ndd@sunbar.mc.duke.edu (Ned Danieley) (05/06/89)
I'm looking for information on people's experience with memory expansion kits for the 3/50, especially those that are easily removed. Now that Sun has announced the possibility of upgrading even dimple-top 50s to 60s, we have to decide which way to go. Any info would be appreciated; I'll summarize to the digest. Ned Danieley (ndd@sunbar.mc.duke.edu) Basic Arrhythmia Laboratory Box 3140, Duke University Medical Center Durham, NC 27710 (919) 684-6807 or 684-6942
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (05/29/89)
I posted the following article to a local organizational news group after doing an extensive amount of research on the subject of Sun 3/50 upgrade paths. I've pulled all LLNL prices out because I didn't want to piss off people who couldn't drive enough volume to get the pricing we can or, piss off the companies involved (all of which have been extremely helpful). Sorry I don't have the current list prices available. Contact the companies directly for pricing information for your organization. >From: casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) Subject: Re: Memory expansion available for Sun 3/50 workstations!!! Keywords: Sun 3/50 workstation, memory expansion, cheap Date: 24 May 89 19:34:53 GMT | From: casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) | Date: 22 Dec 88 20:00:26 GMT | | Increasing the memory in your Sun 3/50s can significantly improve the | performance of your entire Sun cluster. Your 3/50s spend less of their | time paging, the network is less loaded with paging traffic, your server | is less loaded with network and disk interrupts, and more server disk | bandwidth is available for real work (this last is especially important | because most Sun servers have slow Xylogics 451 disk controllers that | have very limited disk bandwidth). All in all, a win all the way around. This is the long delayed follow up to my article in llnl.sun last December. In that article I reviewed the information available on the Sun 3/50 memory expansion products available from Sun Flower (now named Sol Flower), Parity, Helios, and Clearpoint. At that time, I was unable to get a hold of Sun Flower and had heard their address was a condo in San Jose - not a very promising sign; Parity didn't actually have a product available yet; Helios only had a solder in product for $2100; and Clearpoint had a plug in/out product available for $2350. My recommendation, given the information available, was the Clearpoint product. Since then, Sun has announced a dual pronged upgrade policy for 3/50s: 1. a 3/50 to 3/60 trade in that would cost you something like $4300 to end up with an 8Mb workstation (our original goal remember), and 2. an announcement that your 3/50 warranty would *NOT* be invalidated if you installed a plug in/out third party memory expansion product (you would have to remove it before they would service the workstation however); I've bought a Clearpoint memory expansion; Parity has come out with their plug in/out product and I've BETA tested their first version; Helios has come out with a plug in/out product which I'm evaluating now; and I've seen the Sol Flower product. A lot of stuff, hhmmm? Sun Microsystems, Inc. 2550 Garcia Avenue Mountain View, CA 94043 Price: $XXXX (Sun 3/50 to 3/60 with 8Mb of memory upgrade. Also includes new SunWrite, SunDraw, and SunPaint software.) First things first: I applaud the Sun upgrade policy. It's very flexible allowing you to decide whether you want to upgrade both your memory capacity and CPU power, or just go with one of the third party memory products to increase your memory capacity. Unfortunately the price of the 3/50 to 3/60 upgrade is really too expensive compared with the third party memory upgrades, especially with the current prices, approximately $1500 to $1700, of those third party memory upgrades. If you've got a fixed amount of money available and your fundamental goal is to upgrade your 4Mb 3/50 workstations to 8Mb workstations, you can only upgrade [about] half as many workstations with the Sun 3/50 to 3/60 upgrade. On the other hand the 3/60 is about 30% faster and you do get their new software. It's a decision you'll have to make. [By the way, my initial claim (quoted at the top of this article) ``that a 3/50 is a perfectly adequate workstation, it just lacks memory'' seems to have been borne out by our recent experiences with the 3/50 memory expansion products we've tested in CMRD. Another realistic option has risen on the horizon which I'll describe in a coming article in llnl.general on the Graphon X terminal.] Now, a review of the various 3/50 memory products which I've tested or seen: Parity Systems, Inc. 504-B Vandell Way Campbell, CA 95008 Price: $XXXX Contact: John Miller Phone: 408-378-1000 FAX: 408-378-1022 I ordered a Clearpoint product back in December. Before it arrived I was able to set up a BETA test of Parity's new product. Parity was able get in touch with Sol Flower and buy the right to remarket their board until their own design was complete. The Sol Flower design is very simple and elegant. It's a small board about 6.5x9 inches which lays over and extends out the Memory Management Unit gate array (MMU), Parity Check gate array (PCHK) and the four Programmable Array Logic chips (PALS). Additionally, it uses standard Sun SIMMs for its memory. This means that you can just pop the SIMM memories out if you get rid of your 3/50 and use those SIMMs in your 3/60, 3/80, or 386i. Unfortunately it wouldn't run in any of the older 3/50s we tried it in and it failed after running a couple of days in one of our newer 3/50s. They felt that the problem was a mechanical connection issue and went back to do a small redesign on their own board. (The problem is that the two gate array socket inserts on the bottom of the