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Experiences with the Sun Blade 100?
SomewhereElse asks: "
It's been a few months since Sun introduced the Sun Blade 100 and I wanted to ask Slashdot readers who have had the oppotrunity to review/play with the box what they thought of it. How upgradeable is it? How fast does it feel? And were there any problems with the hardware?"
Mine is awful. Absolutely hideous. I suspect that it's a problem with configuration, but I haven't had time to reinstall to fnid out. Basically, it's too slow to be useful. When I telnet or ssh into the box, it'll do nothing for perhaps 15 to 20 seconds, then I'll hear the disk spin up, and I'll get in. Once the machine has woken up, it performs quite reasonably (although network performance is still extremely slow). The symptoms lead me to think it's a power management issue, but I haven't changed anything from the standard configuration. The machine is basically as it came from Sun. Maybe a reinstall will fix things, but until our dealines are out of the way, I just don't have time...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Ok, as people pointed out, IDE performance is complete and utter CRAP, so any disk IO is s-l-o-w. I suppose you can stick a SCSI card in it.
The other problem I had with them. Hmm. We got several of them at work, and this one guy's 'blade dies one day. I open it up and the CPU heatsink wasn't actually CONNECTED to the CPU. So the CPU fried. After they replaced the the CPU the IDE chain died. Took SUN a week to figure out that what I told them was correct.
Other than that they're a fun machine. I wish the SUN logo was translucent and had a blue LED behind it. I might have to do that to this box (:
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I tried it. My reason was Because It's There. I tried Red Hat, debian and SuSE, none of them could even boot.
I Emailed one of the Debian/SPARC developers and offered my help, and got a slightly impolite "Why don't you sit down, shut up and wait for us to do it, eh?"
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
It's silent until the CDROM starts dying (:
The one advantage a 'Blade has over an Ultra5 is that it has a 24-bit graphics card by default. So if you're going to use a head on it, it's actually not as painful.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Well, this is excellent, thanks.
I figured it's a hacked kernel. In the meantime mine's actually running some solaris-only stuff, so I'll stick with it, but maybe I'll get another one for games.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Just FYI --- Sun DOES make a "PC" style keyboard.
When you order your Sun systems, ask for the "North American" keyboard kit -- it's no extra charge, and it includes the "proper" keys you're looking for.
If you want to order the keyboard, its part number is:
320-1271 Sun Type 6 USB keyboard (PC layout)
320-1270 Sun Type 6 (proprietary connector) keyboard (PC layout)
If you have a service contract (not warranty service!), these parts are covered if you should accidentially bust your keyboard.
--DM
I just happened to be in the US on business the day the Blade hit the market. Overnight shipping to a friend's house, threw it into my bag and came back to Europe with it. Much jealousy ensued on this side of the pond. For about US$1500, I have a native sparc machine with 1Gb RAM and a 60Mb drive, and interactive performance rivals most of the bigger sun hardware at work (but as a server it is nowhere in the same league).
The blade has now become my main home machine. Its basically a PC with a sparc in place of a pentium. You buy it to out-geek your geek friends, not to win childish MHz pissing games. It can be overclocked, and there are other hardware tweaks. The RAM is a cheap PC commodity, IDE drives easily upgradable (buy a matched pair, DiskSuite comes installed, and throw out that noisy seagate), the 10/100 ethernet provides excellent thru-put. You can use any USB keyboard or mouse you want, but mouse wheel support is still lacking. Standard VGA multisync monitors work with it.
It runs all the hi-paying software that I and my conslutant friends use in our professional lives. Oracle 8i, SAP financials and tons of other stuff. Having a true sparc at home is great for brushing up over a weekend before heading out to a new client site, can't do that on an x86 box.
There are some 'bad' things, but nothing to keep you from buying a blade. Support in OpenBoot for USB hubs is lacking, so you can't have a KVM switch or hub when booting (but you can switch once booted). There is a built in smartcard reader, but absolutely no software for it yet, it reads SunRay cards, but doesn't do anything. There is almost no USB driver support for all the cool USB peripherals out there (most USB crud requires special micro~1.oft or mac drivers to work, and solaris is ignored). There is no Firewire support, except for one hacked driver for their overpriced web-cam. There is only one serial port (the second one is on the mobo, just add your own cable). The built in sound card has no internal audio connector, so you can't play audio CDs in the internal drive, and you probably couldn't hear the music over the drive anyways, the CD-ROM is the loudest peripheral I've ever had, not counting disintegrating hard drives. The real time clock is so fucked, even ntpd can't correct it.
With any luck, sun is working hard at fixing all the little problems. Most complaints come from lack of working features/drivers in Solaris, which means they'll get fixed in time. The hardware itself is pretty solid.
Go read news:comp.sys.sun.hardware, and peruse google groups, and find the B100 FAQ and you'll have a much better idea of what to expect.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
So far so good. Yes, the IDE speed sucks, BUT, it is the drive and not the controller. Many people are putting in nice fast IBM drives and getting much better performance. The Seagate drive they ship is slow.
:)
Memory upgrades are easy. They ship Crucial memory in the unit so you know you're safe adding more. Nice to add 512MB of RAM to a Sun for $100.
As someone else said, it is very quiet. Nice compared to my loud PC sitting beside it.
As someone already mentioned, it takes standard PC100 memory, and it COOKS! I've never had a problem with any of the hardware or the operating system, though I know not everyone is a Solaris afficiendo (haven't tried Linux on it, no reason to). One thing to note is that if you're planning on reinstalling it, make sure to use the 04/01 release of Solaris 8. There are disclaimers all over Sun's download page at http://www.sun.com/solaris as to why.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The only problem with it is that IDE performance on Sun boxes continues to blow goats. The other annoying thing is that Sun flashes their own microcode describing disk geometry over the hard disks, making upgrading to a non-sun drive a pain in the ass.
On the positive side, the Blade 100 is SILENT and machine overall is put together with excellent build quality.
Other than that, the Blade is essentially the same as the Ultra-5 that it replaces.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK