Non x-86/Mac-PPC Workstations?

Aknaton asks: "As I begin to plan for my annual fall purchase of new hardware, I would like to try something different. I have already owned several PPC Macs running MacOS X and many PCs but they still leave me wanting more. I have begun looking for non-Apple/X86 alternatives but I am not finding much. SGI still makes machines but they don't even list prices. Sun offers the SunBlade 100, for just under a grand and it is a consideration. Can anyone else suggest, or know of, any other options? Or is it just a PC world after all?"

Comments

Other Unix vendors

[Tuzanor]

You can still find good HP-UX/PA-RISC and Alpha workstations. Even though they are both supposedly architectures that are heading to that great recycle bin in the sky. Some of the HP machines are really neat, and you never hear much about them because SUN pretty much owned the market. I'm not 100% sure on IBM machines, but their PowerPC chips are quite different to the ones you find in Apple boxen. You may want to take a look on ebay or wherever else you can get this kind of stuff.

Why?

[crow]

Sure, you can get MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, PowerPC, StrongARM, or something even more esoteric, but what's the point? You'll end up running the same code, just compiled to a different processor. Despite the technical shortcomings of the X86, the processor can still run anything you can compile. Sure there are annoying BIOS issues. But when you come down to running real code, even most of the kernel code, it doesn't matter one bit what processor you have.

Re:Why?

[walt-sjc]

I have to say "ditto" here.

The basic reason you don't see much else out there is "economics." It's VERY f-ing expensive to put out a new architecture, especially with all the issue associated with the modern bus speeds. Not to mention the software costs to support all the needed interfaces such as usb, scsi, firewire, video, audio, etc. Is your box going to be PCI? Sbus? What about third party support?

All the "specialized" processor architectures are dying. All you have to do is look at the workstation market of HP, SGI, & sun. Their sales drop every year (servers are a different story, but percent market share of intel-based boxes is still climbing.)

Is MUCH more cost effective to go with a fairly standardized architecture that has multiple vendor support, a huge code-base, etc.

Bang for buck you can't beat an x86 box. Period. We will see what the 64 bit market holds in a couple years, but it's probably going to be AMD / Intel ish...

So yeah, the intel PC architecture sucks. Interrupt conflicts, legacy ports, god-aweful bios architecture, real / protected mode - blech.
We can only hope that Hammer / Itanium / etc fixes some of this and doesn't retain the crap "just because it's easier."

Re:Why?

[pmz]

Unsupported? The collective experience among people who purchase and employ Sun workstations, for example, speaks for itself. In my office, 7-year-old Sun workstations are still useful, are still upgradable, and they are as predictable as night following day. Meanwhile, the 7-year-old PCs...wait a minute...where are they?

The RISC-based hardware by folks like Sun, IBM, SGI, HP, whatever is a real investment. In a hard-working business, their flexibility and durability pays both in time saved and frustration saved. I'm not making this up, believe me!

Re:Why?

[alangmead]

In Kernagan and Pike's The Practice of Programming they argue that programs that are written to be portable are inherently better programs. The abstractions that need to be done to make a program work across different operating systems and architectures, (and don't think of "Unix" as a single operating system. Think of it as a family of operating systems.) are abstractions that help improve program quality.

If systems seem all the same to you, then either the range of systems you have developed for are rather limited, or the complexity of the development has been rather shallow.

Re:Why?

[ninewands]

Two words ... reliability and support.

I'm an admin in a mixed-platform Unix environment at a university (which means I work with machines that a lot of folks would consider 'legacy').

I admin Solaris (both SPARC and x86) Tru64 on the Alpha, Irix and Linux. The SPARC, Alpha, and MIPS boxen just DON'T go down barring a power outage or a hard drive failure, which can and will happen on ANY architecture.

I work on machines that are older than some Slashdot posters as well as some of the latest and greatest. Buying a RISC box is a long-term investment and the vendors treat it as such. At present, Sun is still issuing bugfix and security patches for Solaris 2.5, even though it's almost six years old. I have tied up multiple Sun support Engineers for hours on end trying to solve a hardware compatibility problem involving a SunPCI card. You just don't get that kind of service on the x86/PPC architectures.

Have you tried...

