steve
|
|
response 26 of 32:
| 
Mar 24 22:35 UTC 1996 |
Yes Selena, we sat on it.
Rather than immediately going out and purchasing a cheap UPS after
the first possibility fizzled out, we chose to husband the money and
wait for such a time that we could properly look at the market and
make a wise choice.
I'm not at all ashamed to have done that.
Unforunately there are others in the world who view the non-
immediate spending of money as "sitting on it".
Oh well.
|
janc
|
|
response 27 of 32:
|
Mar 25 07:00 UTC 1996 |
When people donate money, they want to see something happen. This is a fact
of life. If we want to keep donors happy, we need to show them some effect
when they give money. People do not give money so that it can sit in Grex's
bank account, however valid our reasons may be for not spending it right now.
Being a volunteer organization it is often hard for us to move fast. Being
supported by donations it is often important that we do so. That's going to
cause problems from time to time. I understand why the staff didn't spend
the money (especially since the full sum was never raised), but I also under-
stand why Selena asked for it back.
|
gregc
|
|
response 30 of 32:
|
Mar 25 19:52 UTC 1996 |
Rob, a Sun 4/470 and 4/490 is an entire *system* with the big 12slot
case, power supply, fans, scsi mounting hardware,etc,etc.
Sun had 2 basic case designs, a 12slot pedistal, which got the X/X60
designation, and a rack mount case, which was the X/X80 designation.
So a 4200 CPU board in a desk-side pedistal became a 4/260 *system*,
and the same board in the rack mount becase a 4/280 *system*.
Around 1990 or so, when Sun brought out the 3400 and 4400 CPU's, they
designed 2 newer enclosures, the 12slot deskside became the X/X70 and
the rack-mount is the X/X90. So a 4400 CPU in the deskside is a 4/470,
and in the rack-mount is a 4/490.
We don't need either a 4/470 or 4/490 system, which includess the bigger
honking fancy case and all the extra bells and whistles. We would simply
need the 4400 CPU board and memory boards.
The 4400 has no memory on the CPU. There are 32meg and 128meg boards
available for it. The 96meg physical limit you stated above is wrong.
With 32meg boards, a 4400 can go to 160meg and with 128meg boards
it can go all the way up to 640meg of physical RAM.
One of the things that I've stated several times and I'll say again,
we need a *server* class machine. Most machines are designed today to
be workstations, the 4400 was designed to be a server. Raw MIPS ratings
by themselves are worthless in this context. To support it's role
as a multiuser server, the 4400 has:
1.) 64 hardware contexts.
2.) A wide path to memory.
3.) A different cache design.
4.) a 4K I/O cache.
A SparcStation 2 was designed to be a desktop workstation that would be
primarily used by 1 person, they optimized the machine's raw CPU over
bandwidth considerations. The SS2 has:
1.) A CPU that *is* roughly 20% faster than the 4400.
2.) 16 hardware contexts.
3.) A slower cache design.
4.) No I/O cache.
Sun also sold something they *called* a SpacreServer 2, but from an
internal hardware standpoint, it used the same motherboard as an SS2.
|
ajax
|
|
response 31 of 32:
|
Mar 26 04:30 UTC 1996 |
I realize the 4/4xx systems include cases and stuff we wouldn't need, but
people don't sell the CPU boards by themselves nearly as often, and for
pricing purposes, I haven't seen any sold separately. Given the shipping
costs, it's not uncommon to tell the seller to pitch the case and monitor
on such systems...shipping often costs more than they're worth.
|