I have been looking for a decent inexpensive Sun workstation for a while, to supplement my laggy Mac mini. From what I have read, the Sun Blade series is supposed to be inexpensive (a 100 is worth $250 tops, again, from what I've read) and relatively fast. So, I've been shopping around, and haven't found anything at a price that I can easily afford, except on Craigslist, which was $90 in Raleigh, NC. I currently have $163, although I expect to have $263+ by this Christmas. So, I am willing to pay essentially anything under ~$300 for a Sun Blade 100, 150, 1000, 1500, 2000, or 2500 (the last three I don't expect to find anywhere near this price). If anyone has one, and is willing to sell it for $300 or less (preferably less) or give it away, OR knows of a reliable Web site where I can buy one of these for, again, $300 or less, although preferably less, please contact me (email or PM), and I will try to work out a deal. I am in the D.C. metropolitan area (the Maryland side), and I have a monitor that should work. If you could throw in a Sun USB UNIX keyboard & three-button mouse, that'd be great. I already have the Solaris 10 media, so I don't need that. Oh, and one last thing: I would like at least 512 MB of RAM, a 15+ GB HDD, a CD-ROM drive, and an Ethernet card.
Thanks,
Eric
I may be wrong, but the sun blade 100s are basically re branded ultra 5s, wich in my experience were really poor in the performance area because of their low quality components. Especially the IDE chipset.
You may me better off with a dual ultra 80 if you want sparc hardware, still even a g4 mac mini with the right HDD (5000-7200 rpm) and at least a gig of ram will out perform a blade 100 / ultra 5.
This might also be the wrong form for this stuff as we think 33mhz is fast and 40 with cache is a holy grail.
Quote from: "rice0067"I may be wrong, but the sun blade 100s are basically re branded ultra 5s, wich in my experience were really poor in the performance area because of their low quality components. Especially the IDE chipset.
You may me better off with a dual ultra 80 if you want sparc hardware, still even a g4 mac mini with the right HDD (5000-7200 rpm) and at least a gig of ram will out perform a blade 100 / ultra 5.
This might also be the wrong form for this stuff as we think 33mhz is fast and 40 with cache is a holy grail.
The Ultra 5 was an UltraSPARC IIi at 270-440 MHz, while the Blade 100 was an UltraSPARC IIe at 500-700 MHz, so, AFAIK, nothing is rebranded here. And I know that this isn't quite the right forum for Sun hardware, but IIRC, at least two people here have owned/currently own Sun hardware, and I don't know of any Sun forums with a marketplace section.
Eric
P.S. I have the old single-core Intel Mac mini, which I found out was slow after I bought it. And at the only place I have found an Ultra 80 it is priced
way out of my range.
The Blade 1000 and 2000 are almost precisely the same machine, except that the B1k was never offered with the 1GHz+ CPU modules, while the 2k was never offered with the 750MHz ones. Otherwise, same motherboard, cosmetically different case, different setting in the firmware. (to reflect the name).
As for the Blade 100 and 150, you can sometimes find them inexpensively, yeah. However, I got a Blade 2000, with dual 900MHz UltraSPARC II Cu modules, 2GB of RAM, an XVR-1000 graphics card, added gigabit ethernet and a 73GB FC-AL disk, for $450. (Ebay). You might get lucky and find a Blade 1k/2k for not too much. Fair note, though, having the second CPU helps a lot, I'd go for dual 750s over a single 900 or 1GHz most times. (but not over a single 1.2GHz). Also, you want XVR-500, Expert3D or XVR-1000 graphics (or the rarer XVR-600/XVR-1200), not the Creator3D, Elite3D or Expert3D Lite, if you can help it. (Unless you want to run Linux, then you want Creator3D). The newer cards are much faster. Also, avoid PGX32 and PGX64 graphics like the plague, they're quite weak. The XVR-100 is better, but still slightly low-rent.
The big catch with the Blades, is that they all use weird storage. The B100/B150 use IDE, though it's sane, unlike that on the U5/U10 (which was highly pants). The 1k/2k and 1500/2500 use fiber channel for the internal drives. They have SCSI, but only an external port. Both groups of Blades also have USB 1.1 and Firewire 400. If you plan to use Firewire, you need Solaris 10 or later, though (or Linux/BSD). Solaris 8/9 did not support Firewire mass storage, or, well, almost anything. Both have PCI for upgrades, but only the B1k/2k have UPA (two slots). All have onboard 100BaseT Ethernet and dual serial, the B100/150 lack SCSI. The B1500/2500 do not have UPA, which is odd.
