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I picked up an Ultra 5 and I loaded Solaris 10 on it. It's really slow,

and it's writing to the disk constantly.

System Information shows:


Physical memory: 128M
Virtual memory (Swap): 565M
Virtual Memory in Use: 42%


I'm assuming I need to pick up some RAM?


I know that buying RAM for my PC is full of gotcha's - same for the
Ultra 5?
What do I need to know/do to ensure that I get the right stuff?
Any tips on a good place to pick up a stick of RAM for the Ultra?


Thanks,
Robert

engineer10325 <engineer10325@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I picked up an Ultra 5 and I loaded Solaris 10 on it. It's really slow,

> and it's writing to the disk constantly.

Have you logged in?

CDE? JDS?

S10 takes a bit more memory than older versions.
JDS takes a lot more memory than older windowing systems.

You could force it to run a lightweight window manager like twm or
something.

> System Information shows:

> Physical memory: 128M
> Virtual memory (Swap): 565M
> Virtual Memory in Use: 42%

> I'm assuming I need to pick up some RAM?

If you want to run JDS, you're definitely going to want more RAM.

As a standalone, no graphics machine, 128 might suffice for tasks that
don't need much memory.

> I know that buying RAM for my PC is full of gotcha's - same for the
> Ultra 5?

Not so much gotchas as just hunting it down.

> What do I need to know/do to ensure that I get the right stuff?
> Any tips on a good place to pick up a stick of RAM for the Ultra?

ebay or other resellers. Anyone selling it will declare it memory for
Ultra5/Ultra10. It's not manufactured any more. You can't get it from
kingston/crucial/etc...

There are some "tall" modules that are compatible with both the 5 and
10, but will not physically fit in the Ultra 5 as long as the floppy is
installed.

--
Darren Dunham ddunham@taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant TAOS http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
< This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

engineer10325 wrote:
> I picked up an Ultra 5 and I loaded Solaris 10 on it. It's really slow,
>
> and it's writing to the disk constantly.
>
> System Information shows:
> Physical memory: 128M
> Virtual memory (Swap): 565M
> Virtual Memory in Use: 42%
> I'm assuming I need to pick up some RAM?

Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,
but you need far, far more RAM than that. If you're using 42% of 565MB,
that means you'll need at least 384MB to do what you're doing now
without swapping.

> I know that buying RAM for my PC is full of gotcha's - same for the
> Ultra 5?
> What do I need to know/do to ensure that I get the right stuff?
> Any tips on a good place to pick up a stick of RAM for the Ultra?

How technical are you? I faced the same dilemma with my first 5 and fell
into a number of pitfalls, but learnt a few things on the way:

Easiest and surest way to go is to buy Sun replacement parts for the
U5/10. They come up for sale on eBay quite frequently, but you pay a
premium for the certainty.

Technically what you need is the following:
168p buffered 3.3V EDO DIMMs with 10 or 11-bit column addressing.

Now the first part is easy as pie to find, vast numbers of Compaq
Pentium Pro servers ran on 168p buffered 3.3V EDO DIMMs. Unfortunately
the standard i440FX memory controller worked with 8 or 9-bit column
addressing. Putting this memory into your Sun will cause strange things
to happen. The amount of memory will either be 25% under-reported
(resulting in - well, less memory) or will be 50% over-reported,
resulting in an utter crash when Solaris tries to write to or read from
any of the non-existent memory.

The problem is that almost no sellers will know what addressing their
DIMMs have. It is theoretically possible to discover this from the codes
on the chips, but even though I have quite some experience in that sort
of thing I've never quite managed it with enough certainty...

There is one ray of light though: some or other HP system (presumably
PA-RISC, although I've never figured out exactly which one) also uses
this 10/11b column addressing. HP 168p buffered EDO 3.3V DIMMs will work.

Probably the best compromise is to go for DIMMs advertised as working in
a U5/10 and to get the guarantee you can return for a refund if it turns
out not to work correctly.
That said there's another way too - sometimes people getting rid of
their old Sun stuff have little idea of exactly what they're disposing
of. After having finally gotten my U5 reliably up to 384MB with two HP
DIMMs I was offered "an old Sun machine" for EUR25 (about USD30). The
description sounded like a U10, which it indeed was. What I hadn't dared
hope was that it was maxed out at 1GB of official Sun memory, with a
440MHz 2MB CPU (the fastest for these machines) and a nice fat Creator3D
card in the UPA slot. The EUR25 was considerably less than 1GB of Sun
memory on its own would have cost, let alone the rest of the system.
Keeping your eyes open for complete machines is a good way to secure an
upgrade

dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
> Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,

These machines were dog slow - even five years ago.

--
Daniel

Daniel Rock wrote:
> dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
>> Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,
>
> These machines were dog slow - even five years ago.
>
Five years ago these things were EOL already. The question is what you
use them for. Even my maxed out U10 is incapable of playing a DiVX film
fullscreen - which a lousy little P2-400 x86 would have no trouble with
- so looking at pure CPU power they could be called dog slow - but as a
light little fileserver they're excellent, getting better throughput
rates than you'd get with a faster clocked x86 system.

