Of the Love of Oldtimers - Dusting Off a Sun Fire V1280 Server 281
vikingpower writes "Today, I decided to acquire a refurbished Sun Fire V1280 server, with 8 CPUs. The machine will soon or may already belong to a certain history of computing. This project is not about high-performance computing, much more about lovingly dusting off and maintaining a piece of hardware considered quirky by 2013 standards. And Now the question creeps to mind: what software would Slashdotters run on such a beast, once it is upgraded to 12 procs and, say, 24 GiB of RAM ?"
A Quake2 sewer64 server (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
those where the days..
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I must be getting old (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't seem too long ago 8 Ultrasparcs and 12GB of RAM was the shit. It must really hurt to pull that invoice from 2005 out...
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF?
"The Sun Fire server brand was a series of server computers introduced in 2001".
You think something from 2001 is old? What are you? 12?
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that would prevent me from using a Sun like the submitter describes would be the power requirements. I probably wouldn't use the computer to its extent that justifies the power costs to run it.
The computer I'm typing this on is a Dell Latitude D410, which is eight years old. It's normally the shop computer, but works just fine for general computing. It's a lot faster than the much newer netbook, and the keyboard is loads better.
I guess I've graduated from newest/latest/greatest to just wanting computers that do what I want them to do. I get a lot of gear from local surplus dealers, as I don't feel a need to spend more money than I have to for a given result. If the Core2Duo HP in the entertainment center runs XBMC at full 1080p then it's adequate and won't be changed out until it's no longer good enough.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that would prevent me from using a Sun like the submitter describes would be the power requirements. I probably wouldn't use the computer to its extent that justifies the power costs to run it.
This is the real problem with old hardware like that. In the not so distant past we had a wall of obsolete HPUX workstations, which while being decent at number crunching, were simply outclassed by new Intel machines (literally it was a wall - 3high by many wide, they stack well). I considered ways of converting them into some kind of compute farm, but they simply weren't worth the air conditioning or power required to run them (not to mention space). Power efficiency has so vastly improved in recent years that for compute tasks it just isn't worth it to keep old hardware like that running.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Informative)
This is the real problem with old hardware like that.
In contrast, many retro home computers take very little power. A Commodore 64 with an old inefficient linear regulator based power supply still only drew up to 15W from the wall.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The mid to late 90s were the era of brute force in computing. Many clever ideas came along - tile rendering GPUs, smart new CPU architectures, complex hardware accelerated audio DSPs. All of them lost out to just adding more megahertz, more cache, more heat and power consumption.
On the server side everything was focused on big, powerful machines instead of lots of smaller distributed ones.
It wasn't until the mid 2000s that that energy efficient computing started to matter again.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps, but that C64 can be duplicated/emulated with a low-end ARM processor - with appropriate connections to a keyboard, tape drive, disk drive, monitor, etc. - on a PCB that draws maybe 1 W. The inefficiencies in the wall wart may well be greater than the power consumed by the computer.
Alternately, there are c64 emulators for iOS, Android, etc. that, in effect, give you the keyboard (
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
and what's the comparison of power usage compared to your maxed out G4 and a consumer grade NAS?
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the same argument made for fuel efficiency in an existing vehicle versus purchasing a new vehicle. If your existing paid-for vehicle gets 15mpg and a new vehicle with 30mpg will result in a $500/month car payment for five years, you're probably better off driving the 15mpg vehicle until it wears out. Not only will you not be spending $500/month minus half the cost of the fuel you buy (for me that would be around $100, so $400 difference) but as technology progresses, vehicles only get more and more efficient.
Same argument for computers. Run it until it doesn't do what you need anymore, either through significant mechanical breakage (admittedly unlikely in a computer outside of capacitor problems) or because new needs can't be met by it. Then make an intelligent change.
I have an Opteron board sitting in a bag. Odds are good that I won't end up using it, but that's okay. I don't need it right now, as much fun as it would be to put into something.
Obviously if one can get newer used gear cheap that does help to negate the argument, but a lot of people don't want to try used gear for whatever reason.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Insightful)
Those powermac G4 actually support 2gb of ram (4x 512mb), the official spec says 1.5 because that's all OS9 could use and in those days not many people would actually have that much.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not be that old but, it's definitely of nostalgic value for a lot of people. 12 cores isn't mindblowing these days but, in 2001, cramming 12 processors (not 12 cores) into a single rack mountable computer was a very impressive feat. I worked at Sun in the late 90s and I'd love to own some brand new gear from that era because, in those days, Sun was doing really impressive things with hardware in an exciting time. It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.
