memory expansion for 3/50?

[Casey Leedom]

I posted the following article to a local organizational news group after
doing an extensive amount of research on the subject of Sun 3/50 upgrade
paths.  I've pulled all LLNL prices out because I didn't want to piss off
people who couldn't drive enough volume to get the pricing we can or, piss
off the companies involved (all of which have been extremely helpful).
Sorry I don't have the current list prices available.  Contact the
companies directly for pricing information for your organization.

>From: casey at lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Subject: Re: Memory expansion available for Sun 3/50 workstations!!!
Keywords: Sun 3/50 workstation, memory expansion, cheap
Date: 24 May 89 19:34:53 GMT

| From: casey at lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
| Date: 22 Dec 88 20:00:26 GMT
| 
|   Increasing the memory in your Sun 3/50s can significantly improve the
| performance of your entire Sun cluster.  Your 3/50s spend less of their
| time paging, the network is less loaded with paging traffic, your server
| is less loaded with network and disk interrupts, and more server disk
| bandwidth is available for real work (this last is especially important
| because most Sun servers have slow Xylogics 451 disk controllers that
| have very limited disk bandwidth).  All in all, a win all the way around.

  This is the long delayed follow up to my article in llnl.sun last
December.  In that article I reviewed the information available on the
Sun 3/50 memory expansion products available from Sun Flower (now named
Sol Flower), Parity, Helios, and Clearpoint.  At that time, I was unable
to get a hold of Sun Flower and had heard their address was a condo in
San Jose - not a very promising sign; Parity didn't actually have a
product available yet; Helios only had a solder in product for $2100; and
Clearpoint had a plug in/out product available for $2350.  My
recommendation, given the information available, was the Clearpoint
product.

  Since then, Sun has announced a dual pronged upgrade policy for 3/50s:
1. a 3/50 to 3/60 trade in that would cost you something like $4300 to
end up with an 8Mb workstation (our original goal remember), and 2. an
announcement that your 3/50 warranty would *NOT* be invalidated if you
installed a plug in/out third party memory expansion product (you would
have to remove it before they would service the workstation however);
I've bought a Clearpoint memory expansion; Parity has come out with their
plug in/out product and I've BETA tested their first version; Helios has
come out with a plug in/out product which I'm evaluating now; and I've
seen the Sol Flower product.  A lot of stuff, hhmmm?

	Sun Microsystems, Inc.
	2550 Garcia Avenue
	Mountain View, CA 94043

	Price: $XXXX
			(Sun 3/50 to 3/60 with 8Mb of memory upgrade.
			Also includes new SunWrite, SunDraw, and SunPaint
			software.)

  First things first: I applaud the Sun upgrade policy.  It's very
flexible allowing you to decide whether you want to upgrade both your
memory capacity and CPU power, or just go with one of the third party
memory products to increase your memory capacity.  Unfortunately the
price of the 3/50 to 3/60 upgrade is really too expensive compared with
the third party memory upgrades, especially with the current prices,
approximately $1500 to $1700, of those third party memory upgrades.  If
you've got a fixed amount of money available and your fundamental goal is
to upgrade your 4Mb 3/50 workstations to 8Mb workstations, you can only
upgrade [about] half as many workstations with the Sun 3/50 to 3/60
upgrade.  On the other hand the 3/60 is about 30% faster and you do get
their new software.  It's a decision you'll have to make.

	[By the way, my initial claim (quoted at the top of this article)
	``that a 3/50 is a perfectly adequate workstation, it just lacks
	memory'' seems to have been borne out by our recent experiences
	with the 3/50 memory expansion products we've tested in CMRD.
	Another realistic option has risen on the horizon which I'll
	describe in a coming article in llnl.general on the Graphon X
	terminal.]

  Now, a review of the various 3/50 memory products which I've tested or
seen:

	Parity Systems, Inc.
	504-B Vandell Way
	Campbell, CA 95008

	Price: $XXXX

	Contact: John Miller
	Phone:	408-378-1000
	FAX:	408-378-1022

  I ordered a Clearpoint product back in December.  Before it arrived I
was able to set up a BETA test of Parity's new product.  Parity was able
get in touch with Sol Flower and buy the right to remarket their board
until their own design was complete.

  The Sol Flower design is very simple and elegant.  It's a small board
about 6.5x9 inches which lays over and extends out the Memory Management
Unit gate array (MMU), Parity Check gate array (PCHK) and the four
Programmable Array Logic chips (PALS).  Additionally, it uses standard
Sun SIMMs for its memory.  This means that you can just pop the SIMM
memories out if you get rid of your 3/50 and use those SIMMs in your
3/60, 3/80, or 386i.

  Unfortunately it wouldn't run in any of the older 3/50s we tried it in
and it failed after running a couple of days in one of our newer 3/50s.
They felt that the problem was a mechanical connection issue and went
back to do a small redesign on their own board.  (The problem is that the
two gate array socket inserts on the bottom of the daughter board are
fixed in place and the gate sockets on the system board are not always in
exactly the same place.  Parity's solution is to mount one of the gate
array socket inserts onto a small separate board and connect the two
boards via a short ribbon cable.)

  Parity's design is due to start shipping at the end of May.  They're
including an installation and maintenance kit with each board.  The
installation kit consists of two chip pullers pullers.  An anti-static
mat is a $20 option.  The maintenance kit consists of a anti-static box
with label so you can keep track of the old Sun PALS and which machine
they came from which are replaced by the board.

	Clearpoint Inc.
	3333 Bowers, #245
	Santa Clara, CA 95054

	Price: $XXXX

	Contact: Michelle Sieber
	Phone:	408-727-2433
	FAX:	408-727-2109

  When the Clearpoint board came in, I and Tom DeBoni, who had worked with
me on the Parity evaluation, were both unhappy with the design.  It
consists of a very large board which covers a large portion, including
some of the hottest sections, of the 3/50 system board.  It also includes
three smaller boards which are used to pull out and get at the signals of
the MMU, PCHK, *and* CPU and well as the PALS.  In addition to the heat
problem, the large board is held off the system board with a couple of
stand-off posts that leave most of the board just laying on the central
board stiffener on the system board.  It looks like it will be very
sensitive to vibration.  In contrast, the Parity board comes with three
plastic clips that are used to tie the small board firmly down to the
system board at the two system board stiffeners that it abuts.  Also, the
memory chips are soldered in to the Clearpoint board.  Clearpoint does
guarantee a one for one memory swap of Sun SIMMs if you ever get rid of
your 3/50, but it certainly isn't as convenient as just pulling the SIMMs
out of the 3/50 memory board yourself as you can do with *all* the other
products.

  But, it must be pointed out that the board has been running in Tom
DeBoni's reliably for nearly two months now.  What can I say?  It looks
like a lousy design, but it seems to work fine.  Also, Clearpoint has
been great to work with.  (Actually, this has been true of all the
companies, though Sol Flower still feels a bit flakey ...)

	Helios Systems
	1996 Lundy Avenue
	San Jose, CA 95131

	Price: $XXXX

	Contact: Sheryl Kaiser
	Phone:	408-432-0292
	FAX:	408-943-1309

  Helios announced a new plug in/out 3/50 memory upgrade product on March
3rd.  Previously they had only offered a solder in product which just
wasn't acceptable as far as I was concerned.  I do understand their
engineers wanting to do this having seen how difficult it is to come up
with a reliable connection scheme that doesn't use soldered connections,
but it just doesn't make sense given the maintenance issue (especially
with Sun's announced warranty stance).

  This product is very similar to the Parity and Sol Flower products.
Roughly the same size, it extends the MMU, PCHK, and replaces the four
PALS, and uses standard Sun SIMMs for memory.  Similarly it uses plastic
clips to bind the board down securely to the system board stiffeners.

  I'm evaluating the Helios board right now and it's been running reliably
for about three weeks.  I would have thought that it would suffer the
same mechanical connection problem that we had with the Parity product,
but so far no problems.

  The board comes with an installation kit that consists of two chip
pullers (one for the gate arrays and one for the PALS), an hex wrench to
open the 3/50 up, and a disposable anti-static wrist.

  Helios is also offering the solder in version of their Sun 3/50 memory
upgrades for $XXXX/4Mb, and $XXXX/8Mb.  This board also uses standard Sun
SIMMs.  If your machine is on Sun Maintenance, Helios will pick up the
remainder of your maintenance through Apex, Inc. out of Seattle.

	Sol Flower, Inc.
	1630 Oakland Road, Suite A-108
	San Jose, CA 95131

	Price: $XXXX

	Phone:	408-452-5780
		408-452-5781
	FAX:	408-452-8442

  Finally, I haven't evaluated the Sol Flower product myself, but Joe
Carlson has (perhaps he'll follow up this article with his impressions of
it).  I can say that I'm still unimpressed with the impression of
instability in the company.  Also, they only offer a two year warranty
while all the other companies offer life time warranties.  However, it
should be noted that when Joe Carlson's board failed, they replaced it
promptly.

  When I contacted them about the mechanical connection problems that
Parity was having with their design, they said they couldn't understand
Parity's problems - they had no such problems themselves.  Who knows ...

  One other kind of disgruntling aspect of the Sol Flower product rears
it head when you look at it: they've sand-blasted the identification
marks off of most of the chips.  They're apparently very worried about
other companies stealing their design.  Oh well, perhaps they have reason
...

SUMMARY:

  I'm happy enough with the Helios product that I'm evaluating, impatient
enough not to want to wait for the next Parity product, and nervous
enough about the stability of Sol Flower that I've decided to start
upgrading all of my 3/50s with the Helios product.  The only other
contender in my decision was the Clearpoint product and I have enough
reservations about its engineering that I just couldn't see myself going
with that.  I'll probably order a bunch of Parity boards on the next
round since they have a better design visa vi the mechanical interconnect
problem mentioned above.

  Hopefully this will be my last article on this subject.  These things
take too long to write up.  If you're interested in a different approach
to the whole workstation issue, check out my article in comp.windows.x on
the Graphon X terminal which I think offers a very reasonable alternative
to putting a workstation (whether Sun or otherwise) on a person's desk.

Casey