dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (02/10/90)
A few months ago, we had a Solbourne on loan. The machine appeared well made, and its performance and compatability seemed fine. Supposedly, through Solbourne, we should be able to get a more powerful machine at a reduced cost with the added feature of multiple processors without a loss of compatability. Currently, we are in need of more file server power and file space. Does anybody on the net have any strong feelings to relate or any good or bad experiences with Solbourne or any other Sun-compatable vendors in terms of reliability, cost, maintenance, compatability, and expandability? Thank you for your help.
roberts@studguppy.lanl.gov (Doug Roberts) (02/12/90)
In article <4899@brazos.Rice.edu> dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov writes: | Currently, we are in need of more file server power and file space. Does | anybody on the net have any strong feelings to relate or any good or bad | experiences with Solbourne or any other Sun-compatable vendors in terms of | reliability, cost, maintenance, compatability, and expandability? We recently invited Solbourne here to Los Alamos to demo their Model 5/500 22 MIPs, 4.6 MFLOP desktop machine. I spent the day checking out its Sun SPARC compatibility, and ended up being quite impressed with the machine. I actually coaxed 40 MIPS out of it when it was in it's dual-CPU configuration. I was so impressed, in fact, that I'm purchasing one instead of upgrading my 3/260 to a 16 MIP 4/330. It will cost ~$2,500 more than upgrading, but on the other hand I will end up with two machines instead of one! I didn't find any software incompatibilities with the Solbourne vs. Sun SPARC. I spent most of my time exercising Sun (Lucid) Common Lisp. The machine was running a liscensed derivitive of Sun OS4.0.1 with 4.0.3 available Any Day Now. The performance was really impressive: It really did crank out 22 MIPS in it's single-CPU (33 MHz SPARC) configuration. Also, I was interested to see if it's frame buffer could drive a Sun high-res (1600 X 1280) monochrome monitor, and it did. Just plug & run. It is faster and cheaper than anything Sun currently has, and since it has a multiple CPU architecture, it can readily grow to meet increased computing requirements, especially as a server. The 5/500 has a memory expansion capability to 256 MB, and a synchronous SCSI that you get to via a funky Centronics-type connector instead of either Sun's 50 pin D or mini SCSI connector. As far as reliability and service, only time will tell, of course. Solbourne said that they had a guaranteed 24-hour board shipping maintenance plan. Douglas Roberts dzzr@lanl.gov