[TriLUG] Re: old Sun equipment

[Ben Pitzer]

> >A Ford Ranger could handle a few of the smaller machines but not the
> >e6500s, at least I don't think so.
> >
> >
> It really is quite sad how the value of Sun hardware plummets when it
> reaches end of life.  It's all because the companies that purchase Sun
> equipment are generally doing so for a) the very fastest UNIX platform
> at hand, and b) the very nice support contracts from Sun to assist in
> guaranteeing that it'll be up and available.  When the boxes go end of
> life, you can't get support for them anymore, getting parts is tricky at
> best (usually involves Ebay), and thus the appeal to their original
> customer base goes *way* down.  Consequentially, they upgrade, and pay
> Sun huge chunks of money again, or they switch to a commodity platform
> with clustering on cheap PCs.  :)  Either way, the market for old Sun
> gear is small, but it's really great hardware and rock-bottom prices,
> considering.

Agreed.  I've still got a fully functional, completely solid
Sparcstation 4 at home, in addition to my Ultra 5.  Great hardware. 
Given the opportunity, I'd probably gladly get myself a new SunBlade
workstation as well to be a Solaris 10 or Debian Linux desktop.  The
biggest problem with Sun hardware is the extremely high cost of
replacement parts, and the relative lack of ugradability in some of
the older systems.  Some Froogle searches I just ran turned up a 2GB 
Sun memory kit (3rd party) for an E6500 (8x256) for $995, so I guess
the biggest thing to say for anyone buying Sun hardware is simply
'caveat emptor'.  It's solid stuff, and it'll work great for you, but
God help you if you need replacement hardware.  Sorry, Dan.  Not
trying to un-sell anything for you.

> I worked for a Biotech company in the late 90s, and we dropped around
> $250,000 on a Sun E3500, with a Sun A5200 disk array half full of disks
> (about 500G if I recall), 7 disk DDS-7 juke box, pair of very nice
> SharkRack enclosures, etc, etc.  I was shopping on Ebay a few months ago
> and saw an E3500 for sale for around $400 after shipping (from
> Australia), and it's not uncommon to find fully loaded ones on Ebay for
> under $2,000.  There was also an A5200 (chock full-o-disks) that went by
> for around $700 or so.  It was highly tempting to pick up the bits and
> pieces for nostalgia purposes, but I some how managed to refrain.  :)

Yeah, the prices went through the floor, but remember that much of
that was surplus from dot coms liquidating.  Sun hardware, other than
the big iron, doesn't depreciate at quite this rate anymore.  It was
nice, though, for a while a few years back, when you could get
practically free office furniture, a $50 Herman Miller Aeron chair,
and half a data center worth of Sun equipment for $25K.

> As for transporting E6500s, remember that these are 19 inch rack mount
> equipment, and the racks they come in are roughly 60 tall, 30 inches
> wide, and 40 inches deep.  Don't neglect to consider that they weigh
> roughly 1000 pounds.  The E450s are much more transport-friendly.
> They're 22 x 17 x 26 inches, which weighs approximately 200 pounds.  For
> the official specs of both lines, check these links:

I think I saw an E420R in that list, and that'd be a great machine, if
you can afford the power.  Frankly, though, you'd do just as well with
a new Athlon64 machine.  If you really need to do builds on UltraSparc
architectures, you could probably find a decent Sun Blade workstation
on eBay for that, and it would be much more home-friendly.

> http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/E450/spec.html
> http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/e6500/specs.html
> 
> For reference, they're both on wheels, and in order to deal with an
> E6500 you're going to need a loading dock, as you can't reasonably lift
> the thing into a truck.  You could conceivably disassemble it and carry
> it up into a truck piece by piece, and repeat the process in reverse to
> get it off, but I wouldn't recommend it, and more than one or two of
> them probably exceeds the weight rating on your truck bed.  Actually, a
> quick google leads me to believe the ranger's payload capacity is only
> 1,260 lbs., so more than one is probably a really bad idea.  :)
> 
> Happy hunting!  :)
> Aaron S. Joyner
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