I don't want them to get too mad and take back their disk before it becomes our disk. --- Thanks to Barry Shein bzs@bu-cs for supplying the benchmarks. --- Paul Haas haas@msudoc.egr.mich-state.edu (35.8.8.108) ...!ihnp4!msudoc!haas