Re: (Score:3)
Heh. 'Old' was the Sparcstation IPX I had until a couple of years ago. http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ipx/ [obsolyte.com]
Really old would be the 486 I first ran Linux on back in the early 90s.
These young whippersnappers don't know old. :)
Necron69
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.
I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.
Re: (Score:2)
I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.
I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.
Not that a brand-new LP12 is less expensive. The entry level model is priced at about $5500 if I'm not mistaken.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Funny)
Still havent called mom.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Funny)
I've got post-it notes on my desk older than this thing. Still havent called mom.
But isn't she just upstairs?
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody still running a WinXP computer (I still have one) is running older stuff than this server.
This V1280 should still make an excellent webserver by today's standards. Heck, it should still be superior to a lot of current hardware.
Also, I don't quite see what's quirky about it. It's basically low-end Sun hardware without anything particularly special about it. If anything, it's the least special of all Sun hardware since it lacks the special features of it's more expensive cousins.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. We just got a chassis of roughly the same footprint for a customer; there is 524GB of RAM available per "blade", of which there are 6.
Honestly, I have a hard time seeing this as that old. It wasn't that long ago that 2GB of RAM was still considered a huge amount for a common server, either - not anything you'd see in a large budget environment, but certainly commonplace.
Personally, I've got equipment predating this millennium which is not only still plugged in and powered, but in actual regular use and continues to do its job just fine. The power bill from it is not as bad as one might think. And I'm not -that- old. 2001 certainly doesn't seem like something for an 'oldtimer', not unless you were already past mid-career at the time... we sysadmins have a pretty decent shelf life, vs. a programmer.
Kids these days...
(The pre-millennium system in question is a ULV-style 733MHz P3 Cely with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB IDE drive - a Compaq iPAQ desktop, a last ditch effort to remain relevant by Compaq. In all honesty, it was a good and under-appreciated effort. It's been running Debian since 2000, uninterrupted but upgraded to the latest without issues. It uses 36 watts of power under load (markedly less than a 2nd gen Atom or a Bobcat, I might add), has a parallel port and a real serial port with good port timing. It is more responsive over SSH and for basic home server silliness than either the Bobcat or Atom as well.)
A decade is a long time in computing, yes; but the modern systems we run are, in many ways, an exercise in self-perpetuation. (If it wasn't for the exponential RAM capacity we've run into along side CPU capability, there's absolutely no way we'd be offshoring half of what we are to India. Our systems wouldn't be able to run their shit code.)
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Informative)
There is a port of open source Illumos / Opendiana that should work on this hardware :
http://opensxce.org
Solaris 11 will not work on this hardware, but sxce should work.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for pointing this out. So, of the various options that would be there among the Unixes:
But this looks like a cool setup. Just put one of the above OSs listed, and that thing can run for life, no need to bother about whether it will be supported in future or not. Also, if one is nostalgic about a past FOSS Unix, one can install any of the former distro versions that existed for it - from Red Hat going all the way back to Caldera. Although I'm not sure about the SMP support of some of them.
Re:I must be getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
A really good reason to run OpenBSD on sparc64 hardware is that the logical domain support is stable now, so you can use the processor's built-in virtualization framework: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20121214153413 [undeadly.org]
Re: (Score:3)
A really good reason to run OpenBSD on sparc64 hardware is that the logical domain support is stable now, so you can use the processor's built-in virtualization framework: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20121214153413 [undeadly.org]
Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a recycling center, and we sell some of our stuff we get on ebay, got a few smaller sunfires in, Debian works GREAT on SPARC machines, its still active, and everything works OOB
I'll adjust your statement... (Score:2, Interesting)
> Debian works GREAT on SPARC64 machines
Go try it with a real vintage sparc32 box and see where you land. Sparc32, specifically SMP, has been broken since 2.2.19, and UP support has been unstable for most of 2.4 and 2.6
I have however heard that netbsd 6.0 or 6.0.1 had sparc32 smp support fixed after all these years, but it's hearsay and not mentioned in the sparc arch changelog.
Hmm. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Erm I just installed Ubuntu on a crappy 2001 vintage Dell laptop and it works just fine.
I'm using it without a GUI which helps but it could handle Gnome/KDE flawlessly.
Woo 512mb ram and 802.11b wifi.
Re: (Score:3)
it's a shame his bandwidth wont be wide enough to cope with all that communication to the mothership....
Free software. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many free software projects are not regularly tested on anything other than x86.
Make your system available for free software developers and you will be sure to have
the loag average of 30 or more. Ghostscript project, for instance, would greatly benefit
from testing on minority platforms.
