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[previous article] [next article]Several users of Sun 3/50 workstations have asked about the possibility of upgrading the memory capacity of the machines. Until recently this was not possible; however, in the past several months add-on vendors have been releasing 3/50 memory upgrade boards. ECN, CS and PUCC have been testing and evaluating these boards for use in campus Sun 3/50 systems.
When purchased from Sun, the 3/50's have 4 Megabytes of main memory. Currently the ECN has three Sun 3/50 systems running with 8 Megabytes of memory and one unit running with 12 Megabytes of memory. The extra memory helps improve performance by keeping the workstations from swapping jobs out to disk. ECN system staff members who have used the large memory 3/50's have all been impressed with the improved performance. Some have even traded their 3/60 units for 3/50's with extra memory!
To minimize maintenance problems, the ECN has focused evaluation efforts on finding an acceptable plug-in memory upgrade for the Sun 3/50. Sun has declared that they will NOT repair boards that have had "solder-in" memory upgrades installed. The ECN has tested the plug-in and the solder-in version of the upgrade and also determined that the solder-in version is not a feasible option. Don't make a costly mistake and order the wrong type of board--check with me first!
There are also fears that the add-in memory could be too much of a load on the power supplies of Suns 3/50, thereby becoming a maintenance/reliability problem. To date we have not seen any adverse effect on the reliability of units with the upgrades installed.
Currently the prices for the 4 megabyte upgrade range from $1500 to $2000. The price for the 8 megabyte upgrade ranges from $2700 to $5000. As more vendors enter the 3/50 memory market, the prices are dropping. If you are interested in purchasing memory upgrades for your Sun 3/50 workstations, contact Curt Freeland (curt@mischief.ecn.purdue.edu) for current vendor/pricing information.
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