is this a fair price (Sun ultra 5)

anti.corp · 03-24-2006, 02:04 PM

Hi,

I just got an offer on two old Sun ultra sparc 366Mhz, 9GB SCSI, 128MB of ram. They are both in good condition.

The price is 240$ for both of them.

Is this a fair price?

Im asking because I got no clue about Sun hardware prices, at least not when it comes to used equipment.

Sincerely, Jørgen

jlliagre · 03-24-2006, 02:32 PM

Ebay will probably beat the price, but $120 for on WS is probably still cheap.

The problem is the memory, you won't be able to install a recent Solaris release with so few RAM, and adding it may cost you more than the rest of the H/W ...

anti.corp · 03-24-2006, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

Ebay will probably beat the price, but $120 for on WS is probably still cheap.

The problem is the memory, you won't be able to install a recent Solaris release with so few RAM, and adding it may cost you more than the rest of the H/W ...

Thanks for your reply.

I was thinking aboout using one of them as spare parts. That means that I would have 256MB I know its not much, and that the old ultra 5 has a maximum of 512MB.

How much RAM does it take/is needed to install/run Sun Solaris 10?

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely, Jørgen

Komakino · 03-24-2006, 02:47 PM

I got one for free from Southampton University. I put FreeBSD on it

Can't get a wireless card to work, sadly.

anti.corp · 03-24-2006, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Komakino

I got one for free from Southampton University. I put FreeBSD on it

Can't get a wireless card to work, sadly.

Wish (for more reasons than this) that I lived in the UK

What version of Freebsd are you running on it? How much RAM does it have? Does it run smooth or? Just curious

Sincerely, Jorgen

Vgui · 03-24-2006, 05:42 PM

You sure you can't find a local place that sells for cheaper?

For example:
http://vfxweb.com/index.php?maincate...productid=9351
http://vfxweb.com/index.php?maincate...productid=9184

Both are pretty jazzy machines, and are dirt cheap (considering the price is in Canadian). For the specs you are saying, I'd pay $80CDN tops.

So, maybe scrounge around locally, or give Ebay a shot, or maybe another online site.

Good luck either way, old Sun hardware sure is nice tank-like stuff.

anti.corp · 03-25-2006, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vgui

You sure you can't find a local place that sells for cheaper?

For example:
http://vfxweb.com/index.php?maincate...productid=9351
http://vfxweb.com/index.php?maincate...productid=9184

Both are pretty jazzy machines, and are dirt cheap (considering the price is in Canadian). For the specs you are saying, I'd pay $80CDN tops.

So, maybe scrounge around locally, or give Ebay a shot, or maybe another online site.

Good luck either way, old Sun hardware sure is nice tank-like stuff.

thanks for your reply.

Finding a local place in Denmark is pretty hard. Sun machines are not common in this (in many ways) small country.

I heard alot about old Sun machines, 'solid stuff' 'working horse' 'dont let the low cpu mhz fool you'.

Now I really want to try one (or more) out

Sincerely, Jorgen

Komakino · 03-25-2006, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anti.corp

Wish (for more reasons than this) that I lived in the UK

What version of Freebsd are you running on it? How much RAM does it have? Does it run smooth or? Just curious

Sincerely, Jorgen

It's a 333MHz Ultra SPARC 5 and it has 256MB ram. I'm running FreeBSD 6. It doesn't cope well with KDE but I run windowmaker so that's OK. I've not really used it much because I can't get wireless networking to work.

jlliagre · 03-25-2006, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anti.corp

I was thinking aboout using one of them as spare parts.

That make sense.

Quote:

That means that I would have 256MB I know its not much, and that the old ultra 5 has a maximum of 512MB.

Make sure you can do that, for example if the U5 have their 4 slots with each one 64 MB, you can't merge them on one box.

Quote:

How much RAM does it take/is needed to install/run Sun Solaris 10?

Installation in graphic mode will require 384 MB
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817...0v?l=en&a=view

Running Solaris 10 or Solaris Express require less memory, but memory usage depends essentially on what you plan to do with that machine.

Beware also that although 8 years ago, these workstations were cool 64 bit "affordable" machines, they are quite outdated now compared to what current 64 bit technology (SPARC or AMD) is providing.