Diamonds (Score:3)
Minecraft!
shutdown -h now (Score:2, Redundant)
global warming, man. /proc/ every minute and stick into rrd.
But if you insist on running somethnig, dtrace is a wonderful thing,
or extract all of
make 12 solaris containers all monitoring each other.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Maybe he can use it for carbon credits. If he promises not to also run and/or buy a new computer for the next ten tears or so. Otherwise it's definitely going to use up energy that would not have been used.
Not that old. (Score:2)
I still have a Sun SparcStation 20 with 2 SM71s in my closet with SunOS on it.
Until last year, I had the IPC on an AUI adapter on a nonprofit network I manage acting as a public terminal.
And yet it's funny how even post-2000 machines have already become so obsolete as to be silly, especially in the server space.
Re: (Score:2)
I want a Sparcstation ELC to run as a serial console/network admin console in my server room.
And for a while I had a Sparc20 with a pair of dual Ross Hypersparc-150s and 512MB of RAM. Stupid fast for a Sparc machine, but you could cook an egg on the chassis.
Re: (Score:2)
I've got a few SPARCStation 20s that can replace the servers running the core business. Sure they aren't fast but they can still do the job. I think they are about 19 years old. I also have a pair of SPARCServer 1000 that could take over loads they use so much power they are only good as space heater or if I need a power supply to jump start a car. There was a time when my web site was running on a SPARCStation 1
mind the power supplies (Score:2)
those buggers may be redundant, but if one goes you're still up shit creek.
also, one of them went splodey in my old boss' face one time. i can't say i was too upset about it.
OS? (Score:4, Informative)
For OS I personally would stay in the Solaris realm. I'd try out the the open source Ilumos/Opendiana based distribution that Martin Bochnig has been working on :
http://opensxce.org
Speaking of labours of love, Martin's one man effort to port the open source fork of Solaris back to the SPARC platform would be a good fit.
Debian GNU/Linux - sparc64 (Score:3)
3D graphics (Score:2)
*yawn* (Score:2)
Not only do I still run Netra X1s (similar vintage) in production (DNS, low volume SMTP) I also take pride in using a Cobalt Raq2+ at home for DHCP and local DNS. I also have a vintage Ultra 2, Ultra 5 and Blade 100 I could dust off for work if they weren't power hogs compared to the Raq 2+.
Needs lots of power (Score:5, Informative)
Hope you don't pay much for your electricity, fully populated and busy, that server is going to draw around 3000W [oracle.com] of power.
With that power draw, if you're paying $0.12/KWh for electricity, it would cost around $250/month to keep it powered, not including cooling costs.
Re: (Score:3)
I would pay $0.36/KWh in tree-hugging Euroland (Germany). Imagine.
CC.
Toss it (Score:2)
The other day my company was tossing out some huge server looking thing. They said I could have it if I wanted, it was a huge disc array. It was the size of a small car. So I asked how much space that monster had... 1 Terabyte... no thanks. Some stuff should just go in the landfill.
can you please donate it to GNU compile farm (Score:5, Informative)
they will stick Debian on it and people will use it to port free software.
they do have a sunfire but it's almost out of disk space and there are tons of people using it already.
Run Firefox (Score:2)
Don't open too many tabs with just 24 GiB
Dusting off? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeesh, and here I thought you'd have found a Sparc Center 2000 or other old sun boxes. Perhaps something that ran SunOS and not Solaris... or something newer with SBUS like an e4500...
It's not old if it has multiple cores.
Space Heater Linux (Score:3)
Run Space Heater Linux Distro. It will warm up the basement just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
And the NOISE that thing must make!
Antique? (Score:4, Informative)
We still have a V1280 in production (despite my best efforts to get rid of it), in fact I am sure we have an E3000 and some E450s somewhere in the place that somehow runs part of the network in a way no-one understands.
gradual phase-out (Score:4, Informative)
When you run into this situation, the trick is to understand what the server actually does for end users and the answer is largely non-deterministic. So what you do is you write a network of cron jobs that take it "offline" for an hour a day, where that hour advances throughout the day.
After a week, increase the hour to 2 hours, and so on. If anybody is actually using said server, the complaints will shortly come out and you can then do a needs assessment.
When you get somewhere past 6/5 (6 hours per day, 5 days per week) you are pretty much ready to shut it down. And when you shut it down, keep it on hand "dark" for at least a year just in case.
Lastly, UPDATE YOUR FRIGGEN ADMIN LOGS because stuff like this is really a sign of gross incompetence at updating the logs.
