[comp.sys.sun] Price of comparable high-end PC vs. Sun SLC

ajayshah@aludra.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) (08/12/90)

The SLC is $5.5k including 

	-8M of RAM
	-a 17" screen of resolution 1200x1000 or so 
	-FP hardware
	-12.5 mips.  

With a 500M disk, the cost comes to $7.5k or so (does someone have exact
disk prices?).  The best available 486 does something like 8 mips. 8 meg
of RAM is $800 or so.  How much is a 17" mono display with 1200x1000 or
so?  And a .5G disk?  Basically, how do the contenders play off?

oliveau@cs.ucla.edu (Greg Oliveau) (09/01/90)

In article <1990Aug13.011336.6089@rice.edu> ajayshah@aludra.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>The SLC is $5.5k including 
>
>	-8M of RAM
>	-a 17" screen of resolution 1200x1000 or so 
>	-FP hardware
>	-12.5 mips.  
>
>With a 500M disk, the cost comes to $7.5k or so (does someone have exact
>disk prices?).  

Well, the price of an SLC is $4995, and what a deal that is!  But, Unix
(SunOs) and Open Windows costs $350 (they are now bundling the two) and
the complete set of manuals is $600 for Unix and Open Windows.  The disk
business is strange.  They just cancelled their 327MB Disk/150MB Tape
package and are now selling a 669MB Disk/150MB Tape package for $6500!
So, it looks like your storage costs are going to be the major investment.
Apparently you can hook up around 20 SLC's to a single disk (or SLC
server) and not see significant performance degredation depending on what
you do - this of course was from a Sun salesman!

Greg.

bdsz@cbnewsl.att.com (10/08/90)

In article <1990Sep4.232304.16861@rice.edu>, oliveau@cs.ucla.edu (Greg Oliveau) writes:
> They just cancelled their 327MB Disk/150MB Tape
> package and are now selling a 669MB Disk/150MB Tape package for $6500!...

On a whim, I looked up the price of a 600+ MB SCSI DISK in Computer
Shopper and found several for about $2300. Does anyone know what disk SUN
uses? Is there a compatible disk? What about replacements for the 104MB
SCSI drive, and the 150 MB Tape unit?

fredc@umrisca.isc.umr.edu (10/08/90)

In article <1990Sep4.232304.16861@rice.edu> oliveau@cs.ucla.edu
(Greg Oliveau) writes:
>Apparently you can hook up around 20 SLC's to a single disk (or SLC
>server) and not see significant performance degredation depending on what
>you do - this of course was from a Sun salesman!

I saw a system set up like this (DACNet at the Design Automation
Conference), and it was trash!  The reason: when you are running Open
Windows, an 8M SLC will thrash memory.  Put twenty of those running swap
off the same disk and you have a disaster.  If you run any windowing
system at all, anything with a local disk for swap will outperform a
diskless node with the same amount of real memory, unless that amount
happens to be large enough to avoid swapping altogether.  I have found
that I tend to use up whatever real memory is there by enhancing my basic
layout, so I'll never have enough real memory to do that :-)

An aside: Sun was there in force at DAC, knew about the mess called
DACNet, yet they made no attempts to remedy the problem.  I thought that
such negligence shows a remarkable arrogance, not unlike another 3-letter
company we all love to hate.

Fred Clauss                  INTERNET:  fredc@isc.umr.edu (preferred)
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