daughter board are fixed in place and the gate sockets on the system board are not always in exactly the same place. Parity's solution is to mount one of the gate array socket inserts onto a small separate board and connect the two boards via a short ribbon cable.) Parity's design is due to start shipping at the end of May. They're including an installation and maintenance kit with each board. The installation kit consists of two chip pullers pullers. An anti-static mat is a $20 option. The maintenance kit consists of a anti-static box with label so you can keep track of the old Sun PALS and which machine they came from which are replaced by the board. Clearpoint Inc. 3333 Bowers, #245 Santa Clara, CA 95054 Price: $XXXX Contact: Michelle Sieber Phone: 408-727-2433 FAX: 408-727-2109 When the Clearpoint board came in, I and Tom DeBoni, who had worked with me on the Parity evaluation, were both unhappy with the design. It consists of a very large board which covers a large portion, including some of the hottest sections, of the 3/50 system board. It also includes three smaller boards which are used to pull out and get at the signals of the MMU, PCHK, *and* CPU and well as the PALS. In addition to the heat problem, the large board is held off the system board with a couple of stand-off posts that leave most of the board just laying on the central board stiffener on the system board. It looks like it will be very sensitive to vibration. In contrast, the Parity board comes with three plastic clips that are used to tie the small board firmly down to the system board at the two system board stiffeners that it abuts. Also, the memory chips are soldered in to the Clearpoint board. Clearpoint does guarantee a one for one memory swap of Sun SIMMs if you ever get rid of your 3/50, but it certainly isn't as convenient as just pulling the SIMMs out of the 3/50 memory board yourself as you can do with *all* the other products. But, it must be pointed out that the board has been running in Tom DeBoni's reliably for nearly two months now. What can I say? It looks like a lousy design, but it seems to work fine. Also, Clearpoint has been great to work with. (Actually, this has been true of all the companies, though Sol Flower still feels a bit flakey ...) Helios Systems 1996 Lundy Avenue San Jose, CA 95131 Price: $XXXX Contact: Sheryl Kaiser Phone: 408-432-0292 FAX: 408-943-1309 Helios announced a new plug in/out 3/50 memory upgrade product on March 3rd. Previously they had only offered a solder in product which just wasn't acceptable as far as I was concerned. I do understand their engineers wanting to do this having seen how difficult it is to come up with a reliable connection scheme that doesn't use soldered connections, but it just doesn't make sense given the maintenance issue (especially with Sun's announced warranty stance). This product is very similar to the Parity and Sol Flower products. Roughly the same size, it extends the MMU, PCHK, and replaces the four PALS, and uses standard Sun SIMMs for memory. Similarly it uses plastic clips to bind the board down securely to the system board stiffeners. I'm evaluating the Helios board right now and it's been running reliably for about three weeks. I would have thought that it would suffer the same mechanical connection problem that we had with the Parity product, but so far no problems. The board comes with an installation kit that consists of two chip pullers (one for the gate arrays and one for the PALS), an hex wrench to open the 3/50 up, and a disposable anti-static wrist. Helios is also offering the solder in version of their Sun 3/50 memory upgrades for $XXXX/4Mb, and $XXXX/8Mb. This board also uses standard Sun SIMMs. If your machine is on Sun Maintenance, Helios will pick up the remainder of your maintenance through Apex, Inc. out of Seattle. Sol Flower, Inc. 1630 Oakland Road, Suite A-108 San Jose, CA 95131 Price: $XXXX Phone: 408-452-5780 408-452-5781 FAX: 408-452-8442 Finally, I haven't evaluated the Sol Flower product myself, but Joe Carlson has (perhaps he'll follow up this article with his impressions of it). I can say that I'm still unimpressed with the impression of instability in the company. Also, they only offer a two year warranty while all the other companies offer life time warranties. However, it should be noted that when Joe Carlson's board failed, they replaced it promptly. When I contacted them about the mechanical connection problems that Parity was having with their design, they said they couldn't understand Parity's problems - they had no such problems themselves. Who knows ... One other kind of disgruntling aspect of the Sol Flower product rears it head when you look at it: they've sand-blasted the identification marks off of most of the chips. They're apparently very worried about other companies stealing their design. Oh well, perhaps they have reason ... SUMMARY: I'm happy enough with the Helios product that I'm evaluating, impatient enough not to want to wait for the next Parity product, and nervous enough about the stability of Sol Flower that I've decided to start upgrading all of my 3/50s with the Helios product. The only other contender in my decision was the Clearpoint product and I have enough reservations about its engineering that I just couldn't see myself going with that. I'll probably order a bunch of Parity boards on the next round since they have a better design visa vi the mechanical interconnect problem mentioned above. Hopefully this will be my last article on this subject. These things take too long to write up. If you're interested in a different approach to the whole workstation issue, check out my article in comp.windows.x on the Graphon X terminal which I think offers a very reasonable alternative to putting a workstation (whether Sun or otherwise) on a person's desk. Casey