HP/DEC/Compaq

I was grabbed by the dark side... - Page 1

Too bad, but I couldn't resist to the dark side of Unix.
After owning 3 Indy, an I2 (gone), an O2 (gone) and an Octane...
I got an HP-UX machine.
For 200 euros including shipping I got a 400MHz PA8500, 1/2 GB of memory and graphics with texture. Dual graphics actually. Both with texture!
Not as cool as an SGI, but way more affordable :?
Going to power up soon...

Marco/Sat
Pictures from the inside, Sat!
The Bandito wrote: In a few years, no doubt, you'll be able to buy a computer,
software and operating system that will match the capabilities
of your current Amiga at about the price you paid for the
Amiga way back when. But you can smile to yourself, knowing
that you were touching the future years before the rest of
the world. And that other computers and operating systems
will do with brute force what the Amiga did years before with
grace, elegance and style.


Eroteme.ch - my end of the internet...
Satoru wrote: Too bad, but I couldn't resist to the dark side of Unix.
After owning 3 Indy, an I2 (gone), an O2 (gone) and an Octane...
I got an HP-UX machine.
For 200 euros including shipping I got a 400MHz PA8500, 1/2 GB of memory and graphics with texture. Dual graphics actually. Both with texture!
Not as cool as an SGI, but way more affordable :?
Going to power up soon...

Marco/Sat


You're not kidding, the price/performance on those seems much better. And you can get faster cpu's without breaking the bank .... I'd be interested in what you think of it, Satoru. If you want to run some benchmarks .....
Shame it runs HPUX. That and AIX, are my two least favourite Unix implementations. I'm not talking just about the default install, but can't say I liked programming on them either.

Nik
nvukovlj wrote: Shame it runs HPUX. That and AIX, are my two least favourite Unix implementations. I'm not talking just about the default install, but can't say I liked programming on them either.


Full ack

Matthias
Life is what happens while we are making other plans
nvukovlj wrote: Shame it runs HPUX. That and AIX, are my two least favourite Unix implementations. I'm not talking just about the default install, but can't say I liked programming on them either.


But it appears that a lot of people like it better than the alternatives :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/18 ... ers_react/

hey, SGI ! WAKE UP !! Notice where half of HP's customers don't plan to move AT ALL. And the other half look like moving to Sun or IBM .....
I'll provide the picture as soon as tomorrow.
In fact the interior of the B2000 is quite roomy and allows for easy shooting... it looks somewat similar to a good ATX case... but you know, it was the same with the fuel :)
For the benckmark what may I run that's pseudo-crossplatform?

Marco/Sat
Satoru wrote: For the benckmark what may I run that's pseudo-crossplatform?

Marco/Sat


If you'd like, there's a VR program that takes quite a while to convert a model ... about an hour. Not too short, not too long for a good cpu test. Real-world, too. When you get comfortable with the new box give me a whistle and we'll figger something out, if you like. I'd be interested to see how the HP stacks up. I'm almost afraid to find out, actually ....
I ran the mplayer -vo null -nosound -quiet -benchmark on the warcraft 3 trailer, and got 183 seconds on my HP C180 running a 180MHz HPPA 64 bit processor, gotta say, I wish I had that 400MHz one.
I've probably overseen the installation of 200 HP-UX machines in the last month. I did an inventory of another 200-400 last week (I don't know the exact number since I inventoried all the UNIX machines).

The B2000 isn't too bad. A C3700 is what you'd like, I imagine.

I don't recall offhand if the B2000 has DVI. I don't believe that it does.

EDIT: I just looked and there were 466 HP-UX machines of various flavor including B2000s, C3000s, C3600s and C3700s. I'm not counting ancient behemoths like the C360s or C200s.
I checked what the second graphics was... well I can confirm that I have both an FXE (18MB, 3,5 allocated for textures) built-in and a nicer FX5 (non pro).

Hopefully I should be able to startup (and give some attention to) the machine in the weekend.

Marco/Sat

P.S: how do I send the interior pictures?
TeeTylerToe wrote: I ran the mplayer -vo null -nosound -quiet -benchmark on the warcraft 3 trailer, and got 183 seconds on my HP C180 running a 180MHz HPPA 64 bit processor, gotta say, I wish I had that 400MHz one.


Glad to see I've instantiated that warcraft III trailer as the unofficial official nekochan mplayer benchmark :)

Really though, it's quite beautiful to look at...and quite mean to your computer :)
Sat, I meant to take pictures of the inside of the machine. ;-) Maybe on the web or you can ftp them to me, and i'll host them... :-) Want a look inside!
The Bandito wrote: In a few years, no doubt, you'll be able to buy a computer,
software and operating system that will match the capabilities
of your current Amiga at about the price you paid for the
Amiga way back when. But you can smile to yourself, knowing
that you were touching the future years before the rest of
the world. And that other computers and operating systems
will do with brute force what the Amiga did years before with
grace, elegance and style.


Eroteme.ch - my end of the internet...
Hakimoto wrote: Sat, I meant to take pictures of the inside of the machine. ;-) Maybe on the web or you can ftp them to me, and i'll host them... :-) Want a look inside!


There's lots of HP workstation photos around ... the inside is nothing special. They're like all the older HP stuff used to be - unimaginative but sturdy as hell. Nowhere near as nicely-designed as SGI's.

However, they're cheaper and they have bunches more cpu power .... damn sgi anyway. R18k. Damn them damn them damn them.

This is funny, and so much like what SGI did :

Borrowed from http://www.sparcproductdirectory.com/view44.html

In the mid 1990s Sun Microsystems was a cool band. They played sweet songs like "Open Systems". They drove fast SPARC accelerated systems. And they made money for their investors. It looked like they could do no wrong.

How Did Sun Microsystems Fall from Grace?

It wasn't just that the songs got less sweet, or the hubris or the (Java) drugs. Fashions are fickle. The times changed, and the fans changed but the old rockers didn't notice or didn't seem to care.

Sun's decline was charted in many articles in the SPARC Product Directory as it happened. Here are some of the highlights.

In 1996 Sun stopped actively promoting its "SPARC" brand and instead Sun and Java became the new brands. Later when most other SPARC server companies had been driven out of business, this was taken as a sign that Sun may be playing the open systems tunes, but its real tastes were proprietary.

In 1999 Sun's star shone brightly enough that it could have killed off the fledgeling Linux market by launching its own range of Solaris x86 servers, and promoting its OS as an open source standard. But Sun clearly gave the impression that it didn't want to soil its hands with that fithy Intel hardware. Four years later, when Sun tried to go down that route. It was already well worn by others who had been there before.

In 2000 the trendy tunes in the computer market were all about network storage. Sun tried to get into that. But it had too much of a loner image to fit in with all those Intel server users. And it was too fat to squeeze in as a low cost supplier. We said it wouldn't work at the time. Sun spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire a new image. But what the market saw was mutton dressed as lamb. It wasn't buying.


[ ring any bells ? "SGI" logo, to the tune of fifty million $$ ? ]

In 2001 Sun got hit by a treble whammy. The dotcom generation, its biggest fans, were getting old or had passed on. And reliability problems dented the cool image of its SPARC servers. And actually when you took a closer look at those SPARC processors they didn't seem so fast any more. Sun had lost its edge.

In the next few years Sun's revenue continued to decline. Its profits disappeared. It tried to make a lame comeback by playing some newer Intel/Linux tunes. But if you looked closely at their videos you could see the group wasn't really singing at all. They had been dubbed. Sun had become a follower of fashion, and was no longer a leader. But can Sun still make a comeback?


possible answers :

Future #2 - Get the Business Consultants in and Make Sun More Profitable

This strategy would cut investment in technology and dispose of business units which were non-core. It's easy to imagine what the hatchet men would do in the case of Sun...

