On Thursday, May 3, 2001, at 05:03 PM, Julian Coleman wrote:

>> Looks quite interesting - does anyone have any experience of actually
>> buying/using their stuff (esp. w/NetBSD!!)  A new motherboard would
>> do my poor old Classic no harm at all (hell, it might even be able to
>> manage a web browser with the 170MHz Sparc in it ;-)
> Only oddities I can think of - `shutdown -p` doesn't work with 
> the upgrades
> for the older machines (no 'soft' power supply) and you can't 
> get both the
> 30pin SIMM's and the internal speaker in the IPC upgrade ;-)

Bah, I like the soft power on my Classic :-).  One of the few 
irritations
of the SSs.

I know it sounds like a daft question, but is the serial port on 
the Cycle
mobos any better than the standard Sun one (ie. can it handle >33k/s)?

>> Couldn't get their online store to work though, so dunno about
>> the prices...
>
> I seem to remember that they're not cheap (I sent a message 
> sometime last
> year with a rough price) - you're probably looking at at least 
> $1000.  Get
> a second hand Sparc 5 instead?

Yow, I could buy a new X1 or SunBlade for that price!


Actually, I know it's completely off-topic, but what I'm _really_ after
is a second hand/reconditioned HP Risc workstation (so I can 
leave the Classic
alone doing what it does best - NAT/web cache/NNTP server etc.,) 
and have a
separate workstation.  Thought an HP would make a change :-).

Only thing is, I got my Classic from sunsunsun.net - anyone know 
if there is
a similar outfit for HP kit (or workstations in general?)


--
Tim Walls