Reliability of Sun 3/50's

[Ralph Noack]

We have 6 3/50's (5 diskless, 1 p5(140MB+tape)). We have had 4 for ~ 2
years.  The others ~1.5 yrs. We do not carry any maintenance on any. We
have shipped monitors to be repaired 4 times I believe. In each case we
took the 30 day repair at a cost of about $550. In each case the monitor
failed after a power glitch/outage. Being short of brains and cash we used
only surge protectors and no pwr line conditioners. We sent several to
another company(Dyn Service Network) which actually does the warranty work
for Phillips(the monitor manufac.) for sun.  However Sun found out and
screamed. They have a contract with Phillips which precluded such
activety(Dyn was less than half price).  I could get limited feedback on
what went wrong. In at least one case it was the flyback transformer. The
guy said it was basically weak.  Other than the monitors we have had no
failures. I think that with adequate pwr protection/condition the 50's are
very reliable. The weakest part is definetly the monitor.

Ralph W. Noack (817)-273-2860
Univ. of Tx at Arlington, Aerospace Eng. Dept. Box 19018 Arlington, Tx 76019
..!{killer,texsun}!utacfd!rwn