Blade 100 are dirt cheap the biggest issue with them is the IDE controller is bad and the built in video chip is slow. If you are willing to convert it to SCSI, fill it with memory and put a better video card in it then it will be ok. However your Mac Mini will still blow the doors off it. A 500-650mhz Ultrasparc IIi machine is ok as a server but for a workstation they are not great. The Blade 1000 and 2000 are better and would be the minimum I would suggest for a desktop.
Anysystem sometimes has good deals on this right now it looks like they have some Blade 2000 on sale.
http://www.anysystem.com/sunblade2000.html ....
Good luck.
-Mike
Thanks for the information, it's actually a lot better than what I expected to find here. But, other than AnySystem, which doesn't have good graphics cards in their Blade 2000s (since I presume the PGX8 is worse than the PGX32/64s; although, I did find a separate XVR-500 for $125, but $620 is out of my range), and other than eBay (I dislike PayPal), where can I get these for less than ~$550? If all else fails, I'll try eBay, but I would prefer a reliable online seller that has good hardware at low prices and doesn't use PayPal.
Thanks,
Eric
Too bad you can't make it up to Boston. I have a SB2000 on the block, with a much better config for less (2x900mhz/8mb, 4gb RAM, 2x36gb FC-AL, XVR-500, DVD-ROM: $500).
I'm a technical support engineer for Sun hardware for a living. SB1000s and SB2000s actually use the exact same motherboard--I co-sign kronoman's post above wholeheartedly. Your best bet to have any shot of getting anything more than a SB100/150 in your budget would be to seek a low-config SB1000.
Another cheap option would be an Ultra 60 w/ dual 450 Mhz procs & 2 gigs of ram. You can find those on Ebay less than $200 all the time. They are a whole lot faster than an Ultra 5/10 or Sun Blade 100/150. :D
AStar617,
Where do you work @ up there? I'll be up that way in Dec. for Hitachi 99xx training. It's always good to meet other Sun/NeXT users.
I work in Westborough, MA, which is located about a half hour...
(wait for it...)
...west of Boston. :-) I live in Cambridge though.
I don't usually fear that which I don't understand, but HDS's 9900 series is a special beast which frightens my company (and Sun, who as you probably know sold a badge-engineered StorEdge 99xx) very, very much. That oughta be a real fun class:-D
Quote from: "AStar617"I work in Westborough, MA, which is located about a half hour...
(wait for it...)
...west of Boston. :-) I live in Cambridge though.
I don't usually fear that which I don't understand, but HDS's 9900 series is a special beast which frightens my company (and Sun, who as you probably know sold a badge-engineered StorEdge 99xx) very, very much. That oughta be a real fun class:-D
The Hitachi 99xx series is a very nice array. It's true, Sun just puts a different "skin" on the array compared to a Hitachi one. That's the only differnce. We have a few customers in this area that have them. One of the other SSE's here in the area usually takes care of them, but when he's on vacation, I'm the lucky one. I know enough about them to be "dangerous" :wink: Seriously, the reason I'm going to the class is because we plan on installing several more in the area & it'll be tough for one SSE to try to cover them all.
eric, still looking for a machine? I finally got ahold of one of my friends who I remembered had a sun he was wanting to get rid of..
Friend: Sun Blade 2000 2x900MHz 36GB Hard Drive XVR 500 video etc etc.
Friend: oh, and Elite3D m3 framebuffer too.
If interested, just private message me :)
Quote from: "helf"eric, still looking for a machine? I finally got ahold of one of my friends who I remembered had a sun he was wanting to get rid of..
Friend: Sun Blade 2000 2x900MHz 36GB Hard Drive XVR 500 video etc etc.
Friend: oh, and Elite3D m3 framebuffer too.
If interested, just private message me :)
I don't know if you've noticed, but I PM'd you 4 days ago. I was sick for a week, so I wasn't able to check on the post.
Eric
oh, yeah, idid. sorry. i was trying to get ahold of my friend. he is in NY and doesnt come online in regular intervals (he also lost his phone.. soo.. :P)
as soon as i get in touch with him again, ill ask how much he wants for it.
Quote from: "helf"oh, yeah, idid. sorry. i was trying to get ahold of my friend. he is in NY and doesnt come online in regular intervals (he also lost his phone.. soo.. :P)
as soon as i get in touch with him again, ill ask how much he wants for it.
Oh, OK. Thanks!
Eric