RE: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:suns-at-home-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Henry Nelson
> Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:45 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Suns-at-Home] Power supply efficiency on older model Sun
> equipment
> 
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:18:56PM -0300, D G Teed wrote:
> > rising cost of energy, and the appearance of new
> > processors and standards like 80 Plus, I'm starting
> > to look at my options.  Is it better to save these
> > old Sun machines from land-fill, or is it better
> > to prevent coal from being burned to keep them in operation?
> 
> Better to prevent coal from being burned, IMHO.  Even better to keep
> the old Suns around as mantle pieces or weights for pressing leaves
> than chucking them out.  I'll be using mine for furniture before
> they go to any landfill.
> 
> > 80plus power supply.  I'd probably keep one Sun
> > box for test drives of new Sun Solaris and that sort of
> > thing, but not keep any Sun machine on 24 hours a day.
> 
> Hmmm.  Will "new" Sun Solaris run on any of those old machines.
> I think Solaris 2.6 was the last I could run on my IPCs, and
> Solaris 2.8 was the last for my Classics.  I run NetBSD on all
> of my Sun equipment in use today.
> 
> > The Intel or AMD solution is cheap, adequate for home
> > server loads, and light on the power bill,
> 
> I moved my two servers from SparcStation5s to Intel PentIIIs two
> years ago.  The electric bill did go down noticably.  In addition,
> one great advantage I found was to be able to easily cover the two
> servers with one UPS.  With the Suns I had to have one for each
> machine.  Also, I enjoyed being able to increase memory size about
> 10 times for practically nothing money wise.
> 
> > as well as not making the house too hot.
> 
> For sure!
> 
> --
> henry n.
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Oddly enough I noticed exactly the same thing- My ultra 2 and A5000
array (plus the A/C unit running to keep them from melting) cost more to
power for a year than buying a P3 box, SATA RAID controller, and a bunch
of SATA disks.

It's not as fun, but you can't argue with numbers like that.

Also I measured the real power consumption of the old 3/80 I have, and
it weighs in at 50W at full tilt. Of course it's a real exercise in
patience- it took 2 days to compile Perl5 on it.

-Mike