UX400S in SUN 3/160

[cjl@ai.mit.edu (Chris Lindblad)]

    Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 13:27 PST
    From: JFK@bold-eagle.varian.dialnet.symbolics.com (Joe F. Karnicky)

    I am trying to configure a SUN platform in which to run a UX400S board
    as cheaply as possible.  I am considering using a SUN 3/160C
    with 4 Megs of RAM, one 140 M disk with 1/4" tape and one 327 M disk.
    (I can get one of these from one of the Varian operating divisions
    at 70% depreciation).

    I realize there are preferrable host choices, but price is going to
    be a *BIG* issue.

    I'd appreciate any advice as to whether this system will work.
    Am I buying into any forseeable problems, limitations?

It sounds like this will work, except that you're going to be tight on memory.
X runs sluggishly on sun with only 4 megabytes.  This means you sun will page
a bit as you switch windows.

Disk space may be tight too if you don't have a file server.  The disk sizes
you gave are before formatting.  You should determine just how much disk space
you'll have after formatting.  The UX400 board will need at least 200
megabytes for its FEP file system, and you'll probably need about 32 megabytes
of sun paging.  Then you need space for all your UNIX files, including X.  You
can probably fit all the UNIX files on the 140MB disk, but it will be a tight
squeeze.