3/50 memory vs 3/60 board swap; other upgrade options--long summary
Bruce Samuelson
utacfd!utafll!bruce at central.sun.com
Sun Dec 10 00:49:05 AEST 1989
In Sunspots 8.191, I posted a questionnaire regarding upgrading 3/50s
either by adding memory or swapping in a 3/60 board. Here is a summary of
direct responses I've received and of information I've gathered from other
sources. Section 4 below covers upgrades of 3/50s and 3/60s to 3/80s and
SparcStations. Thanks to those of you who responded to my questionnaire.
I assume readers have access to back issues of Sunspots and so will cite
references to them from 8.100 onwards (based on grepping for SIMM). You
can look up the details.
Table of Contents
1. REFERENCES TO RECENT POSTINGS IN SUNSPOTS AND SUN MANAGERS
2. DIRECT RESPONSES TO MY QUESTIONNAIRE
3. ADVERTISERS OF MEMORY PRODUCTS IN THE SUN OBSERVER, SUN EXPERT MAGAZINE,
SUNTECH JOURNAL AND SUN USER GROUP README
4. SUN'S UPGRADE PRICE LIST, INCLUDING SUNSET TRADE-UP PROGRAM
1. REFERENCES TO RECENT POSTINGS IN SUNSPOTS AND SUN MANAGERS
Sunspots 8.102 Jeff Weber gives prices & advice for SIMMs for 3/60
Sunspots 8.103 Jon Shultis had trouble with 3/60s containing 12MB
Sunspots 8.103 Chuck Musciano upgraded 3/60s to 12MB without problems
Sunspots 8.103 Gerry Lachac summarizes responses for adding mem to 3/60 3/80
Sunspots 8.105 Howard Hart added SIMMs to 3/60 in "almost 10 minutes"; also
suggests adding mem to 3/80 must be done in right slots
Sunspots 8.110 Por Emanuelsson says 3/60 and 3/80 can use 100 ns SIMMs
Sunspots 8.110 William LeFebvre got 80 ns SIMMs (qty 25) for $129 apiece;
1 megabit by 9, low profile
Sunspots 8.122 Lawrence Deleski- 100 ns 1M x 9 low profile SIMMs work in 3/60
Sunspots 8.125 Richard Foulk had problems with SIMMs in 12 MB 3/60, possibly
because of bad connectors
Sunspots 8.176 dupuy thinks you can mix 1 megabit and 4 megabit SIMMs
provided you have multiples of 4 of each
Sunspots 8.181 John Chadwick summarizes advice on buying used 3/50
Sunspots 8.191 Jacob Parnas paid $145/MB for SIMMs from Toshiba (qty 130);
"Sun wanted $500 per MB." Also "significantly lower than
buying from a third party like Clearpoint."
Sunspots 8.199 David Cortesi summarizes memory upgrades to 3/50 3/60 3/80
SparcStation: all use industry standard 1 megabit x 9, 100 ns,
low profile SIMMs. Vendors & phone numbers listed. Prices
for megabyte SIMM: $89-125. 4MB boards for 3/50 around $950.
These can be added to flat-tops. No mention of dimple-tops.
Sun Managers Steve Miller, 9 Nov 89, said SunOS 3.5 is the lowest
officially supported OS version for 3/60s, although some
SunOS 3.2 software may work. [Note: 3.2 is supported on 3/50.]
2. DIRECT RESPONSES TO MY QUESTIONNAIRE
**** Andrew Duane, duane at ginosko.samsung.com, ordered 3/50 to 3/60 upgrades in
June. No longer available. Order converted to 3/80 upgrades. 3/80 order not
delivered. Sun salesman won't return calls. Order cancelled. Buying X
terminals instead. "My advice: check VERY VERY VERY carefully about the
availability and lead times on the upgrades from Sun."
***** Brad Yearwood, {pyramid, tekbspa, pixar}!optilink!brad, gave a
comprehensive reply which is quoted in its entirety:
We upgraded 8 3/50 systems with 4MB upgrades from Clearpoint. The upgrades
were received and installed about 3 weeks ago. The cost was approximately
$940 each.
Approximate mix of systems was 5 flat-top and 3 dimple-top.
