Re: U5 RAM?

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> The problem is to get high capacity modules > 32 MB.  With 32 MB
> DIMMs you get a max. of 128 MB.  Thats OK for a small headless server
> or playground, but not enough to use it as a graphical desktop
> machine.

(a) You must have a remarkably bloated idea of a "graphical desktop
machine".  My main desktop at work has 48M, and that's plenty.  It's
sparc32, not sparc64, but sparc64 is not _that_ much more
memory-hungry.  (At home, I have 448, but that machine (a) does a lot
more than just being my desktop and (b) doesn't actually need anything
like 448; I just had the RAM sitting around, so I shoved it in there.)
Even 32M is perfectly usable.  (Well, it was until recently; I tried
doing a build of the 4.0.1 world on a 32M i386 this week, and it took
over an hour to run genattrtab because it was paging itself to death.
Sad, how the mighty have fallen; I think even 3.1 was fine on that
hardware.  I really really need to look at pcc more.)

(b) This _is_ going to be running basically headless (perhaps screen
and keyboard, but just text-console use).  32M total would probably be
enough; 64M total definitely would be.  I didn't outline my use
paradigm in my original message, but given what I've been seeing since,
perhaps I should have. :)  I have a machine at work which has two
tasks: (1) stream ripped CD images off a 931G ("1T") SATA disk to a
machine on my desktop (which latter machine is basically just playing
sound synth); (2) handling the "outside" end of the v6-over-v4 tunnel
that provides my home LAN with v6 connectivity.  (2) borders on
trivial; it's (1) that is the issue here - because it's approximately
impossible to find disks that big with pre-SATA interfaces.  And the
current machine is a peecee, but, like all my peecees, it is
responsible for a disproportionate fraction of the hardware failures my
machines experience; recently, the power-supply fan seized up and I was
without music at work for a couple of days.  So I wanted a machine that
(a) had PCI so I could give it SATA capability and (b) wasn't a peecee.
Looking at my collection, the U5 seemed like the front runner, until I
tried to set it up and found it had no RAM. :)  While I am looking into
other possibilities, I prefer to pursue my options in parallel.

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