Ha uhm.... what kind of company is this? (Score:5, Informative)
If you work at a financial institituion, this is the kind of s**** that will lose millions of dollars.
There are a lot of things that only come up quarterly, or yearly, and things where the effects wont be known until months or years later.
so if someone does task X on February 15 but it doesnt show on a report until July, and then you shut it off on Feb 16th, that means it will be over a year before anyone finds out.
quarterly and annual recurring runs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
If you work at a financial institution and you have an undocumented process managing millions of dollars running on an unmaintained server, the problem extends much, much deeper than what to do with said undocumented, unmaintained server.
Quit, and find someplace that has some respect for its staff. The best you can accomplish in this environment is to stress yourself out beyond reason.
The years off the end of your life simply aren't worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
Just beware of HW and software support cost.
Some 10 years ago, after my company had been through a few years of crazy growth, someone decided to look at cost. Turns out that more than half of our machine park, mostly leased Sun servers, and some HP, and even a couple of Compaq Alpha servers was hardly used, and maintenance cost (and leases) cost us tons of money every year, A quick project to convert all leases to purchases, and decommission everything else saved our company some $2 million per year.
The 4-5
No emotional connection (Score:5, Interesting)
I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.
I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.
I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?
You don't actually know that. Just because the OP did not own this machine at the time does not mean he didn't use one or even just want one back then. Putting aside the obvious impracticalities, I think it would be really cool to have a Vax 11/750 at home. I have never owned one but I did lightly use one in the 80s. The important part though, is that in it's heyday, the Vax 11/750 was held up as the lusted after prototype of what desktop computers were to become.
Sparc pizza box machines from the time w
Hardware Fetishist's Dilemma (Score:2)
The thing about systems is that you generally shouldn't need to think very hard to find a use for them, unless you have too many systems. You either buy systems to meet your needs, or you have standing needs that will tell you what to run on the thing.
Anyhow, the V1280 isn't an antique by any means. It was a really really nice piece of hardware when it was released, and I think that was just 3 or 4 years ago.
It gets faster. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I use 2950s to share off ZFS-formatted storage via iSCSI... and not much else.
cc (Score:2)
8 CPU == 2150W || 12 CPU == 2900W || Max 3300W (Score:2)
You're going to need some bigger power cords [oracle.com]:
The Sun Fire V1280 system is supplied with four detachable power cords:
Voltage: 200 to 240 VAC
Circuit breakers - North America (4): 15A to 20A
Inrush Current: 18A after 100 microseconds
Surge Current: After 5ms brown-out short term surge is higher at 75A
Power Consumption: 3300W max
Re: (Score:2)
Adventr (Score:2)
Text based games. The quake server sounds good too.
Oracle RDBMS, of course (Score:2)
I'd run Oracle RDBMS on it, say 11.2.0.3.
Then I'd call your friendly, local, Oracle sales rep and ask for a quote for a 12 processor Oracle DB server.
Just watch out for licensing terms (Score:2)
Many software licenses are based on physical CPU. With 8 CPUs that thing could cost a fair bit to legally run certain software...
Use it as a heater (Score:2)
Any software will do really. Something CPU intensive would be best but even in idle mode that server will use several orders of magnitude more power than a modern server with the same capability.
Put it in your living room and use it as a heater.
- Jesper
Spring Cleaning (Score:2)
You're reminding me that I haven't fired up my SPARCcenter 2000E and associated RAID cabinets in far too long.
Seriously? (Score:2)
Put it in a closet. If you have visitors, proudly show it to them. Leave it at that.
Running this thing is irresponsible.
You consider that OLD? (Score:2)
My mousepad is older than this server. (Score:2)
My mousepad is older than this server.
Seriously, I use a mousepad from an SGI Indigo. 7 or 8 years ago I had 14 of them at my disposal. Those are old. This, this is just a waste of electricity.
duh (Score:2)
Then I turned it on... The thing sounded like an aeroplane taking off. I knew it would be loud, but this thing was just ridiculous. It took up quite a lot of space, so putting it in a data-center would have been very expensive. Fo
Let it go... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines. Just don't get too attached.
The school my daughter attended got rid of a bunch of old 486s in 2001, which I brought home to build a beowulf cluster. Networked 32 of the things into a single, massive computer with all this computing power... it was the most exciting thing I had done in a while.
It was fascinating thinking I could do such a thing, but there were all these issues: fuses started blowing / the air was so dry my lips were chapping / the power bill went up by 400 dollars that month / hardware would mysteriously die and screw up the whole cluster / there was no software support / it took up an entire room in the house / my dog kept peeing on the machines at the bottom / etc.
Still, I was able to turn it into the world's most computationally expensive, clunky web server. It was outstanding for local development, but it was impossible to get it to work with the router for external network access.
It was hard to get rid of it, the machines were in my house for 2 years until I decided to move and had to leave them behind. It's so easy to get attached to obsolete machinery because of that personal connection to it.
Seriously, give your wife a safe word for when it's time to break ties with the thing. Ultimately, it is cool, but it's either going to become an unhealthy obsession or a thing on your shelf.
Re: (Score:2)
Like a classic car it's more interesting if it is vintage. Run vintage solaris.
You mean Solaris 8? This is not vintage. It's just one generation EOL, hardly "dusting off." It's just expensive to maintain. We threw one off the loading dock a few months back after replacing it with a M4000.
Re:Keep it Vintage (Score:5, Informative)
This thing ain't vintage. It's just old.
Hang on to it for 10 years. Then it might be vintage.
Re: (Score:3)
We threw one off the loading dock a few months back after replacing it with a M4000.
Domains on the M4000 are a pain in the ass... the second domain can't access internal disk. You're forced to Jumpstart and SAN boot. They should only sell the M5000 and up.
Re:Keep it Vintage (Score:4, Insightful)
I can tell that you aren't into cars.
The people we bought the house from have a Studebaker Avanti with a Chevy 350 in it.
Neighbors next door have a Chevy 350 in one of their vintage Jaguars.
A friend of mine has a Dodge Dart with a Magnum 5.9L V8 with full computer control and EFI.
I have a '78 Chrysler Cordoba that's getting a bored-and-stroked 408 small block.
Some people only value stock restorations, but a lot of us place a lot of value on restomods.
Re: (Score:3)
Nice! Anyone can restore a car, but it takes a real man to cut one up. :-)
Re:Keep it Vintage (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm into vintage firearms. I can't tell you how many times I've seen an old WWII or WWI vintage rifle that's worth next to nothing because some Bubba went and fucked it up. Guns that would be worth a lot of money if they were un-messed with are only worth a couple hundred dollars. I assume it's the same with most classic car collectors.
LK
Re:Keep it Vintage (Score:5, Insightful)
Firearms collectors value true originality above all else, and car collectors generally value condition and are okay with restorations and even some modernizations. It's just a different domain.
Re: (Score:2)
you're confusing cool&practical with interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? Even brand new sun hardware isn't as fast as an i7 in any benchmark I've seen (check spec.org).
The other thing is that Sun v1280 will drink electricity. I remember we had two of those in a data center I helped build in Portland - and even though the room was at 65 deg you could always warm up on the left hand side of those - because the worst heat imaginable poured out the vents on the side.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
as an ex field engineer, I suspect you are confused... the sides of these were solid sheet-metal, with front-to-rear ventilation.
Re: (Score:2)
I must have been thinking about the 4500 maybe.
Re:seconed debian (Score:5, Informative)
At the moment we're fighting to remove all the legacy Sun systems from our datacenters, and love the chance to remove these old machines.
They're rock solid, and do a great job. Our databases still run very very well on them, frequently more stabily than newer X86 kit they're being replaced with.
However:
1) Power usage is insane. The datacenter team reported the larger boxes (ie, 12U type beasts like this) use the same power as whole racks of the standard IBM/HP type pizza boxes we can replace them with. Modern Xeons are multi-cored/multi-threaded enough to compete seriously with the older SPARCs, and do a good job of it, without needing their own power station too fuel and cool them.
2) Parts are getting harder to find, and vastly more expensive. As they age the cost of supporting them sky-rockets, and with parts being harder to find if something breaks there is downtime to fix it. That's not a good situation to be in. Indivual parts for these old machines (eg. spare HBA card, etc) are now becoming as expensive as a new replacement system.
Re: (Score:2)
Space heater?
Farm with racks of those, hot and cold aisles, cold aisles were freezing, hot aisles were sweltering. Run it opposite the LHC to balance the electricity usage.
andy
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Any of the OpenSolaris forks would run fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:North Korea just set off a nuke (Score:5, Funny)
That wasn't a nuke being set off - it was just vikingpower turning that V1280 on.
Re:Still more efficient than the x86 architecture (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're forgetting how little computing power you're getting out of the sparc processors.
And the risc pipeline being highly optimized doesn't do you any good when you get 10x the speed out of a $50 intel chip.
Sparc was better in 1995.
By 1997 it was already playing catchup to everythnig else.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a good point.
Even dollar-for-dollar it was never better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This comment on a site that gets excited about neon glowing tubes in transparent PC cases...