Bad experiences:
1. Older systems (all dimple-top and one flat-top) have an older package
design on the MMU and PCHK gate array chips, which are removed and
placed into adapter boards. The old package has very soft leads,
which are separated by small ribs. The new package seems to have
harder leads, with the lead ends nestled into dimples in the package.
Leads near the corners on the old package are very easy to bend in
the process of removal or insertion. Upon removal, it is essential
to carefully inspect all leads, particularly near the corners, and
to reshape any that are out of alignment. It is very easy to have leads
on two joining sides of the package short at the corner. (We have seen
this on plastic leaded packages on gate arrays we use in our own
products - it says nothing unfavorable about Clearpoint's product.)
2. One dimple top system crashed frequently with parity errors. This
system was one where two gate array leads came out in particularly
bad shape.
3. One flat-top system (mine) has crashed once with a parity error. This
was on a day with terrible static electricity problems, when I was
wearing clothes that are known to be excellent static generators
against my chair, and occurred immediately after I had sat down at
the keyboard.
Good experiences:
Clearpoint's mechanical design is excellent, clean, and expensive looking.
I don't see how they make money selling these things for $940.
Installation documentation, if followed carefully, is entirely adequate
for a reasonably dexterous person to install the product. The only
bad part is removal and reinsertion of the gate arrays - if somebody at
your site already has experience doing this, it will help. (Or you can
leave installation to a service contractor - Clearpoint has arrangements
with one.) If you self-install, you'll need Clearpoint's tool set (consists
of a gate array puller [they supplied a Burndy tool that works so much
better than the AMP tools that we had been using around here, that I'm
grateful for the introduction]), a DIP puller for two PAL chips, and a
hex wrench for removing the bolts that secure the Sun board to the chassis.
Each upgrade kit includes a 3M disposable anti-static wrist strap - very
clever - I used one or two, and saved the rest for use on field visits
in support of our own product.
Even a 4MB upgrade gives a radical improvement in SunOS 4.0.3 performance
on the 3/50. I can once again keep up a calctool, a local perfmeter,
and a couple of server perfmeters, a clocktool with second hand enabled,
and run (Unipress) Emacs. Large dbxtool work that took 30 minutes to
load with the GENERIC kernel and sendmail daemon running, and 5 minutes
to load with a stripped-out kernel and no sendmail daemons on a 4MB 3/50,
now load in less than one minute. It is now reasonable and fairly painless
to run our cross-compiles and links on workstations - the servers can
be left more to disk service.
We have not seen any evidence so far of overheating in a normal office
environment.
The $940/system has absolutely been worth the investment, both for
productivity, and for morale.
***** Brett Chapman, uunet!crdgw1!gemed!chapmanB, sun!sunbrew!gemed!chapmanB,
added 8MB of Helios memory to 2 flat top, 15 dimple top 3/50s. Much cheaper
than 3/60 upgrade, which may no longer be available anyway.
***** Dan Franklin, dfranklin at bbn.com, added 4MB of Parity memory to each of 6
dimple top 3/50s for $860 apiece this Sept. No problems yet w/ overheating or
power supplies. Partial quote:
We like 'em! Someone else at a different BBN subsidiary who has bought
a couple had looked into all the vendors; he says that Parity is the only
one who makes the memory board in two pieces (a main piece and a little
outboard piece with one of the PLCC plugs on it). The advantage of this
design is that variations in the relative placement of the two PLCC sockets
on the 3/50 board will not cause stresses or strains. Apparently such
variations do exist on different 3/50s.
One comment: examine your boards closely when you get them. One of
ours had a little loose piece of solder trapped underneath one of the
pLCC sockets. Needless to say, we did not try to use it! Two more
came with one of the SIMMs slightly askew and not making contact;
though I would have thought this would show up as a memory failure, it
actually causes the machine to fail to light up its monitor at all.
Pushing the SIMM into place solved the problem. And one board came with
8 Mb of SIMMs instead of 4 Mb...
***** George Nassiopoulos, nassio at cfa.harvard.edu, added 4MB of Helios memory
this August to 2 flat top, 1 dimple top 3/50s for $1350 each. Partial quote:
Interest thing is that the add-on we had the most trouble with was the first.
