Re: Sun Blade 100 vs Ultra 60

[Michael Lorenz <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On Feb 10, 2008, at 15:54, Al - image hosting services wrote:

> I have been doing some research, though I still don't have any  
> answers.
>
> Looking at the Sun Blade 100, it is a small pci based machine. This  
> would
> be great for my purpose. I should be able put in 2 hard drives,  
> plus if I
> pulled the cdrom, floppy drive and card reader I should be able to  
> put in
> 2 more. Does anyone know if the power supply could run this many  
> drives or
> if there is are upgrade options for it? Also, is there a firmware  
> limit on
> the size of a drive that could be put in it?

First - the power supply is a bog standard ATX part if I remember  
correctly so if it's too small you can easily upgrade it. Then, if  
there is a limit in the firmware that only limits where you can put  
the loaders and the kernel, it does not keep NetBSD from accessing  
the whole disk.

> The Ultra 60 looks like a better system and should easily be able  
> to hold
> 4 drives, although it would be more exspensive to colo. Is there a big
> advantagee to having 2 cpus and the larger case? Is there an option  
> to put
> the motherboard into a smaller case?

We don't currently support SMP on sparc64 and there's not much room  
in the U60 for IDE drives.
It has two dedicated SCA bays, you'd need at least one SCA drive to  
boot from since there's no onboard IDE and finding an IDE or SATA  
card with fcode ROM could be difficult.
The U60 is better in several ways though:
- - it can take 2GB RAM
- - the CPUs can have up to 4MB cache
- - you get four 64bit PCI slots, one 66MHz capable
Downsides:
- - it will suck more power than a Blade 100
- - you need a card to hook up IDE drives ( although you'd probably  
want one for the Blade as well, the onboard IDE controller isn't that  
fast IIRC )
- - motherboard and power supply are non-standard and pretty big,  
fitting them into a smaller case would be a challenge, especially if  
you want to keep the CPU cooling arrangement.

have fun
Michael
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