[OneFix]

The new Amiga One hardware. This is was the subject of a previous article. Outside of the CPU, it looks to take pretty much standard PeeCee hardware, but it's PPC based and it runs Linux right now...it will run AmigaOS once the nextgen OS is completed.

What about legacy hardware?

[catseye]

Someone else already mentioned that all you'll do with different "modern" hardware is compile the same old stuff for a different processor. How truly different are modern machines, especially with ubiquitous operating systems like Linux?

Maybe a more interesting challenge would be to hunt down some legacy hardware you never worked with, for example. An Amiga or Atari ST might be an interesting challenge, and both still have vibrant developer and user communities (maybe too vibrant, in the case of the Amiga ;) ), and represent substantially different hardware and software architectures than you're likely to run into today.

Just a thought, this may be a bit off-topic from what you're doing -- I don't know if you're looking to do "useful" things with this machine or just tinker.

-A.

Why?

[sethgecko]

I have already owned several PPC Macs running MacOS X and many PCs but they still leave me wanting more.

What leaves you wanting? The OS choices? The processor architectures? Gui's available? Ability to talk to the BIOS via serial console? The coolness factor (hey, look at me, I run an AS/400 in my basement!)...

Do you just want to be different?

It's impossible to even begin answering your question without knowing why you're dissatisfied with x86/PPC...

I'm writing this from a Mac running OS X, which is sitting next to my OS 9 box for photoshop, which is next to my 2 x86 linux boxes for playing quake. My home directory is shared to all via NFS from my x86 freebsd box, which sits on the rack next to an *old* HP-PA box running HP-UX since that's what we run at work, and 2 sparcs running Solaris serving up web pages for no reason other than that Solaris is kewl. Any one of these can do pretty much everything any of the others can do (except for the HP. 80Mhz PA-Risc just don't cut it...)

Now what, exactly, did you want your workstation to do that it doesn't do now?

Used SGI's

[d_p]

Check out http://www.reputable.com. They sell used SGI systems. You can pick up an O2 or Octane for under $1000.

i want my adm3a

[dru]

look around for a used Lear Siglear ADM3a terminal. These things are fun-ky. They support upper & lower case, maximum speed of 9600 baud, are packaged in a case that was the inspiration for the orinal iMac.

perfect!

Why Not?

[GreenHell]

There's no real answer. It's just sort of a thing that's particular to a sub-set of geeks: The desire to have as many different architectures running as possible. It's one of those things like people who collect stuff (stamps, cards, 1st edition books, etc), if you have to ask 'Why?' you're obviously not in that group and it's likely you never will be.

Tight budget?

[Otter]

SGI still makes machines but they don't even list prices. Sun offers the SunBlade 100, for just under a grand and it is a consideration.

So....you're looking to buy hardware for which you have no need or use, but you're concerned about the price?

My suggestion is to browse the vintage computer auctions at eBay. You'll get the same amount of value for it, and it'll be a lot cheaper.

I've got an SGI at home...

[Rorschach1]

But my 6-year old son hogs it all the time to play Doom. =]

I don't know if I'd recommend it for a general workstation. I'm running IRIX 6.5.15, and it's as ugly as ever. Haven't loaded up gnome yet.

It all comes down to application support. If you're just wanting to run normal desktop stuff, forget it. Stick to x86 or Mac. But if it's just out of curiosity and a desire to learn, hit eBay and get yourself a variety. I've got VAXstations, an AlphaStation, a couple of SPARCstations, a NeXTstation, and the SGI. Not to mention the bigger stuff.. a couple of MicroVAXen and a VAX 6000-510. In all, I've spent maybe $1000 on odd hardware, and most of that was for the Alpha and the SGI. The rest were free or under $100. Ok, the VAX wound up costing me a bit for truck rental and medical bills after hauling around 80-pound hard drives, but it was still under $100. And the former owner bought me dinner for hauling it away.

Go for a used Sun

[pmz]

Take a look at the secondary market of Sun hardware. For less than $1000, you can have an Ultra 2 workstation with SCSI disks and SMP capability. Or you get an older SPARCstation 10 or 20 that still supports SCSI-2 and up to 4 CPUs.

