[a little advocacy] Selling point of SPARC vs. Intel or AMD

I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis. PC's typically fall apart
and have fans that whine and groan after a mere 3 years. These
usually have a slight to moderate amount of flimsy feel to them. My
Ultra II is still going very strong, and is still pretty quiet. It's
also well-built. Imagine a PC that is as old as my Ultra II, how it
would look, sound, and perform.

That's why I feel PC's are so "dangerous": you can get some pretty
good uptimes and mean time between failures with BSD, Linux, and
Solaris x86. But these require a lot more maintenance in return for
their low cost. So you basically have that "hidden" cost there. Had
Digital not gone belly-up, I think the Sparc would be in better shape
today.

PC's can be extremely reliable when you chose the right components,
but they still have a sort of feel about them that takes away from the
UNIX experience. I've run Linux and OpenBSD on Sparcs, and they still
have a proper unix "feel" to them because the machines they were
running on are designed to run unix. For some reason "init 0" on PC's
feel out of place. PC's seem to have that "Wintendo" feel about them
no matter what you're running on them.

DMM

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:29:48 -0700, hackr_d wrote:

> I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
> are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
> sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis. PC's typically fall apart
> and have fans that whine and groan after a mere 3 years. These
> usually have a slight to moderate amount of flimsy feel to them. My
> Ultra II is still going very strong, and is still pretty quiet. It's
> also well-built. Imagine a PC that is as old as my Ultra II, how it
> would look, sound, and perform.

I don't have to use my imagination. I have 2 Compaqs just as old or older
and running 24/7. Both are substantially less noisy than my Ultra 1 or
Ultra 60 machines.

And since they run headless they have no "feel" at all except when I
access them using SSH from one of my 3 AMD64 systems running snv_94.

hackr_d@yahoo.com writes:
>
>I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
>are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
>sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis. PC's typically fall apart
>and have fans that whine and groan after a mere 3 years. These
>usually have a slight to moderate amount of flimsy feel to them. My
>Ultra II is still going very strong, and is still pretty quiet. It's
>also well-built. Imagine a PC that is as old as my Ultra II, how it
>would look, sound, and perform.
>

The things you mention above and in the other two paragraphs that
I deleted have everything to do with the manufacturer of the
equipment and nothing to do with the sparc or x86 cpu.

In fact, Sun did make Sparc machines that were very similar to
x86 PCs, but with a sparc cpu: the Ultra 5 and Ultra 10.
And they suffered from all the same problems you describe - wobbly
sheet metal chassis and cover (on the U10, which had the PC 'small
tower case' construction), expansion cards that could be plugged
in wrong (due to the PCI buss, though Sbus had similar troubles),
and so on.

If the inexpensive PC problems can be present in sparc cpu machines,
then the things you praise have nothing to do with the cpu inside
and everything to do with the design and manufacture of the product.
You're praising the benefits of well-made products that were sold at
premium prices.

-Greg
--
Do NOT reply via e-mail.
Reply in the newsgroup.

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:29:48 -0700, hackr_d wrote:

> I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
> are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
> sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis.

Valid argument, except can shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have
a collection of OS software to match the hardware.
What *nix can I put on spacr stn 2,5, 10 & 20 other than solaris, which I
don't have {:-).

Otherwise, I agree with you. However, you have to have the funds to buy
Sun hardware.

hackr_d@yahoo.com schrieb:
> I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
> are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
> sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis. PC's typically fall apart
> and have fans that whine and groan after a mere 3 years. These
> usually have a slight to moderate amount of flimsy feel to them. My
> Ultra II is still going very strong, and is still pretty quiet. It's
> also well-built. Imagine a PC that is as old as my Ultra II, how it
> would look, sound, and perform.
>
> That's why I feel PC's are so "dangerous": you can get some pretty
> good uptimes and mean time between failures with BSD, Linux, and
> Solaris x86. But these require a lot more maintenance in return for
> their low cost. So you basically have that "hidden" cost there. Had
> Digital not gone belly-up, I think the Sparc would be in better shape
> today.
>
> PC's can be extremely reliable when you chose the right components,
> but they still have a sort of feel about them that takes away from the
> UNIX experience. I've run Linux and OpenBSD on Sparcs, and they still
> have a proper unix "feel" to them because the machines they were
> running on are designed to run unix. For some reason "init 0" on PC's
> feel out of place. PC's seem to have that "Wintendo" feel about them
> no matter what you're running on them.
>
> DMM

you always have to pay for quality. If you are willing to spend $$ for a
PC, there should be enough vendors to get some quality gear. Although,
spending $$ doesn't guarantee that you'll be getting quality hardware.
It's always like this.