When I installed the first one, the machine would crash once a day with an
error in one of its memory addresses. After two or three days of this i took
the board out and reseated the add-on board. After i did this, the machine
stopped crashing. This was in august, i had the same crashes on the same
machine a couple of weeks ago, but they went away after i removed the board
and checked the seating....(this was a flat top by the way)
about a month after the first add-on stopped crashing daily, we
ordered two more...
the second two add-ons i installed in september (flat and dimple). The dimple
top has been working fine -- no crashes. The flat top has been working fine
with no crashes also, but interestingly enough it will not boot in ``norm''
mode anymore. The only way i can boot the machine is to boot in ``diag''
mode, wait ten seconds for the test to time-out, switch to ``norm'' mode and
then >b. Believe it or not, this has been so effortless that I have done
nothing to track down the problem. My guess is that it is some sort of prom
level problem but i don't know for sure. I haven't had any memory related
crashes in either machine since the install two+ months ago....
The first add-on we received really bugged the heck out of me because one of
the SIMMS on the board is actually touching on of the board's IC chips...but
we decided to buy two more anyway. The second two boards were layed out
slightly differently and did not have any of their SIMMS touching any chips.
I decided to buy Helios instead of Clearpoint last summer because I was more
attracted by Helios' use of SIMMS vs. Clearpoint's use of DRAMS. I wanted the
SIMMS so that we could use them after we retire these 3/50's
The memory upgrade for the 3/50's was something that we wanted to try as an
temporary fix to a workstation shortage. For $1350 per machine, we were able
to provide three of our scientists with a usable workstation, and really we
have not had many problems with the add-ons...
Oh, by the way, i did notice that the inside of the base was a little bit
hotter after the add-ons, but i haven't noticed any problems because of this.
I haven't done any electrical tests to check voltages etc.
***** Richard Jones, jones at bakmes.Colorado.EDU, partial edited quote:
Added 4MB Helios memory to each of 6 flat tops, 5 dimple tops in 9/89 for
$1250 apiece. "No problems with installation or operation. We picked Helios
because they used SIMMS and a few messages on the net early in the summer
indicated that Clearpoint's solution drew more power, made more heat, etc.
The Helios solution looked good; they came and gave a demo-- inserting,
removing. I had a student do our installations."
***** Russ Poffenberger, poffen at sj.ate.slb.com, mentioned upgrade options from
Sun. I'll include this kind info in section 4 below.
***** Scott Holt, prism.gatech.edu!scott, ordered four 3/50 to 3/60 upgrades
this May. Partial quote: "last word on shipment was 2/90... Sun is now
offering to change our orders to 3/80 upgrades - thats right, a completely new
3/80."
***** Steve Holmes, helicon.math.purdue.edu!sjh, upgraded 2 3/50 dimple tops
with 4MB each of Helios memory in June 89, about $2300 apiece. No problems
with overheating or power supply. "Ok to use this form of upgrade."
3. ADVERTISERS OF MEMORY PRODUCTS IN THE SUN OBSERVER, SUN EXPERT MAGAZINE,
SUNTECH JOURNAL AND SUN USER GROUP README
The following vendors advertised memory products for Sun workstations in the
latest issue of these publications. Ones I think are primary sources rather
than resellers are marked with '*'. Apologies to any I missed.
AnDATAco Computer Peripherals, California, 800-334-9191
Bridgeway Technology, California, 415-962-8500
*Clearpoint Research Corporation, Massachusetts 1-800-253-2778 or 508-435-2000
USA, 416-620-7242 Canada, (03) 221-9726 Japan, (0628) 66-7823 UK,
(023) 27-3744 Netherlands, (064) 30-2222 Germany
Computer Systems Technology, California, 714-458-8567
Datalease Systems & Financial Corp., California, 714-632-6986
Falcon Systems, California, 916-344-1221
*Helios Systems, California, 408-432-0292
Interscience Computer Corp., California, 800-627-2007
Minicomputer Exchange, California, 408-733-4400
*Parity Systems Inc., California, 408-378-1000, ...!coherent!parity!parity.
SLR Associates, California, 408-984-7588
*Solflower Computer, Inc., California, 408-452-5780
Uninet, California, 800-433-6784 (714-546-1100 inside Calif), uninet at cpd.com,
uunet!zardoz!uninet
4. SUN'S UPGRADE PRICE LIST, INCLUDING SUNSET TRADE-UP PROGRAM
The following information is from a conversation with my Sun salesman and from
a photocopy he sent from Sun's price list and from some internal Sun email.
