> 
> Martin Husemann writes:
>  > >  that's why I pointed out Ultra5 - to have better perf than my current
>  > > Intel but I don't want to spend too much money in it ;(
>  > 
>  > Your current intel box will be roughly as fast as most U5s. And if you
>  > count IDE performance, any not 15 years old PC will beat the hell out of
>  > all U5s.
> 
> Even a higher-end SPARCstation would be only step sideways from a
> Pentium 200.  The only downside to the Ultra 5 is IDE. Just give it a
> 7200RPM drive and keep the amount of concurrent disk I/O to a minimum.

why not run a U1 instead of a U5?  They've got the advantage of SCSI
drives and they're available in dumpsters near you.  That's where 
I got mine.  It ran NetBSD fine once I replaced the cpu fan, repaired
the disk drive fan, installed a floppy and cdrom drive and put another 
hard drive and rail set in it.  it's probably the second fastest machine
in my house right now.  it's got the 24-bit graphics board, so it's certainly
got the best video of any of my unix machines.
--
nate

> 
> Also, remember that Sun workstations are just nicer to work with;
> i.e., speed isn't everything.
> 
>  > 
>  > Sorry,
>  > 
>  > Martin
>  > 
>  > (running a U5 just for the thrills of another arch)
>  > 
> 
>