[Gllug] Free PC

[Ian Northeast]

Christian Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Ian Northeast wrote:

>> I have a Mac too, and use RS/6000s at
>> work, and the SPARC hard/firmware is definitely my favourite
> 
> But they all use Open{Boot|Firmware}, don't they?

Mac does, yes but the RS6K doesn't. And you can't use a serial console 
on a Mac AFAIK. Pretty irrelevant in my case as it's an iMac so the 
screen isn't detachable anyway. The firmware on an RS can be a pig to 
work with. Getting it to boot off CDROM involves waiting for the right 
moment and hitting either "1" or "5" depending on the model. A p690 with 
a lot of I/O devices (which they generally do have) takes about 20 
minutes to POST and the right moment is a window of about 10 seconds 
just after that. So you have to sit there watching it, finger at the 
ready. Fortunately one doesn't install p690s often (I have done 3 which 
is quite a lot by most standards, these things come in at half a million 
quid a pop).

> Don't like the recent U5/U10/blade hardware. Nasty cheap shite.

Yes, it has got worse. I have a U5 which I bought because my Classic 
won't run Sol10 and it's the cheapest SPARC which will. My U2 is much 
nicer. The last "proper" Sun workstation IMO (even though mine is a 
server:). But the U5 is still nicer than a PC. I doubt however that it 
will still be going strong when it's the Classic's age (10+ years).

Regards, Ian





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