prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (05/22/89)
[This was recently posted to comp.sys.misc, but since I didn't receive
a single reply there, I'm posting it again to this newsgroup.]
I have in front of me a packet of marketing material on Solbourne's
SPARC-equipped and Sun 4 compatible workstations. They sure look good.
Being able to run SunOS and all Sun 4 applications and that. And it has
performance. But...
I haven't heard much about these quite new machines. Is there anyone out
there who uses them? If so, I'd like to hear your opinions on the machines
and the company Solbourne. Please reply via e-mail. I'll summarize to the
net if I receive enough replies of interest.
Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se
ERBE DATA ABnigel@hfnet.british-telecom.co.uk (Nigel Cliffe) (06/08/89)
In article <3402@kalliope.rice.edu>, prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) writes: > I have in front of me a packet of marketing material on Solbourne's > SPARC-equipped and Sun 4 compatible workstations. Is there a UK / Europe address for Solborne, or an agent that anyone knows about? (The US address + phone number would be a start). I'd also be interested in specific comments on the Solbourne that take the discussion beyond that of a few months ago. Perhaps comments and comparisons with the new Sun product line. Thanks, Nigel Cliffe. British Telecom Research Labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, IP5 7RE, UK voice: +44 473 645275 fax: +44 473 637557 email: nigel@hfnet.bt.co.uk
rclaeson@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (06/22/89)
A few weeks ago, I posted the following message to comp.sys.misc and comp.sys.sun: >From: rclaeson@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) >Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun >Subject: Opinions on Solbourne computers wanted >Reply-To: rclaeson@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) >I have in front of me a packet of marketing material on Solbourne's >SPARC-equipped and Sun 4 compatible workstations. They sure look >good. Being able to run SunOS and all Sun 4 applications and that. >And it has performance. But... >I haven't heard much about these quite new machines. Is there anyone >out there who uses them? If so, I'd like to hear your opinions on >the machines and the company Solbourne. Please reply via e-mail. >I'll summarize to the net if I receive enough replies of interest. ***** Well, there apparently is enough interest, since I received more "me too" messages than real opinions. And now the messages has stopped dropping in, so I felt that it was time to compile that summary and post it. The rest of this article contains the replies I got, slightly edited (I left out most of the headers and deleted a small part of one message). Enjoy! Robert ***** >Date: 23 May 89 19:09:56 PDT (Tue) >From: donegan@zardoz.uucp (Steve Donegan - Owner) I beleive zardoz! is a Solbourne, and I have read some good things about the performance expansion from 1 to 4(?) SPARC boards and multi-processor SUN 4.0 OS compatability. Prices I've heard are in the >20k$ for a 1 processor box. --- Steven P. Donegan These opinions are given on MY time, not Area Telecommunications Engineer Western Digital's - They wouldn't agree! Western Digital Corp. stanton!donegan || donegan@stanton.UUCP || donegan%stanton@UUCP ***** >Date: Mon, 5 Jun 89 23:31:16 EDT >From: pjg@urth.cc.Buffalo.EDU (Paul Graham) we're expanding our timeshare environment with some sparc equipment. we decided on some sun stuff and a 2 processor solbourne. we had one here for a week and it worked just fine (we stuck a 4.0.3beta automounter on it and it worked fine). they have asymetric multi's so i'm not sure how it will work out with all the system calls/i-o going through a single XX MIPS* processor. while it was here it was the fastest unix box we had for the few things we could do with it. *XX mips is some value beyond 20. -- paul ***** >Date: Tue, 6 Jun 89 07:36:49 EDT >From: lamson@sierra.crd.ge.com (Scott Lamson) I had a solbourne 2 cpu color system for evaluation. it was subsequently bought here by another group as a group file/compute server. after some initial problems (during beta period), it ran well. network IO seemed slow to me, but they say they remedied that. Compatibility was excellant. Hardware support was great; software support (as they rely on sun) was not much better than sun except that they have much better X window support. We may yet buy one as a group compute server for X window terminals. No reservations about company or compatibility. everything else no worse than sun. Scott| ARPA: lamson@crd.ge.com Lamson| UUCP: uunet!steinmetz!sierra!lamson (518)387-5795| UUCP: uunet!steinmetz!lamson!crd ***** >Date: Tue, 6 Jun 89 08:31:04 EDT >From: david@pyr.gatech.edu (David Brown) Hi, Robert. I, too, have found the recent Solbourne announcements interesting. I'm test-driving a Solbourne 4/602 for the next week or so. I'm pretty impressed. It looks well built, and has a lot of bang for the bucks. If you can get your hands on this month's UNIX REVIEW, there is a very good article on Solbourne. They tested on against Sun-4, MIPS, HP and a couple of others. It faired pretty well. Good luck, David ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Brown Armstrong State College, Savannah, Georgia uucp: ...!gatech!gitpyr!david ARPA: david@pyr.gatech.edu ***** >Date: Tue, 6 Jun 89 10:33:17 EDT >From: jim@applix.com (Jim Morton) We have experience with their machines because we did a verification test of our Sun-4 port of our Alis office software on it. I was very impressed. They seemed like a very ruggedly built machine. Of course we only had a few hundred hours of experience with it, but my impression was that they really wanted to overcome the QA failings of Sun's hardware - monitors, video boards, memory failures, etc. As for software compatibility, we hit 100% except for an ioctl() to the type-4 keyboard, which as soon as we pointed out to them they fixed. Overall I give them high marks. If Suns have a clone market, Solbourne is the COMPAQ of the market. -- Jim Morton, APPLiX Inc., Westboro, MA ...uunet!applix!jim jim@applix.COM ***** >Date: Thu, 8 Jun 89 11:05:53 CDT >From: doug%ross@cs.utexas.edu (doug carmean) I've just caught up on reading comp.sys.sun and noticed your request for information on Solbourne computers. We have a Solbourne Series 4/600 that we have been using for about 3 months now. We mostly run GDT from Silicon Compiler Systems and Dracula from Cadence on the thing. We have had absolutely no compatibility problems with any of the stuff that we have thrown at it. The only problem with it so far has been the keyboard and the mouse. The keyboard absolutely flaked out and they (Solbourne) had to send us a new one. Now the mouse is starting to get a flakey and we may have to get a new one of those. I ran Dhrystone 2.1 on the Solbourne and compared it to one of our Sun 4/110: Solbourne 16.8k Sun 4/110 12.2k both version were compiled on the respective machines using the -O4 switch, thats why the numbers might seem inflated over some of the others you see on the net. -- -doug carmean ross!doug@cs.utexas.edu -ROSS Technology, 7748 Hwy 290 West Suite 400, Austin, TX 78736 -Don't let my sarcasm fool you: I have no sense of humor. ***** >Date: Fri, 9 Jun 89 12:42:26 CDT >From: dan@rose3.Rosemount.COM (Dan Messinger) I've played on a Solbourne for a short time. It was a dual processor system. And it was obvious. We were playing on the system's console and an X terminal right beside it. It felt like we were running on two different systems. I would give it strong consideration, if I was looking for a file server or compute server. But at the moment, I'm looking for personal workstations. Solbourne has nothing that can compete with a Sparcstation 1 right now. Dan Messinger -- Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB
neil@uunet.uu.net (Neil Gorsuch) (06/25/89)
In article <3402@kalliope.rice.edu> prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) writes: >I have in front of me a packet of marketing material on Solbourne's >SPARC-equipped and Sun 4 compatible workstations. They sure look good. >Being able to run SunOS and all Sun 4 applications and that. And it has >performance. But... zardoz is a single processor Solbourne 4 model 500 with a color 19" screen (the 12th according to the serial number) and handles the following with ease: being the file server for 4 sun 3's, 45 uucp connections (26 of which are news connections using B news), the unix security mailing list which sends out a digest to ~500 destinations about once a week, a couple of other smaller local mailing lists, a PC-NFS server, and being used as a personal workstation by a "power user" that typically runs many things at the same thing (me). I can't compare it to a sun 4, since I just ordered one and it isn't here yet, but it compiles, links, and installs gnu emacs (including x and sunview support) in about 6 minutes. It handles suntools window operations very quickly, but does color x fairly slowly. I expect that once someone tweaks the x software, that will be very impressive too. The present memory boards are 16 Mbytes each, and you need 32 Mbytes if you don't want to thrash terribly under heavy load. From what I can see, it is perfectly compatible with suns. The support from Solbourne is excellent. They have an 800 number in Colorado that is often manned into the evenings, which is important to me in California. When I call, I end up talking to a knowledgeable engineer DURING the call, not when I get a call back a month later as recently happened with I called a certain nameless large computer company. When I complained about the thin wire ethernet being somewhat weak, they came out and installed a transceiver free, which is not the usual case with other computer companies that I have dealt with. The model 500 is the cheapest way I know of to start out, while still having the option of adding up to 2 soon to be announced 20 MIPS each cpu boards, and having up to 128 Mbytes of memory when the new memory board is populated with 4 Mbit chips. The scsi performance is excellent, about 1.5 times faster than a sun 3 using the same scsi shoeboxes with the same disk drives in them. Take a model 500, put in a couple of cpu boards, add some 16 mS or even 10.5 mS average access disks from a friendly shoebox supplier (like me), and you have a VERY fast server. Overall, I am very impressed with Solbourne, and the price is right. Neil Gorsuch Uninet peripherals division of Custom Product Design, Inc. (800) 433-6784 outside California (714) 546-1100 inside California neil@cpd.com uunet!zardoz!neil 1209 E. Warner Santa Ana, CA 92705