stefan@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Stefan Mochnacki) (01/04/89)
In v7n69, S.I.Hariharan asks: > .. I have the option of buying the diskless work station. Is there >any one out there who knows about compatible disks for 386i? Is it >possible to buy say a 150meg drive (compatible with the SUN 386i) around >2000 dollars. Also, I am wondering if the disk controller is it already >built in the machine with cables. If so, I can buy some thing like a CDC >Wren series drive and just stick it in the slot. In the same issue Teresa Kloss asks: >I'd like to know if anybody out there has a Sun 386i/150? If so what is >your configuration and what kind of performance do you get? >Does anybody have a 150 with 4 megs of memory? If so is the memory >adequate or would you recommend more? In the Astronomy Department at U of T we now have two 386i's, an RR250 with 4 megs cached memory, and a 150 with 8 megs of DRAM (no cache). We are running 4.0, and Fortran v1.1. These machines really do need 8 MB; the 4 MB RR250 feels much slower than the 8 MB RR150. We have more memory on order. Both have the 16" color monitor. A third 386i will arrive next year. Re disk storage, we bought the 386i's diskless from Sun and bought 300 MB WREN IV's from Dilog for CAN (NB: CAN!) $2752 each. The 386i's came with all required SCSI cables. (We also bought the expansion boxes with 1/4" tape drives). The SCSI controller is built in. We have brought the systems up with very little trouble (except for the 150 going into a funny state after too many power-cycles: cured by disconnecting everything,running diagnostics, and re-assembling ... ). I think 300 MB is the minimum useful size of disk. I had to make a simple metal sliding mounting plate to mount the Wren IV in the system unit, substituting for Sun's nylon sliding mount. I can send details on request. Since Sun supplies an external terminator, I removed the terminating resistor packs and removed the power termination jumper. I set the SCSI address to 2 (sd2). No parity checking, power on when powered up, chassis grounding (came with no grounding jumper installed; not important?). Select the "expert" installation mode when loading SunOS. We used the "format" utility; very easy. NB: The Sun-supplied Wren IV is a 327 MB unit, the ones we bought were 300 MB. Later Wren IV's are bigger. Use "original" to get defect list, make current, then format. I used 1412 data cylinders, 2 alternates, 46 sectors/track, 9 heads, but I believe several different combinations will work. Got 299 MB. I used my own set of partition sizes (needed more swap space); Ch. 10 of the advanced admin. manual gives several examples. Call label "CDC Wren IV". Only annoying thing is that a "hardware upgrade" S/W upgrade kit checks for 91 or 327 MB disks and barfs if one is not found. I'll hack the script or wait for 4.0.1. The Sun people are snarky (but in a friendly way ...) about using "3rd-party" disks on 386i's... Anyway, after loading 4.0 off tape, the system is happy as a lark booting off the Wren IV. The Wrens are very quiet (quieter than the fans...). Boot cmnd: b sd(0,2,0) As for SunOS 4.0, well ... SNAP dies after setting up 2 accounts (!), snuffing yellow pages has disastrous results ... etc. etc. We await 4.0.1. As for FORTRAN performance, a very crude benchmark I ran today suggests the 150 is only about 30% slower than the 250. Running the same program compiled under Microsoft Fortran v4.0 is only about 20% slower than the SunOS f77 v1.1 version. (This is a very floating-point intensive case). The same program compiled and run on a microVAX II under VMS runs about the same as the Microsoft compiled version on the RR150-FC. Stefan W. Mochnacki INTERNET - stefan@helios.physics.toronto.edu Astronomy, U. Toronto UUCP - {uunet,pyramid}!utai!helios!stefan +1 (416) 884-9562 BITNET - mochnacki@utorphys.bitnet