hardware costs, again...

[Andrew H. Marrinson]

In article <1990May28.193506.21864 at maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> terry at eesun1.eece.ksu.edu (Terry Hull) writes:

>You can add a disk/tape subassembly and speed by all your colleagues
>that are using their '386 boxes.

True, though from the Byte review I just read you can fit your 386
with a faster disk controller than the Sun SLC has.

>Remember, for that price you get BSD UNIX (yea!!) , development
>system, TCP/IP, NFS, and SunView for free.

I doubt if this is true.  With the diskless workstation you presumably
get a license to use the software which resides on your server.  To
run stand-alone you would need to buy the software on some media which
will probably cost extra.  So the savings is probably less substantial
than you make it sound.

Anybody know the real story on what it really costs to make an SLC a
stand-alone workstation?  Am I limited to buying the SCSI peripherals
from Sun?  If so, how much does that cost?  And does anyone know how
you obtain software and what it costs in such a case.

Also, many vendors don't even include licensing fees in their
workstation prices.  Is Sun one of those?  If so how much do you add
to the ca. $5K price for the software license?
--
		Andrew H. Marrinson
		Icom Systems, Inc.
		Wheeling, IL, USA
		(andy at icom.icom.com)