Nemo ad Nusquam <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
>one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
The thing that would probably push it one way or the other for me is
that the SB2000 use FCAL hard drives, while the SB2500 switched back
to SCSI (other than the SB2500 generally having newer, bigger CPUs, etc).
On 2009-09-14, Nemo ad Nusquam <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
Well ... I *already* have a SB-2000, and enough FC disk drives
so I would like to keep it.
However, if I were starting from scratch, I would go for the
SB-2500, since the FC (Fibre Channel) disk drives are harder to find at
reasonable prices -- except occasionally at hamfests. And the SB-2000
uses two FC drives internally, and has external 68-pin SCSI and FC (as
well as slow USB 1.1 and a rather slow Firewire built in, while the
SB-2500 comes with a PCI card which offers several USB 2.0 and a couple
of faster Firewire ports. (I can testify that the card works in the
SB-2000 as well, as I am using one that way.
Other than that -- the SB-2500 seems to only be marginally
faster (in CPU speed) than the SB-2000.
I know that the SB-2000 is far from featherweight, and I presume
that the SB-2500 is similar in weight.
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 ---
Nemo ad Nusquam wrote:
> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
>
> Thank you.
I noticed on eBay the other day someone selling a Silver Blade 2500
rather than a red one. They implied this was a newer model. I know there
are two colours, but are unsure of the difference between them.
I have a Blade 2000 which I really liked, but it was damaged recently by
lightning. I am in fact going to replace it by an x86 box.
As far as I can ascertain, there is no electrical difference between a
blade 1000 and a 2000. The motherboards are the same.
As others have said, FC-AL disks are somewhat rarer than SCA. Whilst my
machine has a pair of 147 GB disks, I can't pick them up and put them in
any other machine, or in any external enclosure I own.
--
I respectfully request that this message is not archived by companies as
unscrupulous as 'Experts Exchange' . In case you are unaware,
'Experts Exchange' take questions posted on the web and try to find
idiots stupid enough to pay for the answers, which were posted freely
by others. They are leeches.
Dave wrote:
> Nemo ad Nusquam wrote:
>> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to
>> buy
>> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
>>
>> Thank you.
>
> I noticed on eBay the other day someone selling a Silver Blade 2500
> rather than a red one. They implied this was a newer model. I know there
> are two colours, but are unsure of the difference between them.
Red is up to 1.28Ghz and Silver is 1.6GHz which is the fastest IIIi CPU.
>
> I have a Blade 2000 which I really liked, but it was damaged recently by
> lightning. I am in fact going to replace it by an x86 box.
>
> As far as I can ascertain, there is no electrical difference between a
> blade 1000 and a 2000. The motherboards are the same.
>
SCSI(1000) FCAL(2000), but I would assume that the motherboard has been
reved since the first 650MHz 1000!
> As others have said, FC-AL disks are somewhat rarer than SCA. Whilst my
> machine has a pair of 147 GB disks, I can't pick them up and put them in
> any other machine, or in any external enclosure I own.
>
Nemo ad Nusquam wrote:
> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
>
> Thank you.
>
>
The Blade 1000/2000 uses the server CPU Ultrasparc III in various speed
and caches, the Blade 1500/2500 uses the the desktop CPU Ultrasparc IIIi .
IIIi runs cooler, but I think if loaded with a lot of processes the III
will outperform the IIIi.
IIIi can also take more RAM(8GB per CPU) and cheaper RAM.
On 2009-09-16, Dave <foo@coo.com> wrote:
> Nemo ad Nusquam wrote:
>> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
>> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
>>
>> Thank you.
>
> I noticed on eBay the other day someone selling a Silver Blade 2500
> rather than a red one. They implied this was a newer model. I know there
> are two colours, but are unsure of the difference between them.
and navigate around until you find the man pages for the two systems.
Routing is going in a loop for me right now, so I can't post links to the
specific pages, but hopefully by the time you try this, the routing will
be fixed.
IIRC, the primary difference is that the later version comes
with faster CPUs, but I may be mis-remembering, since I don't have any
of these beyond the SB-2K.
> I have a Blade 2000 which I really liked, but it was damaged recently by
> lightning. I am in fact going to replace it by an x86 box.
>
> As far as I can ascertain, there is no electrical difference between a
> blade 1000 and a 2000. The motherboards are the same.
There are several system boards some of which overlap between
the two systems, and the primary difference in these is the version of
the SCHIZO modules -- and I don't really know what difference these make
anyway. :-)
> As others have said, FC-AL disks are somewhat rarer than SCA. Whilst my
> machine has a pair of 147 GB disks, I can't pick them up and put them in
> any other machine, or in any external enclosure I own.
There are various external boxes for multiple FC-AL drives. EMC
makes them, I'm using a set of Eurologic ones which I particularly like
Sun makes some -- and I *think* that there is even a FC-AL version of the
Multipack.
Or -- you could get a spare drive cage for a SB-[12]000, dig
though the foam rubber on the back of the backplane, and jumper one of
the ID wires high which is currently low to make the drive addresses no
longer conflict with the ones which are internal (1&2 for the SB-[12]Km
0&1 for the Sun Fire 280R. Also -- the Sun Fire 280R cage only will
accept 1" high drives, not 1.6" ones. You can get 146 GB 1" FC-AL
drives, and I have two in one of my SF-280R machines.
I'm not sure how many traces you'll need to cut to make this
jumpering possible.
Good Luck,
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 ---
* Nemo ad Nusquam:
> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
Well, the SB2000 has a hampered memory interface (only the primary CPU
has directly connected main memory, the second processor has to go over
the first one to access RAM which in memory-intensive applications
affects performance), not sure if this got better with the SB2500. As
others have said, the SB2000 uses FC-AL disks which limits the choice of
available disks quite a lot.
To be honest, if you don't really *need* a SPARC system I would go for a
x86 (x64) PC instead which will give you much more performance than any
of those old machines at the same cost. Heck, even a Sun W2100z (the
first generation dual Opteron workstation with AMD AGP chipset) will
very likely run circles around any SB2x00 system.
Nemo ad Nusquam wrote:
> SB 2000 and SB 2500 are available on ebay at PC prices. I am going to buy
> one. Specs aside, which one would gentle readers choose?
Thank you for your comments. I think I will go for the SB 2500.
--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
------->>>>>>http://www.NewsDemon.com<<<<<<------
Unlimited Access, Anonymous Accounts, Uncensored Broadband Access
> Well, the SB2000 has a hampered memory interface (only the primary CPU
> has directly connected main memory, the second processor has to go over
> the first one to access RAM which in memory-intensive applications
> affects performance),
Can you point me to any documentation that explains this any better?
I've never heard of this about the 1k/2k blades. Most any multiprocess
system architecture I am familiar with has some overhead with the
memory controller.
SB 2000 or SB 2500: Which would you buy? 
Linear Mode
