jim@bauhaus.Stanford.EDU (unknown) (11/15/89)
I just learned from one of our third party suppliers that Clearpoint is now (finally!) making memory both for most of the SGI product line, including the 4D/2x0. Comparing the current cost of the Clearpoint memory with the price we paid SGI when we bought our 220 (to be fair, this was back in July when the memory market prices were still a little high, SGI's prices may be lower now), we would have saved almost $10K in hardware and support on the 24MB board.. Even so, the 4D/2x0 memory costs more than twice as much per Meg as the 4D/60/70/80 memory. But even so, it is a LOT less expensive than SGI's. Also, it comes with a lifetime warranty. I'm told that some SGI salespeople have on occasion mentioned Clearpoint when they are pressed to the wall on pricing against DEC and SUN. Our experience with Clearpoint has been pretty good. Once, we had a 16MB board go flakey on a Sun-3. After making sure I wasn't a foo-foo head, they FedEx'ed a new board out without waiting for the return of the bad one. Of course, caveat administrator. One always runs the risk of finger pointing with third-party hardware. Personally, I wouldn't get third party anything unless I felt comfortable pulling it out if problems develop. Disclaimer: I has no association with Clearpoint other than as a customer. I has on occasion flamed about the high cost of SGI add ons. I must admit that SGI's pricing on these things is much better than it used to be. Jim Helman Department of Applied Physics P.O. Box 10494 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94309 (jim@thrush.stanford.edu) (415) 723-4940