Since he's only been with Sun for a month (our fourth sales rep in 3 years),
it's possible that Sun has other programs he (and therefore I) don't know
about. Be sure to verify the accuracy of my summary here with your salesman.
4a. Board swaps
My Sun literature mentions no board swaps. Apparently, the 3/50 to 3/60 swap
program has been discontinued. See comments of Andrew Duane and Scott Holt
above. My guess is that the program ended when Sun finished selling off
its inventory of 3/60 boards in preparation for the introduction of the 3/80
and SparcStation. However, if you talk to third party vendors, you can swap
just about anything you want to for a price. For example, one vendor
estimated it would charge about $1500-$2000 for a 3/50 to 3/60 board swap (4MB
to 4MB). William LeFebvre posted Sun's 3/50 to 3/60 board swap program this
January in Sunspots 7.123. Sun's price for the same swap was $4,950.
William's posting included the following statement from Sun about flat top and
dimple top compatibility:
"Only the flat-top 3/50 versions are upgradable [to 3/60]. This version has
been shipping since July 1987. At this time we are unable to announce anything
for the dimple-top 3/50's but several possible alternatives are under
evaluation."
I don't know whether third party vendors will offer the 3/50 to 3/60 swap for
dimple top 3/50s. If you want to inquire, I'd suggest contacting vendors who
provide maintenance on Sun equipment, such as Apex Computer, Washington state,
800-654-8222; National Customer Engineering, California, 800-446-6456;
Workstation Technologies, Massachusetts, 800-882-0007. There are many others
that advertise. This is a sample.
4b. Other 3/50 upgrades
Here's a summary. Get Sun price list for details. May upgrade 3/50 flat top
or dimple top to either 4 MB 3/80 for $3995 or 8 MB SparcStation 1 for $6995.
Discount category A applies. (May order additional memory as separate line
item.) Customer returns "Sun-3/50 diskless base with CPU, keyboard and mouse,
SCSI connector cable" and keeps all else, including shoeboxes and monitor.
Upgrade includes SPARC or 3/80 base with CPU, "mono frame buffer, Sun-4
keyboard and mouse, monitor mount kit, SCSI-1 to SCSI-2 connector cable."
NOTES: Various older shoebox configurations are not supported. (Get price
list for details.) Requires SunOS 4.0.3 or later. Will ship OS media at no
extra charge. "For thin Ethernet installations, order THIN as a separate line
item." "Only Sun memory may be returned for credit."
4c. Other 3/60 upgrades
Here's a summary with one option as an example. There are 18 options listed.
Get Sun price list for details. Upgrade 3/60 4 MB mono to SparcStation 1.
$5995. Discount category A. Other details similar to 3/50 upgrade. NOTES:
"Sun-3/60 SIMM memory is not supported on the SPARCstation 1."
4d. 3/50, 3/60 SunSET Trade-up program (non-profit institutions thru Dec 31)
Sun is offering this program "to nonprofit educational and nonprofit research
institutions which own Sun 3/50's and 3/60's." It offers a $1000 credit for
owners of 3/50s and $2000 for owners of 3/60s. The owner purchases "PACKAGED
configurations of Sun 3 and Sun 4 technology." The old systems "will then be
immediately DONATED BACK to the institution at time of sales transaction.
(Thus there will be NO MOVEMENT of the equipment.) The price of the new
system will be: (LIST minus TradeUp Rebate) discounted by VEU amount.
Software loaded on the trade-in system will also be donated back." Offer is
good Sept 5 - Dec 31, 1989. "One-for-one trades on desktop systems (Can't
accumulate ten 3/50's for one SS1); two-for-one trade on server PACKAGES.
includes Sun 3 and Sun 4... ONLY." Several other restrictions apply. If your
Sun rep doesn't know about this program, he should contact Chris Drost-Hansen
at this internal Sun address: chrisdh at univ.
*****************************************************
* Bruce Samuelson, University of Texas at Arlington *
* ...uunet!texbell!utafll!bruce *
* ...texsun!utacfd!utafll!bruce *
* bruce at utafll.lonestar.org *
*****************************************************
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