From: schultz@halley.est.3m.com (John C. Schultz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.hardware
Subject: SPARC clones
Date: 4 Jan 93 21:06:24 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: 3M Company, 3M Center, Minnesota, USA

Since there has been some bandwidth on the net about clones I thought I would
review my experiences with  SuperWorkstation clones.

They advertise in SunExpert (at least) if you are interested in contacting
them.

I got a SPARC 2 clone with a 1 GB Maxtor external drive, 64MB RAM, 20"
Trinitron 1280x1024 monitor, GX graphics accelerator, keyboard and mouse.  It
came loaded with SunOS 4.1.2 (Solaris 1.0.1) although the disk was either
configured for the wrong SCSI address or the installation was corrupted.  In
any case it would boot but would not run OpenWindows. They reformatted and
re-installed the OS after I shipped the disk back. When I got the disk back, I
changed the SCSI address to 1 and booted disk1 - it worked fine.

Since NIS did not come installed, I borrowed a SUN CDROM drive and
re-installed Solaris 1.0.1 (I know, I should not have wasted my time shipping
it back :-(.  

Just for the ^%$# of it, before re-installing Solaris 1.0.1, I tried Solaris
2.1.  It installed and ran just fine.  Unfortunately none of my applications
(C compiled code w shared libraries, Khoros, epoch, image processing software,
and about anything else I use daily) worked very well with Solaris 2.1.
Sigh, back to Solaris 1.0.1.

With everything up and running, I tested out the resolution - supposed to be
1280 x 1024 right?  No.  Khoros, an image processing environment among other
things, as well as some other display software packages were only able to
address 1152 x 900 pixels. (In fact the cgsix0 1152 x 900 driver is obviously
loaded during boot which is why I tested it - see below.) MAJOR BUMMER. True
1280 x 1024 DISPLAYED resolution would cost more - a lot more.

Cut from /var/adm/messages

Jan  3 17:40:27 frostpile vmunix: cgsix0 at SBus slot 2 0x0 pri 7
Jan  3 17:40:27 frostpile vmunix: cgsix0: screen 1152x900, single buffered, 1M mappable, rev 7

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Some more minor observations may be in order as well.

The system works very nicely and seems to have zero compatability problems
with other SUNs, SGI, HP, IBM, etc. machines. 

The printed circuit board looks very neat and clean.

The Trinitron is not a Sony Trinitron although quite nice.  The nameplate says
Capertronic. 

The keyboard is not a standard SUN keyboard buts works quite well.  The only
problem is that BACKSPACE is above RETURN rather than DELETE.  DELETE is on
the same row as the F1-F12 function keys.  While I could (maybe) map all
applications to use BACKSPACE, it has been easier to just reach up to use
DELETE.

The mouse is a Logitech mechanical mouse.  Seems to work fine and as long as
it does, I will not (re)start the argument on optical vs mechanical mice.
Replacements should certainly be cheaper :-)

The "pizza" box is noticeably cheaper than Sun's - no pretty dimples and some
pretty raw edges in the sheet metal.  I could care less since I don't have
dimples :-)

The shipped system documentation is minimal.  You get a thin hardware manual,
Solaris 1.0.1 "Getting Started", "Openwindows Version 2" and "Openwindows
version 3".  I went back to MIT X11R5 (about 25% faster than OpenWindows 3.0
it seems to me) so I could care less about Openwindows.  In any case, this is
very minimal documentation and presumes that you know a lot about SUNOS and/or
have access to a manual set.


This review is my personnal view and is not regulated, endorsed or otherwise
policy of my employer.
--
   John C. Schultz   +1 (612) 733-4047   schultz@halley.serc.3m.com
   How to include the taste of Glendronach in a multi-media system?