Reliability of Sun 3/50's

[Karl Kleinpaste]

> From: root at helios.ucsc.edu (De Clarke x2630)
> 
> The question before us, as we contemplate acquisition of our sixth and
> seventh Sun 3/50-ME-4, is 'to maintain or not to maintain?'.  Has anyone
> out there had conclusive experience of the failure rate of 3/50's in a
> normal office environment (no a/c, isolation-txformer-type power
> conditioning)?

In just the last couple of months, we have had rather a lot of the flyback
transformers in our 3/50 monitors going bad.  #10 (of 200-odd) gave up the
ghost yesterday afternoon.  While Sun will tell you that the monitor will
have thus-and-so MTBF, they generally seem to have computed those figures
based on the machine being on during office hours only.  Ours are always
on.

--Karl