But I agree with your 'Wintendo' impression. I think the most important
point here is that PCs come with a BIOS and not something like OpenBoot.
It's really sad that PC vendors haven't managed to come up with a good
successor to BIOS. All that legacy stuff, and compatibility layers can
make one's head spin. Just think of all that ACPI issues. Never heard of
something similar with UNIX workstations.

Only Apple was able to push some fundamental changes into the PC market.
Just think of the history of USB - once Apple shipped its first machine
with only USB for peripherals (no Serial, no Parallel, no PS2), vendors
where willing to invest into this new technology.

What I really would like to see, is a new kind of PC, without legacy
stuff, without BIOS, without compatibility layers, with some kind of
programmable firmware like OpenBoot with serial console, and on top of
that some nice textual menu, so that Mr. Joe is able to handle some
booting procedures (e.g. choose alternate boot disk).

But I doubt, we'll ever see anything like this.

- Thomas

On Aug 7, 10:03 am, Thomas Maier-Komor <tho...@maier-komor.de> wrote:

> But I agree with your 'Wintendo' impression. I think the most important
> point here is that PCs come with a BIOS and not something like OpenBoot.
> It's really sad that PC vendors haven't managed to come up with a good
> successor to BIOS. All that legacy stuff, and compatibility layers can
> make one's head spin. Just think of all that ACPI issues. Never heard of
> something similar with UNIX workstations.
>
> Only Apple was able to push some fundamental changes into the PC market.
> Just think of the history of USB - once Apple shipped its first machine
> with only USB for peripherals (no Serial, no Parallel, no PS2), vendors
> where willing to invest into this new technology.
>
> What I really would like to see, is a new kind of PC, without legacy
> stuff, without BIOS, without compatibility layers, with some kind of
> programmable firmware like OpenBoot with serial console, and on top of
> that some nice textual menu, so that Mr. Joe is able to handle some
> booting procedures (e.g. choose alternate boot disk).

You really nailed it there. That's exactly what I was trying to get
at. PC BIOS have far too many "features", the ACPI features being one
culprit. I have a fairly expensive DV8000 laptop, but the keyboard
controller is really cheap (or simply buggy) and the bios is buggy as
well. It also has the faulty Foxconn keyboard connector which poorly
fits and works itself lose after a period of normal use.

Having Open Firmware seems to help the unix environment out a bit.
For example, "init 0" will drop you to the firmware prompt on a sparc,
but on a PC, you're left hanging. Technically, it should land you at
the BIOS screen, but that may be tough to do. The serial console is
one very good example. I'm sure all servers, PC or SPARC, have them
though.

Maybe an open firmware with a menu option, where you can turn the
graphical menu off or on via an environment variable. Add an option
to escape the menu (or resume later) via something similar to the Stop-
A on Sun keyboards.

It's definitely the ACPI BIOS and lack of serial ports which reinforce
the Wintendo, "non-unix" feel. Some of the other stuff is OK though,
such as PCI-E and AGP. Those really help the bandwidth as far as
graphics are concerned.

DMM

On Aug 7, 8:30 am, terryc <newssixspam-s...@woa.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:29:48 -0700, hackr_d wrote:
> > I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
> > are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
> > sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis.
>
> Valid argument, except can shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have
> a collection of OS software to match the hardware.
> What *nix can I put on spacr stn 2,5, 10 & 20 other than solaris, which I
> don't have {:-).
>
> Otherwise, I agree with you. However, you have to have the funds to buy
> Sun hardware.

Probably NetBSD, and maybe OpenBSD or even FreeBSD. Linux may work,
although there is a bug which prevents it from working withe the 170
MHz processor in the sparcstation 5. Linux can be a pain, because on
Sparc, a certain patchset may work while others don't. If you're
going to go non-Solaris, I'd say NetBSD or OpenBSD.

I run Solaris Nevada build 94 on my Sun Blade 2000, and it works
fantastic. I tried Gentoo/sparc, and it doesn't come close to Solaris
when it comes to hardware support. Solaris just runs so much better.
I like Solaris Express over Solaris 10, because I'm not really using
it for anything important.

I did buy an ATI Rage XL PCI card for my Blade 2000, thinking it could
work with Gentoo/sparc. Turns out I was wrong. Technically, it's
supported, but I don't think it liked the Gentoo-specific kernel with
gcc 4.1.2. It cause a kernel panic and reboot. And of course, I did
move it around in various PCI slots.

The thing that's funny is that I did have Solaris 10 previously, with
the XVR-1000 as my primary framebuffer. Then I had the little
experiment with Linux, which doesn't really support any of my
framebuffers (except the ATI, which caused panics). Solaris NV b.94
runs like a dream. This time, I used the XVR-500 as my primary
framebuffer, and the video seems to work even smoother. That was
unexpected.

