Summary: V100 question

First off, I'd like to thank everyone that responded to my question about
the V100. I had over 20 responses and they were all useful. Here is a
summary of the answers I received:

> 1) Has anyone been successful in adding after market RAM into this
> machine. The one I'm looking at (The educational promo for $995) comes
> with 512 Mb and that may be enough, but if I wanted to add more from Sun
> it will cost something like $600 (list) for another 512 Mb. If so, what
> did you get?

From all accounts, this machine can use after-market RAM (and it will be
much cheaper). In general, it will take high quality, ECC, generic, 133,
SDRAM 168-pin DIMMs. People have successfully used RAM from Kingston,
Micron, and others which they have bought from places such as crucial.com
(I just checked and they list 512 Mb for $89.00 if bought over the
Web) and from memoryx.net.

> 2) Does this machine have any PCI expansion slots (even 1)? I can't see
> any mention of one, on Sun's site or the online documentation, so I'm
> guessing not. However, I have an external Sun DDS-3 SCSI tape drive that
> I'd like to attach if possible. 

This machine does not have any PCI slots (or a SCSI Controller). However,
Simon-Bernard Drolet found on Sun's web site a cable that does do USB to
SCSI that is supported. If you are interested
check: http://www.sun.com/io_technologies/pci/io.html and look for the USB
to SCSI converter. (Note: I haven't fully investigated this yet, but it
may be a good way to go, as it is basically the only way to expand this
machine. 

Tim Chapman also recommended that if I need some expandability to
look at the similar vintage, SunBlade 100. This is a desktop workstation
with similar guts/core to the V100 that he uses for the purposes I
stated. It has 3 PCI slots and takes about 2x the amount of space in his
rack (placed on a shelf, as Sun doesn't sell a rack-mount kit). If you
really want to put it in a rack, I found that Shark Rack 
(www.sharkrack.com) sells a kit for a list price of $398. I don't know if
they offer any discounts from the list price. (But for that I price, I'd
rather buy 3 512 Mb Dimms and put in on a shelf that I already have have
:-).

> 
> 3) Has anyone successfully used after market IDE hard drives in this
> machine. If so, does just about any standard drive work or is there
> something special that I would need to look for? 

A number of reponders mentioned using after-market drives. Some of the
popular ones were from Seagate and Western Digital. One person also used a
Maxtor drive, but another respondent cautioned that there may be Geometry
problems with some Maxtor drives, so you might want to check the specs if
you are planning on getting a Maxtor. Also note that Sun will not support
3rd party drives and they machine as sold (unless you but 2 drives and
take one or two out), don't come with the sled you need to mount
it. However, you can modify the blanking sled that it is shipped with if
that is the way you want to go (http://jwm3.con/labs/netra/), or you may
be able to by 3rd party sleds.

All of the respondents mentioned that this machine will be more then
capable of being used for my desired purpose as a test web server and
occasional backup "live" webserver and it sounds like a great
little machine for what it is. To be honest, the responses I have
received made me think this machine is more capable then I
thought. However, it has basically no expandability and wouldn't be all
that great for backup/storage.

Some good websites for more information that I have been referred to
include:

The Sun System Engineer handbook: http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/

Unofficial Sun Blade 100/150 FAQ: http://sunblade100.wells.org.uk/

For what it's worth, after all the responses, I am planning on getting
one. I'll probably buy some after-market RAM to boast the machine to
at least 1GB, but probably to 1.5 GB. At this point, I'm not 100%
sure what I'm going to do with the hard drive. I need to look at the
prices a little more and determine how much disk space I need.

Edward Corrado
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers