Martin Bochnig writes: > I'm not even sure, whether or not the cmd646 did support UDMA33 in > hardware [chances are], anyways: Its Solaris_sparc driver does not. > I think, putting such an obsolete chip as the 646 into the U5/U10 > systems has not been the wisest marketing decision back then. Why didn't > they prefer the equally cheap cmd/sil0649, back in 1997/98??
You'd have to talk to the hardware guys who built it, and I doubt they're subscribed to opensolaris-discuss. (Though I guess you could get lucky ...) For what it's worth, it seems that the GA date was January 1998, and I suspect that means it was in development well before that. I'd have to guess that it takes a while to settle on a chipset and field a machine along with all of its supporting documentation, software, firmware, and whatnot, so assuming that there were better choices might be a bit much. I also don't know what the real estate, power budget, and other design issues might have been. There many factors that go into system design. > Or maybe replaced it later in the design phase when new cpus and system > boards came out until 2000? SUNW imho hurt itself by that. Was the aim > to direct all potential customers to capable U60 and U80 boxes?? I don't see how anyone here could address that. This is still an Open Solaris mailing list, I think. > I'm afraid many of those, who once paid $5k for a loaded U10 "featuring" > a thing like the cmd646 may have moved away to somewhere else, rather > than to a real computer like the U60 or U80. Possibly. Not for me to say. If I were in the position of making that system -- I was not, and I'm not in the position of building any hardware now -- I'm pretty sure I would think twice before wasting precious engineering resources attempting to make over an aging product line. Doing that would likely delay the new hardware significantly, and that's exactly the sort of thing that big customers (and the overall market) tend to dislike. Nothing is free. > There is a very interesting aspect concerning the U5/U10 versus cmd64x > matter: Newer Solaris_sparc releases explicitly do support the faster > cmd/sil0649 Sure; it says so in the man page for uata. > And well, even a few SATA controllers should be supported now (of course > without boot support on the U5/U10 platform). > > "NewSUNW" and opensolaris give you so much more options now. > SPARC is not dead on the desktop! Sure ... but you're using a system that was designed at least 9 years ago. That's ancient by most measures. -- James Carlson, KISS Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
