From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Nov 14 23:58:01 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA02372 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:58:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (castles231.castles.com [208.214.165.231]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA02352 for ; Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:57:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA10471; Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:56:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <199811150756.XAA10471@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: "Jason C. Wells" cc: FreeBSD-chat , Ken Keeler Subject: Re: Can you recommend one of these workstations? In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:42:00 PST." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:56:40 -0800 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I will be graduationg before long. I have little experience with expensive > unix workstations. > > The software that I am interested in running is SDRC IDEAS Master Series 6 > which is a CAD system among other things. Unfortunately, I cannot this > software on FreeBSD. (or can I?) > > It runs on: Sun, HP, IBM, and SGI. > > (I have used SGI and wasn't really impressed by IRIX. I have used Solaris > in process control and thought it was neat.) > > Can anyone point me to a good resource (not the vendors please) on how to > buy one of these machines? Any recommendations from experienced > users/admins on what to stay clear of? Sun hardware is generally cheaper for a given performance level. The existence of Sun hardware clones also gives you a better buying position. For less than a thousand dollars you can get a reasonable secondhand Sun-compatible system that will probably run your application OK. Eg. we just bought an Axil 311 with a single SM61 processor module, 128M of memory, 2GB of disk and an accelerated 8-bit framebuffer for about $800.oo. You would need to add a monitor, keyboard and mouse to this combination for a complete system. Systems from Axil and Ross generally offer excellent value for money. A good place to start in the Sun world is www.sunhelp.com, also check out sellers in misc.forsale.computers.workstation (something like that). > Are these machines really any better than Intel based hardware? Is beer better than beer? The question is uselessly vague. Some is, some isn't. > Is there any hope of FreeBSD being compatible with any of these OSes. I > see the SVR4 emulation shows some hope of running "SysV executabls taken > from Solaris/x86 2.5.1 and 2.6 systems". I am wondering if this will > translate into the ability to run a Solaris Sparc binary. No, see the "x86" in "Solaris/x86"? That means "Intel". -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message