Exit the unprofitable Intel/Linux business. Sell off Java as a medium sized software company. Chop away at the unprofitable entry level SPARC server range. Sack 50% of the VARs and take more business directly in the mid to high end SPARC server market. Stop piddling around making the world's most expensive me-too network storage, and buy all of it in from outside.

That would work fine for about a year, and Sun could get good profits that way on 30% lower revenue and being a $5 Billion company. But what would happen after that? Cutting back on technology would mean that the company could continue being profitable for maybe another two year as the revenue trickled south to $1 Billion. In three years the company would have lost its edge, the SPARC processor line would be regarded as a joke, and the company would have a slow lingering death as a small services organization living off a customer base which was just too lazy to unplug its legacy systems.

Whatever other criticisms you may level against Sun's CEO, Scott McNealy - being parsimonious with development budgets isn't one of them. Fortunately Sun hasn't started down this route yet. But if the top management changes, it could still happen. So watch out.
Hakimoto: I got the pics, send me the infos for the upload.
You may need to crop them a bit...

Scott Tarr: the built-in graphics only has 15pin VGA, the additional FX5 has both VGA and DVI. And Stereo.

Marco/Sat
Sat, I'll send you a PM later (hakimoto writes it down) for ftp access to my Intergraph machine.
The Bandito wrote: In a few years, no doubt, you'll be able to buy a computer,
software and operating system that will match the capabilities
of your current Amiga at about the price you paid for the
Amiga way back when. But you can smile to yourself, knowing
that you were touching the future years before the rest of
the world. And that other computers and operating systems
will do with brute force what the Amiga did years before with
grace, elegance and style.


Eroteme.ch - my end of the internet...
I too have an HP B2000. I ran HP-UX for a while and found it to be buggy, have broken package management and have little freeware available. I reformatted and installed Debian linux. But.....the built in video card is unsupported in linux except in text mode....so I ordered a vid card that should work. Lately I've been using an sgi indy (24bit XL) with X11 forwarding to display the b2000's graphics, its not a bad system for a temporary hack. If anyone would like to try out that system I offer free shells on it. Check out http://the1.no-ip.com for more info.

Overall I definitly perfer both linux and Irix over HP-UX, and the built in graphics on the B2k were nothing special either. Design wise machine does look powerfull: it has a cool front pannel mini-lcd, lots of space inside, and a giant cylindrical heat sync on the PA-8500. The 8500 with 1.5 meg cache probably has the best price/performance ratio or any RISC I've seen out there. In intiger performance, It's equilivant to maybe a PIII 500mhz. Floating point wise, you would have to go over a ghz on an x86 to match it. Bus bandwidth wise, I bet the B2000 is closer to a PC than an SGI.
I have a few C300 with the 400MHz processors, and while the clock
speed is higher, I just can't get use to CDE after working with IRIX.
I put Linux on it as an experiment and it was too slow.

Not that it is a true benchmark, but I ran SETI on it with HP-UX and
Linux and the results were about 8 hours on HP-UX, and over 10
running Linux. My Octane R12k 300, runs SETI in just under 7.

I have pictures of the outside of it, nothing special though, just something
to show some friends.

http://gallery2.charlesschwalbach.com/album02

I have two extra if anyone is really interested.

---
Charles
I think you meant to say C300 0 . :P
the1: if FX2 is supported on Debian I can send you one for shipping cost.
For the freeware, did you tried hpux.connect.org.uk? Something is actually available.
What release of HPUX did you used? I use 11i at work and doesn't seems so terrible in sw management.

CDE does depress me too... have you tried Gnome? It's available even if not really updated...

About I/O: in the x000 series of workstation you get ultra2scsi (80MB/s) and from 2 to 4 PCI buses ranging from 266MB/s to 768MB/s each.
For instance C3000 has 4 PCI buses while my B2000 inly has 2 :(

Marco/Sat