While these computers won't win CPU2000 flame wars, they really are beautiful machines that have full firmware, super-clean layout, and integrated Ethernet and SCSI. Also, you can run Solaris 8, Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD on them. They make great personal workstations (I have KDE on a 40MHz SS10--still usable) or great file or web servers. On top of that, they run forever (my SS10 is now 10 years old). Because they're SCSI, you can put big disks into them (9GB, no problem) and connect external tapes, CDROMs and Zip drives to them. Even the old ones support gobs of ram (at least 512MB). If you can figure it out, the SS10s even have integrated ISDN interfaces.

In short, they are a joy to work with.

There are many vendors, so be sure to get several quotes. Some vendors are arrogant and still think they can charge an arm and a leg for old hardware. Don't let them get you down, because you will find a good price if you are persistent. Also, try eBay or other auctions.

Re:Go for a used Sun

[pmz]

the Ultra 2s rather suck

Why? They are really well engineered and are solid workhorses. They really aren't expensive, either (unless you buy directly from Sun). Also, an Ultra 2 is a much better workstation than an Ultra 5 or 10, unless you really need a PCI bus.

An Ultra 60, while sounding considerably more impressive than the modest 10, isn't worth much more than a 10 unless it has either the Elite 3D graphics card or dual processors

Ultra 60s come with dual-channel UltraSCSI controllers, 4MB cache per CPU, and dual UPA framebuffer slots. Ultra 10s have IDE disks and 2MB cache per CPU. The Ultra 60 also has the CPUs mounted on their own daughter cards, which makes it considerably more flexible than the Ultra 10. They really are different beasts.

PS2! (Not PS/2)

[Bistronaut]

In another month, the US version of the Linux kit for the Playstation 2 is coming out. It comes with a hard drive, a VGA monitor connector, a keyboard and mouse and an ethernet adaptor. I already have mine pre-ordered, and I bought the acutal console last week.

As a side note, be sure to get Grand Theft Auto 3! Oh, the carnage!

What is it you want, then?

[stienman]

but they still leave me wanting more.

Leave you wanting more... what? Tuna fish? If you want tuna fish, you're pretty much out of luck. Apple stopped selling tuna fish about the time the Lisa didn't come out, and MS simply refuses to acknowledge tuna compliant systems. No one makes tuna drivers anymore, so you'll be stuck with an old outdated driver on an old outdated OS (or worse, an emulator!) and the hardware stinks. Sure, it smells ok for a day or two, but your friends and SO will leave in a flash if you don't pay the high maintenance costs. Good tuna isn't cheap.

-Adam

Used SGIs for the high-quality user experience

[daviddennis]

Used SGI systems are still fantastic computers, and they're amazingly cheap due to the sad decline of the company. I have an Indigo2 R10000 system that I bought about six months ago for $400 (not including monitor since I already had a SGI monitor). Now you can get an Octane for less then $1,000.

SGI's main distinction aside from cool case designs is Irix, their Unix-based OS. And the main advantage of Irix is that the user interface is still superior to anything else out there, with the possible exception of Apple. Sun's efforts in this direction were so anemic that they are now switching to Gnome, the same design you'll see under Linux.

The biggest disadvantage is that you have to beg, borrow or steal the C compiler, which is not free. I've found that most resellers will sneak it on for you if you ask them nicely enough.

If you don't want to do that, you have to install GCC, which can be an amazing pain.

My Indigo2 is solid as a rock and hasn't given me a minute of trouble since I bought it. Very cool.

Greg Douglas of Reputable.com is a great guy, or you can cheap out with eBay.

This all being said, the Mac running MacOS X is such a compelling option nowadays that it's difficult to ignore. If you want a system you can run Photoshop on AND use as a Unix box, MacOS X is what you really need.

I run both MacOS X and SGI and love them for what I need them for. Certainly I greatly prefer either to Linux, ans as for Windows, well, let's not go there :-).

D

Re:Yeah but...

[fm6]

Yeah, that was one marketing strategy for the Indy. And I suppose some developers actually used it that way. But the main strength of most SGI hardware is in high-performance computing. The Indy, despite its MIPS architecture, is just not a HPC machine. Hard to see developing for the Indy as being much of stepping-stone.

I could be mistaken, but I think the Indy was positioned as a business computer, something people would buy instead of an IBM AT. Note the standard cam, the built-in ISDN hardware, the bundled whiteboard software. A lot more profitable market than ILM wannabes who can't afford an Indigo