Sun User Group conference & 3/50 memory upgrades

[William LeFebvre]

All the messages in this issue are about the SUG conference last week.  I
wanted to get these out while the activities were still fresh in
everyones' minds.  Although there is more that I want to say about the
conference, I will just briefly touch on one of the "hot topics" of the
conference:  memory for the 3/50.

Both Helios and Clearpoint were there showing off their add ons.  The
Clearpoint add on looks much easier to put in and even possible to remove.
The Helios one requires soldering on this flexible harness at many, many
points.  This looks very irreversible.

When someone asked Scott McNealy about Sun's position on maintaining a
3/50 with any type of third party add on, he was most emphatic.
Basically, he said "Sun can't get in the position of supporting
third-party hardware.  We just wouldn't survive as a business if we
started doing that.  It's a bad precedent."  What I want to know (and I
should have asked him---oh well) is if Sun is willing to continue to
support their hardware (the CPU board) even after a temporary or permanent
memory add on has been made.  I'm not asking them to support the add on
memory itself, just to continue supporting their part of the hardware.

Apparently, McNealy's sentiment is not shared by the rest of the company.
Although I was not there, I understand that the next morning Joe Roebeck
said that the issue is still being discussed (debated, fought over?)
within Sun.  The way I see it, they're going to have to compromise some
here.  There are just too many 3/50's out there to ignore.  Running
version 4 on them is practically impossible without a memory upgrade.  But
if Sun isn't going to market their own upgrade nor continue to support a
machine upgraded in such a manner, customers will be forced to take their
support business elsewhere.  And they may just decide that it's easier to
have one support contract than two different ones and take *all* their
support business elsewhere.  Don't take this as a threat, but instead take
it as an observation of reality.

McNealy promised wonderful things for the future of Sun 3's.  He said
something about putting out the best possible upgrade path in the current
market (or some such non-commital comment).  But 3/50 owners don't want
the best hardware upgrade in one or two years.  They want to continue
using their machines today.  And in order to do so, they either have to
stick with 3.5 (or lower) or get a memory upgrade and sacrifice their Sun
support.  Facts of life.

Sun did have a pamphlet at their booth describing how one might tailor a
3/50 to improve performance, theoretically making 4.0 usable.  We will be
trying that out, but it remains to be seen (and I remain skeptical).

More on the conference at a later date.

	Your moderator,
	William LeFebvre