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Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER


USA
2899 Posts
Posted - 17 Dec 2003 :  16:29:01
I found these googling for SCSI <-> PCMCIA Card Readers:

http://secure.oswaltsystems.net/gosurplus/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=COM.SUN.ST10

http://secure.oswaltsystems.net/gosurplus/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=COM.SUN.ST20

Dunno about how good a deal it is, with shipping and all, but a lot of comrades seemed to be interested in these. They said they had some 10s and a few 20's in stock.Check under the Sun tab, I AMOST broke down and ordered one of the cool external SCSI enclosures . . .

jt .
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MacTO
New Member


Canada
60 Posts
Posted - 17 Dec 2003 :  22:40:10
The 20 is a sweet machine. I've used them for programming and data processing, and they as swift as can be. My main worries with these machines are RAM and the hard drive. These aren't your average toy computers after all.

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cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms


USA
4679 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  07:48:56
yeah, I would be concerned with upgrading, as well.

If I were starting out in the world of a sun workstation, I might try to start out a bit newer, but that's just me

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The Balance Of Judgement
Senior Member


Ivory Coast
1006 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  08:21:14
I have too many machines as it is. Although it is tempting, but parts are hard to find and would only rack up the bill.

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Alien
Junior Member


Netherlands
269 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  11:48:05
quote:
The 20 is a sweet machine. I've used them for programming and data processing, and they as swift as can be. My main worries with these machines are RAM and the hard drive. These aren't your average toy computers after all.

SPARCstation 20 RAM.

Harddrives are standard SCSI2 SCA models, although you'll need sleds to install them.

,xtG
.tsooJ
--
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sleep

Edited by - Alien on 18 Dec 2003 12:00:28Go to Top of Page

Alien
Junior Member


Netherlands
269 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  11:58:18
Oh, and those are some great prices on Sun equipment. If they weren't so stupid to insist on UPS shipping (ka-CHING!!), I'd be ordering a bunch of stuff from them.

,xtG
.tsooJ
--
who | grep -i blonde | date
cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger
mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount
sleep

Edited by - Alien on 18 Dec 2003 12:01:10Go to Top of Page

MacTO
New Member


Canada
60 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  14:24:54
The price is so-so. Assuming that my calculations are correct, that would be about $200 US after it's upgraded (256 MB/2 GB). I'll watch the uni for better equipment.

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The Lightning Stalker
Full Member


USA
747 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  15:43:21
W O W, that VRAM is pretty expensive.

The Lightning Stalker

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Unknown_K
Full Member


USA
602 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  17:15:57
What do they go for on ebay? I dont see getting a stripped down model if it costs that much to upgrade it into something usefull. How fast are those suckers compared to a pc processor?

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MacTO
New Member


Canada
60 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  18:18:28
quote:

How fast are those suckers compared to a pc processor?

These machines are much slower than a modern PC, so it would only be useful if you need to learn Solaris. It would also be neat to have if you were satisfied with the performance and wanted an interesting machine. I fit into the latter category because I can find used Solaris software cheap. Then again, there may be a reason for that. Licensing the the IRIX/Solaris world was much more restrictive than it is in the PC world.

A very rough comparison: a four year old PC was about 10 times faster than a SPARCstation 20 using IRAF. That was pure image processing (imagine Photoshop from the command line).

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cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms


USA
4679 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  18:59:13
so there is a commandline photoshop ~ish dealie?

LOL!!!

You can probably get (even just slightly) newer sun workstations for similar amounts of money on eBay, with more stuff inside of them (dunno though)

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The Balance Of Judgement
Senior Member


Ivory Coast
1006 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  19:13:47
One application of command line photoshop use is the movie industry where thousands of frames need to be processed for a CG scene...it's easier for a text based system to spit it out than a GUI.

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MacTO
New Member


Canada
60 Posts
Posted - 18 Dec 2003 :  19:44:22
quote:

so there is a commandline photoshop ~ish dealie?

It is actually an astronomical image processing program. One of the things it allows you to do is take CCD data (read as: photographs from a fancy digital camera) and get clean images out the other end. You then look at those images for evidence of extrasolar planets, or whatever. (I used to measure the brightness of stars, which is slightly more interesting than it sounds.)

IIRC, there are actual command line photoshop type deals under Unix (ie. general purpose stuff). I think ImageMagick (sp?) is one, and the Gimp can be scripted with Perl. Then there are the special purpose image processing utilities.

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Alien
Junior Member


Netherlands
269 Posts
Posted - 19 Dec 2003 :  00:17:10
quote:
A very rough comparison: a four year old PC was about 10 times faster than a SPARCstation 20 using IRAF. That was pure image processing (imagine Photoshop from the command line).

Was that a 40 MHz, single MicroSPARC SS20, or one with 4-way 200 MHz Ross HyperSPARCs?

,xtG
.tsooJ

--
who | grep -i blonde | date
cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger
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