[lug] Netra X1

[Ian Hall-Beyer]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Kyle Moore wrote:

> Has anyone here bought one of these Sun Netra X1's? I have been meaning to
> get a Solaris box at home and this one looks like it might be a decent
> value. Just fishing for opinions.

I've not bought one, but when I was working at Sun, I got to play with a
couple.

They're nice, cheap boxes, but leave little room for expandability.

If you're looking to linuxify it, note that the ethernet chip in them is
non-standard (it's a davicom el cheapo somethingorother, derived from
tulip but different enough to need a separate driver). At least they got
smart, and the 2 IDE drive ports are on separate channels, so software
mirroring is a viable option.

Memory is also cheap for them - they take standard PC133, which is running
for under 50 bucks a gig these days if you know where to look.

If you're looking for a cheap webserver to throw in a rack, this is a
great box to do it with... if you need something more along the lines of a
desktop, go with the SunBlade 100, since it's functionally the same
machine (both use the UltraSparc IIe processor), and offers 3 PCI slots,
a framebuffer, but takes up a footprint the size of an ultra 5.

-Ian

-- 

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves
upon execution.

					--Eric Jorgensen