I really can't recommend going with Solaris Express though for
production boxes. It really is fantastic, though.

DMM

DMM

In article <g7evbk$ebk$1@fred.mathworks.com>,
Thomas Maier-Komor <thomas@maier-komor.de> wrote:

[ snip ]

> But I agree with your 'Wintendo' impression. I think the most important
> point here is that PCs come with a BIOS and not something like OpenBoot.
> It's really sad that PC vendors haven't managed to come up with a good
> successor to BIOS.

The Macintosh appears to be just that: a PC with EFI. Though I'm not
sure why people continue to make a big deal about the drawbacks of a
BIOS. For 99.9% of users EFI/BIOS is just a way to start the OS.

[ snip ]

On 2008-08-07, terryc <newssixspam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:29:48 -0700, hackr_d wrote:
>
>> I'd just use the angle that look how long SPARC machines last: they
>> are usable for many years, and use high-quality components and a very
>> sturdy, albeit sometimes bulky, chassis.
>
> Valid argument, except can shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have
> a collection of OS software to match the hardware.
> What *nix can I put on spacr stn 2,5, 10 & 20 other than solaris, which I
> don't have {:-).

Do you mean "SPARCStation 2, 5, 10, and 20"?

If so, then aside from the older Solaris versions, you can also
get various open source OS's which will work on them. I've used OpenBSD
on them -- and the latest release will handle multiple CPUs. I have
examples of all of the machines which you listed -- and OpenBSD *works* on
them.

And many linux versions are also available targeted for the
earlier Sun systems in the SPARC line -- and sometimes even for the
older 68020 based Sun3 machines as well. My examples of the SS2 and the
Sun3 machines are now retired, as well as the SS10 and SS20 -- but I am
still running a couple of SS5 machines..

> Otherwise, I agree with you. However, you have to have the funds to buy
> Sun hardware.

New Sun hardware has always been out of my reach -- but the
older machines (I'm now up to Sun Blade 1000, and an SB-2000 on its way
to me) keep falling in price -- mostly *because* of the newer machines.

And no -- not all of my machines are Sun. I do have back to the
Sun 2/140, but I also have things like the UnixPC (68010-based unix),
Tektronix 6130 (32016 CPU, BSD OS) and even an Altair 680b (no OS to
speak of. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On Aug 7, 10:45 pm, "DoN. Nichols" <dnich...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> On 2008-08-07, terryc <newssixspam-s...@woa.com.au> wrote:

> > Otherwise, I agree with you. However, you have to have the funds to buy
> > Sun hardware.
>
> New Sun hardware has always been out of my reach -- but the
> older machines (I'm now up to Sun Blade 1000, and an SB-2000 on its way
> to me) keep falling in price -- mostly *because* of the newer machines.

I have a Blade 2000. It came with a 1.2GHz US III+, and I bought
another CPU. I installed Solaris NV 94, and it runs like a dream with
the second CPU. I have 3 framebuffers: XVR-500, 600, and 1000. For
some reason, the XVR-500 actually seems to do better at "normal" 2D
video rendering than the XVR-1000. This is surprising, considering it
wasn't even plugged into the 66 MHz (bottom) slot.

> And no -- not all of my machines are Sun. I do have back to the
> Sun 2/140, but I also have things like the UnixPC (68010-based unix),
> Tektronix 6130 (32016 CPU, BSD OS) and even an Altair 680b (no OS to
> speak of. :-)

I was looking to acquire a Sparcstation 5, 170 MHz. I tried to sell
my Ultra 2 on eBay. I did manage to sell it for $46 + $35 shipping,
but the guy never paid. I've had problems with shill bidders as well.

I relisted, and it was going for $0.99 with about half a day to go. I
pulled it (cancelled the auction), because I wasn't willing to put
with another non-paying bidder or lose money. I didn't trust the
guy. The lone bidder wasn't happy -- he was accusing me of being
fraudulent. I said, too bad, it's my auction, and I reserve the right
to pull it.

When you think about it, that was so ridiculous -- $.99 for an Ultra
2, non-paying bidder before that. He was saying all these things, I
ought to report you, blah blah blah. I said, well, too bad, I'm not
selling this thing for nothing, after all I put into it, and it's
perfectly good. Then he said, I will be watching you in the future,
to see if you pull something similar. After getting ******* the first
time, I still had to pay over $6 for my monthly bill.

I also got reported as a non-paying bidder one time. I bought a $650
laptop. After a week of asking where it was, he then refunded my
money, saying it got lost in shipping. He then filed a non-paying
bidder claim. There are some ridiculous people on eBay. That's why
you have to be careful, athough there are some good bargains.

DMM