Re: New 32-bit (x86) computing options from Sun, Oracle, and Red Hat explained today.

From: Baby Peanut (baby_p_nut2_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 05/21/03 

Date: 21 May 2003 10:36:09 -0700

Greg Menke <gregm-news@toadmail.com> wrote in message news:<m3of1xjerw.fsf@europa.pienet>...
> baby_p_nut2@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) writes:
>
> > Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.44.0305191620030.7210-100000@zaphod.rite-group.com>...
> > > On 19 May 2003, Baby Peanut wrote:
> > >
> > > > Heh, You'd think they learned their lesson after the last time they
> > > > were burned trying to sell a Intel box.
> > >
> > > You really area fool, aren't you? Sun's last Intel box
> > > was the LX50, which was launched last year.
> >
> > At least I know how to spell "are" correctly.
> >
> > > > Leave it to Sun to forget so soon and flip-flop on and off Intel
> > > > boxes.
> > >
> > > The 386i was from over a decade ago; hardly "soon" in computing
> > > terms.
> >
> > The fundemental reason the 386i failed is that it was no bargan. Why
> > should anyone get a 32-bit sunfire when the can buy a DELL?
>
>
> Because Dell systems are generally crud. Against my suggestion, my
> boss went out and bought 3 brand-new fancy Dell workstations, packed
> to the gills with RDRAM and neato-keen motherboards and all of them
> crash in various mysterious ways when running Linux and several
> different versions of Windows.

Well ever few months where I work another Sun box craps out and we
move the disks into a spare crate and stick it back in the rack.
Meanwhile our DELL boxes keep on plugging away running FreeBSD.

I'm really sick of Sun boxes that go "RED STATE EXCEPTION" and fall
over unlike solidly-built systems from DELL. Never mind that the Sun
boxes have the luxury of full climate control and local electrical
generators for UPS.

> I spent the time to track down one of
> the problems, which turns out to be that the hardware timer tick
> mysteriously stops and later equally mysteriously starts back up. On
> a brand new motherboard. The other box acts the same- the 3rd just
> locks up occasionally with the video going mad. Premium hardware my
> ass. Mediocre is more like it.
>
> Don't even start with the on-site maintenance- it will be a cold day
> in h3ll before I let any PC tech touch any of my hardware. I know all
> about how that works out. As far as these flaky boxes go, they're not
> quite bad enough to part out, but I wouldn't use them for anything but
> simple desktop boxes. And all this before we start talking about the
> cheapo flimsy cases and dreadful keyboards.
>
> Frankly, I'm glad I can go out on ebay and buy a 5 year old Sun box
> packed solid with dust and cat hair, turn it on,

Figures that a Sun box would be found in a cat box.

> upgrade it to Solaris
> 9 and run 24-7 from then on. And 6 months later after I turn it off
> for the first time so I can put in a bigger drive then maybe I'll grab
> the compressed air hose and clean it out. I expect their x86 boxes
> will perform at the same level now and in 5 years.
>
> Gregm

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