Other than the one bug noted, the system has been stable.
I just upgraded to an S24 video card and have not seen the problem since.
I am rather disappointed with video speeds.
My 333 dual-head Matrox PC is faster.

The system currently has dual 2 GB drives.
I wish to upgrade to much larger drives - dual 9 GB or larger is the goal.
The sun site is not much help on what limits, if any, apply.
At this time I have condensed the requirements to:
1" high, 80 pin SCSI SCA drives.
As indicated, the drive must fit in a standard drive sled to lock in the
funky cage and mate with the connectors.
Sun site lists transfer rate as 10 mbs, higher speeds would seem to be a
waste of money.
I have found hints that some drives run too hot on a fully loaded
system, but no definitive answers.
Sun documents 1,2, 4, and 9 GB sizes several places on the site.
Is there any sort of limit on size, assuming I can get the drive to fit
otherwise?

I have another 128 MB of sun memory ready to bring this fire breather
up to a full 256 MB. Somehow, in the age of multi-GB main memory that
just does not seem as impressive as it once did.
When this is all finished, this box will push web pages using Apache,
Perl, and MySQL. I *know* that a vanilla PC would be quicker but:
   Its a sun box - my very own sun at home!
Ya, I know, get a life and all that.
Sigh.

Mark Browne

<snip>


On Fri, 8 Mar 2002, Mark Browne wrote:
> I am trying to put Mandrake on my Sparcstaion 5.
> Can anyone point me to a list of what SCSI hard drives are compatible with
> this hardware?
> Thanks

 If it's anything like the Sparc 4 (oh wait, it's nearly identical), it
uses SCA hard drives.  Heck, I'll even verify that.
 Yep.  According to http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ss5/ :

"On the left side of the machine is room for two, 1-inch-high SCA SCSI
Harddrives (stacked ontop of one another), with the SCA connector
providing power, SCSIbus, and setting the SCSI ID."

 The only problems I foresee are sleds (which Carl says he has), and
processor speed.  (I hope, for your sake, that you don't have the 170MHz
model; it's known for problems with Linux.)  SCA hard drives aren't
particularly difficult to find; I too have a couple of 1-gig's floating
around, as well as a 2-gig I just (last night) cycled out of my Sparc 4
(which, unfortunately, can only evidently take one HD).  If you're looking
for bigger, MPC (http://www.materialsprocessing.com/) has some used SCA
drives, some of them rather large.

 And huh, I don't think I was aware that Mandrake has a Sparc version,
either.

Jima