Re: Sun Blade 100 vs Ultra 60

[Al - image hosting services <azick%zickswebventures.com@localhost>]

Hi,

On Sun, 10 Feb 2008, Michael Lorenz wrote:
> > I have been doing some research, though I still don't have any
> > answers.
> >
> > Looking at the Sun Blade 100, it is a small pci based machine. This
> > would
> > be great for my purpose. I should be able put in 2 hard drives,
> > plus if I
> > pulled the cdrom, floppy drive and card reader I should be able to
> > put in
> > 2 more. Does anyone know if the power supply could run this many
> > drives or
> > if there is are upgrade options for it? Also, is there a firmware
> > limit on
> > the size of a drive that could be put in it?
>
> First - the power supply is a bog standard ATX part if I remember
> correctly so if it's too small you can easily upgrade it. Then, if
> there is a limit in the firmware that only limits where you can put
> the loaders and the kernel, it does not keep NetBSD from accessing
> the whole disk.

So, the powersupply shouldn't be an issue. Is the motherboard standard
form factor too? Maybe I could put it into another case.

> > The Ultra 60 looks like a better system and should easily be able
> > to hold
> > 4 drives, although it would be more exspensive to colo. Is there a big
> > advantagee to having 2 cpus and the larger case? Is there an option
> > to put
> > the motherboard into a smaller case?
>
> We don't currently support SMP on sparc64 and there's not much room
> in the U60 for IDE drives.
> It has two dedicated SCA bays, you'd need at least one SCA drive to
> boot from since there's no onboard IDE and finding an IDE or SATA
> card with fcode ROM could be difficult.

Is there good support for a SATA card (if I wasn't trying to boot off of
it)? This could be a good solution to possible performance issues that I
have now.

> The U60 is better in several ways though:
> - - it can take 2GB RAM
> - - the CPUs can have up to 4MB cache
> - - you get four 64bit PCI slots, one 66MHz capable
> Downsides:
> - - it will suck more power than a Blade 100
> - - you need a card to hook up IDE drives ( although you'd probably
> want one for the Blade as well, the onboard IDE controller isn't that
> fast IIRC )

This is true in either case. I would want to put in a controller that
could handle 500 gb drives. I have read that you had to have 5 volt cards
for the Sun Blade 100. Do you know if this is true?

Also, I have been using an ATTO SCSI controller and an intel 100+ pro
ethernet card in a mac running NetBSD. Both seem to work incredibly
reliably. Would they work equally as well in a Sun?

Thanks,
Al