karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (12/04/88)
> From: root@helios.ucsc.edu (De Clarke x2630) > > The question before us, as we contemplate acquisition of our sixth and > seventh Sun 3/50-ME-4, is 'to maintain or not to maintain?'. Has anyone > out there had conclusive experience of the failure rate of 3/50's in a > normal office environment (no a/c, isolation-txformer-type power > conditioning)? In just the last couple of months, we have had rather a lot of the flyback transformers in our 3/50 monitors going bad. #10 (of 200-odd) gave up the ghost yesterday afternoon. While Sun will tell you that the monitor will have thus-and-so MTBF, they generally seem to have computed those figures based on the machine being on during office hours only. Ours are always on. --Karl
roy@philabs.philips.com (Roy Smith) (12/10/88)
> The question before us, as we contemplate acquisition of our sixth and > seventh Sun 3/50-ME-4, is 'to maintain or not to maintain?'. We have 15 3/50's, most (12) of them about 2-1/2 years old. Call it 35 3/50-years of operation. We don't keep any under maintenance. We've had 1 memory chip die which required replacing the CPU board (*!$%@#!) at something like $1300 and 30-days down-time for that particluar workstation. We also had a monitor high-voltage power supply die, which we replaced directly from the monitor manufacturer (Moniterm) for a couple $100 or so. Right now it looks like we have a second system with a memory chip starting to flake out (parity error panics every month or so). We also had a couple of infant failures, covered by warranty. Assuming the machine with the monthly parity errors will die for good tommorow, requiring another new CPU board, that will be under $3000 in repair costs over 35 machine years, or $85/machine-year. We work out the math something like this: It costs $50/month to put a 3/50 under service. At the time we made the decision, we had 12 3/50's so it would have cost us $600 a month for all of them. We can buy a brand new 3/50 for about $3600 (educational discount), which means that even if we had to throw one in the trash every 6 months and replace it completely, we would break even. As it is, we're way ahead. Of course, if you don't get educational prices, the replacement price is higher (but not the repair or mantenance price; there is no discount on these). This shifts the equation a bit. Also, we have the technical expertiese to do a reasonable amount of trouble-shooting and repair ourselves. If you don't have that, you would, for example, have had to buy a new monitor from Sun instead of just replacing the power supply at a fraction of the cost. We are also able to cope with a single diskless workstation being down for a month (Sun has priority repair service, at a much greater cost, which we avoid). We do keep our file servers under contract because when they go down (hasn't happend yet!) a lot of clients are taken along. We also keep our 3/160's under contract because we can't risk having to buy a new one like we can a new 3/50, and because they get much heavier use. Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
ben@tis.llnl.gov (ben ullrich) (12/10/88)
In article <8811102030.AA03003@helios> you write: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 21, message 10 of 12 > >The question before us, as we contemplate acquisition of our sixth and >seventh Sun 3/50-ME-4, is 'to maintain or not to maintain?'. Has anyone >out there had conclusive experience of the failure rate of 3/50's in a >normal office environment (no a/c, isolation-txformer-type power >conditioning)?... we have several 3/60's in operation here, and they have been generally running perfectly for a year or so. we've had sun equipment since 1985, and have had minimal problems with it. boards so go out from time to time, but things have improved with each new model sun puts out. the deciding factor for us when choosing to get sun's next-day maint. was the fact that whenever we had a failure, most of our systems are so important we couldn't afford (from a user-need standpoint) to have the machines down... that decided it for us. but, as i said, the equipment doesn't really fail that much at all. the first 3/50 we ever bought (2 years or so old now) is used by the sales group for on-the-road demos of our database server & front end tools. after at least 50 sales demos all over the country, this machine has yet to fail. i'd say skip the to-of-the-line service if you can afford to have a system down for a day or two. but it is my belief that thhe systems don't fail that much to begin with, so the above need for downtime shouldn't happen very often at all. -- ...ben -- ben ullrich sybase, inc. emeryville, ca {pyramid,pacbell,sun,lll-tis,capmkt}!sybase!ben (^^^^^^^^^== nowhere usa) ben%sybase.com@sun.com
rwn@cs.utexas.edu (Ralph Noack) (12/12/88)
We have 6 3/50's (5 diskless, 1 p5(140MB+tape)). We have had 4 for ~ 2
years. The others ~1.5 yrs. We do not carry any maintenance on any. We
have shipped monitors to be repaired 4 times I believe. In each case we
took the 30 day repair at a cost of about $550. In each case the monitor
failed after a power glitch/outage. Being short of brains and cash we used
only surge protectors and no pwr line conditioners. We sent several to
another company(Dyn Service Network) which actually does the warranty work
for Phillips(the monitor manufac.) for sun. However Sun found out and
screamed. They have a contract with Phillips which precluded such
activety(Dyn was less than half price). I could get limited feedback on
what went wrong. In at least one case it was the flyback transformer. The
guy said it was basically weak. Other than the monitors we have had no
failures. I think that with adequate pwr protection/condition the 50's are
very reliable. The weakest part is definetly the monitor.
Ralph W. Noack (817)-273-2860
Univ. of Tx at Arlington, Aerospace Eng. Dept. Box 19018 Arlington, Tx 76019
..!{killer,texsun}!utacfd!rwnaad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) (12/15/88)
karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: >In just the last couple of months, we have had rather a lot of the flyback >transformers in our 3/50 monitors going bad. I've had more problems with monitors (2/50, 2/120, 3/50) than any other peice of hardware. What are the symptoms of the flyback transformer going bad?
karl@cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (12/22/88)
karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: >In just the last couple of months, we have had rather a lot of the flyback >transformers in our 3/50 monitors going bad. aad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) writes: I've had more problems with monitors (2/50, 2/120, 3/50) than any other piece of hardware. What are the symptoms of the flyback transformer going bad? A dead screen and a high-pitched whine. I received some extremely useful mail yesterday from Lewis Jansen <lrj@helios.tn.cornell.edu>, detailing what his group has learned about dealing with this problem. The short version is that there's a high voltage line (24kv) going to the CRT; it presses against the left side grounding shield. After being heated in the monitor a long time, the insulation decays followed by arcing. The final eventuality is shorting completely through, ruining the flyback. He says they've taken to taping some folded `fish paper' onto the ground shield, which insulates and also holds the wire out a bit from the shield. Be CAREFUL around those high voltages, folks... Many thanx to lrj for the pointer. --Karl