On  6-Oct-99 at 13:50, Greg Earle (earle@isolar.DynDNS.ORG) wrote:
> Um.  The 360 MHz UltraSPARC IIi Ultra 5's were already $1,795.
> 
> The $1,995 systems are the 333 MHz UltraSPARC IIi-based Ultra 5+'s.
> (They're the ones with 2 MB of Level-2 cache, vs. 256 Kb in the 360 MHz
> boxes.) 

Are you sure?  I just ran through the configurator; and it looks like
the low end are the 360MHz boxes with 64Mb RAM and no CD-rom.  (With
the $75 Solaris7 RTU, it comes to $2020.)


> They now come with PGX24 graphics, so I'm not sure why joeo@cracktown.com
> says "256 color display", nor why Greywolf says "Default framebuffer
> appears to be the equivalent of a 1280x1024 cgsix."

With only 4Mb of video RAM, it looks like it can't support 24bit depth
at 1280x1024; only at 1152x900.

> I never thought I'd say this - as a person who's worked almost exclusively
> on Suns for the past 16 years, plus 5 years working for Sun ... and
> wishing for an "affordable" Sun during most of that time - but to me this is
> a big yawn. 

I'm sorry to have to agree.

> From a NetBSD perspective, buying solid hardware with good bang for the
> buck and with good OS support seems key.  If I want bang for the buck, I'd
> go with a PC.  If I want good hardware, I get a Blue&White G3 Mac with more
> bang for the buck (or a G4/400 at $1499, if NetBSD/MacPPC supported it) than
> a SPARCstation or Ultra.  The fact is, PCs and Macs caught up to Sun
> desktops and passed them already.  Sad but true.

Is this really true for Sun's high-end desktops, or just for the low-end
PCI/IDE-based ones?



-Pat