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Opinions on Sun workstations and HP 9000 series.

Opinions on Sun workstations and HP 9000 series.

  • Sun workstation

    Votes: 12 70.6%
  • Hp 9000 series.

    Votes: 5 29.4%

  • Total voters
    17
I have a 9000/735 and SUN Ultra1, IPC and SparcClassic. The SUNs are consistently well designed and of very good quality. This particular HP is of the older design that are expensively constructed, it cost over US$40k new, much more than the SUNs.

Some other HP models are of a clamshell construction and seem flimsy in comparison, e.g the 715. The HP has a coin battery for the clock and won't give you any RTC replacement issues as the SUNs do. It's easier to find an OS and software for the SUNs but I think HPUX is more refined and looks more professional, plus I have NextStep installed which is entertaining.

Yeah, but the flimsiness is only by comparison. I don't think the pizzaboxen HPs are that crufty and they're better built than some of the other systems of that era, though I do agree the 735's case is pretty solid (I have a 425t in a similar case which was secondarily upgraded to the equivalent of a 715t).

My SAIC Galaxy 1100 (portable 712) runs NeXTSTEP and it certainly is a whole lot of fun. It really works well on it.
 
Yeah, the HP pizzaboxen aren't tanks (you could bludgeon a man with a Sparcstation 2,) but they're reasonably well-built and not made out of Spindler plastic, at least. My bigger problem has to do with the weird "stylish" offset-lid design, which I have never once been able to get back together the way it's supposed to fit.
 
My bigger problem has to do with the weird "stylish" offset-lid design, which I have never once been able to get back together the way it's supposed to fit.
Thank God, finally I know that it's not only me. As a collector of pizza box workstations I had been longing for an HP box for quite some time. Finally I got my hands on a 715, and it was a huge disappointment. My Sun and NeXT boxes are of a much better build quality, so after gathering dust for a couple of months I gave the HP away without ever bothering to install NEXTSTEP.
 
I like my SPARC boxen. I don't have any HP/DEC stuff, though - just SGI workstations. I kind of find the SGI stuff more fun to use since i'm a very graphics work oriented kind of person, but the Sun stuff's always had a certain mystique to it that makes me wish I could really get a feel for what they did in the field.
 
Saw your post on Ultra 5. I have a Sparc Station 20 and Ultra 60. I have yet to boot them to see what needs to be updated and fixed hardware-wise. Thinking about which OS to run on both. What do you recommend? I might splurg for a 2nd CPU for both... though I heard they use a lot of electricity?
 
... though I heard they use a lot of electricity?

You have to ask, "compared to what?" The SPARCstation 20 PSU was rated for what, 150 Watts output, and it looks like the Ultra 60 PSU was only 350W. But perhaps people considered them power hungry because these machines were typically left running almost all the time, as opposed to turning off your PC or Mac when you weren't using it.

Oh, looks like the nVIDIA RTX 3080 "only" uses 320-350W. But then, that bitchin' new CPU you paired it with proabably has a TDP of ~250 Watts...


But since this thread was re-animated -- I'd suggest the oldest machine of either make you can get your hands on. Your current phone will run rings around it, so go for something that'll show you a different way of computing. The proprietary Sun bits (Type 4/5 keyboard and mouse) are easier to find than the HP HIL equivalents, and then there's the HP-IB storage issue that was mentioned (finding a PC to run hpdrive that matches a 9000/360 stacked on it is tricky). So maybe a Sun SPARCstation IPC/IPX/1/1+/2, or else an HP 9000/7xx, and run SunOS 4 or HP/UX - at least initially, to get a feel for what they were like back when.
 
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