It certainly is not faster than a U30, let alone anything newer, but
still fully useable (in fact I know of two still used in production at
my workplace, one as an in-house DHCP server, the other to store cases)

dion_b wrote:
> Daniel Rock wrote:
>> dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
>>> Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,
>>
>> These machines were dog slow - even five years ago.
>>
> Five years ago these things were EOL already. The question is what you
> use them for. Even my maxed out U10 is incapable of playing a DiVX film
> fullscreen - which a lousy little P2-400 x86 would have no trouble with
> - so looking at pure CPU power they could be called dog slow - but as a
> light little fileserver they're excellent, getting better throughput
> rates than you'd get with a faster clocked x86 system.
>
> It certainly is not faster than a U30, let alone anything newer, but
> still fully useable (in fact I know of two still used in production at
> my workplace, one as an in-house DHCP server, the other to store cases)

There are quite a few still in production at my workplace, but we are
having difficulty retiring them gracefully as they are failing at an
alarming rate.

The problem is the filter capacitors for the CPU core power supply - the
row of seven 1500uF 6.3v capacitors on the edge of the motherboard
adjacent to the processor. They should be flat on top, and show no signs
of leakage from underneath - but 90% of the U5/U10 motherboards I've
checked recently have bulging and/or leaking capacitors.

If any of these capacitors are visibly bulging, tilted, or leaking, the
system will fail soon - frequently the next time power is recycled.

Anyone still running a U5 or U10 would be well advised to inspect their
filter capacitors and plan accordingly.

Sunny

Sunny wrote:

> dion_b wrote:
>
>> Daniel Rock wrote:
>>
>>> dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,
>>>
>>>
>>> These machines were dog slow - even five years ago.
>>>
>> Five years ago these things were EOL already. The question is what you
>> use them for. Even my maxed out U10 is incapable of playing a DiVX
>> film fullscreen - which a lousy little P2-400 x86 would have no
>> trouble with - so looking at pure CPU power they could be called dog
>> slow - but as a light little fileserver they're excellent, getting
>> better throughput rates than you'd get with a faster clocked x86 system.
>>
>> It certainly is not faster than a U30, let alone anything newer, but
>> still fully useable (in fact I know of two still used in production at
>> my workplace, one as an in-house DHCP server, the other to store cases)
>
>
> There are quite a few still in production at my workplace, but we are
> having difficulty retiring them gracefully as they are failing at an
> alarming rate.
>
> The problem is the filter capacitors for the CPU core power supply - the
> row of seven 1500uF 6.3v capacitors on the edge of the motherboard
> adjacent to the processor. They should be flat on top, and show no signs
> of leakage from underneath - but 90% of the U5/U10 motherboards I've
> checked recently have bulging and/or leaking capacitors.
>
> If any of these capacitors are visibly bulging, tilted, or leaking, the
> system will fail soon - frequently the next time power is recycled.
>
> Anyone still running a U5 or U10 would be well advised to inspect their
> filter capacitors and plan accordingly.
>
> Sunny

It's a well know problem in electronics of that vintage.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/02...dos_big_brand/

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
> Daniel Rock wrote:
>> dion_b <dion_b@nospam.no> wrote:
>>> Dead right - these machines can be quite nippy even by todays standard,
>>
>> These machines were dog slow - even five years ago.
>>
> Five years ago these things were EOL already.

.... and replaced by even more crappy machines: Blade 100


> The question is what you
> use them for. Even my maxed out U10 is incapable of playing a DiVX film
> fullscreen - which a lousy little P2-400 x86 would have no trouble with
> - so looking at pure CPU power they could be called dog slow - but as a
> light little fileserver they're excellent, getting better throughput
> rates than you'd get with a faster clocked x86 system.

Only in your dreams. Their IDE controller was total crap. My old P-II 450
(1998) was in every aspect faster than any Ultra 5/10, including serving
files.

--
Daniel

In article <1160167842.531156.11440@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.c om>,
"engineer10325" <engineer10325@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I picked up an Ultra 5 and I loaded Solaris 10 on it. It's really slow,
>
> and it's writing to the disk constantly.
>
> System Information shows:
>
>
> Physical memory: 128M
> Virtual memory (Swap): 565M
> Virtual Memory in Use: 42%
>
>
> I'm assuming I need to pick up some RAM?
>
>
> I know that buying RAM for my PC is full of gotcha's - same for the
> Ultra 5?
> What do I need to know/do to ensure that I get the right stuff?
> Any tips on a good place to pick up a stick of RAM for the Ultra?

I have a couple of 128MB Sun original barcode modules you can have for
the cost of shipping. Let me know if you want them.

Josh

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Josh McKee wrote:

> In article <1160167842.531156.11440@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.c om>,
> "engineer10325" <engineer10325@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I picked up an Ultra 5 and I loaded Solaris 10 on it. It's really slow,
> >
> > and it's writing to the disk constantly.
> >
> > System Information shows:
> >
> >
> > Physical memory: 128M
> > Virtual memory (Swap): 565M
> > Virtual Memory in Use: 42%
> >
> >
> > I'm assuming I need to pick up some RAM?
> >
> >
> > I know that buying RAM for my PC is full of gotcha's - same for the
> > Ultra 5?
> > What do I need to know/do to ensure that I get the right stuff?
> > Any tips on a good place to pick up a stick of RAM for the Ultra?
>
> I have a couple of 128MB Sun original barcode modules you can have for
> the cost of shipping. Let me know if you want them.

Tip to the OP: take up Josh on his generous offer. 128 MB is
woefully inadequate for Solaris 10, especially considering the
Ultra [5,10]'s crappy IDE implementation.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich