To Weitek or not?

S. Newhouse

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Nov 20, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/20/96

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I have a SS2 (trusty old box) which I use at home. This thing has worked
great for 5 years. Now that I am running Solaris 2.5.1 I would like a
little more speed if it won't wreck other things. So, I think about the
Weitek power-up chip.

Some questions:
I suspect that the increase in speed will cause some increase in heat
being generated. Fixing this box comes out of my own pocket so I don't
want to cause unnecessary expenses. Does anyone have bad experience
with disks or memory problems after installing a Power-up chip? Any
other things to worry about?

TIA,

-sen

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Mike Guilbault

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Nov 21, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/21/96

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I installed the Weitek in two SparcIIs 12 months ago. No problems
encountered. The increase in cpu speed is perceptable but not
obvious.

Robert Dinse

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Nov 21, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/21/96

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In article <329334...@math.msu.edu>, "S. Newhouse" <newh...@math.msu.edu> writes:
> I have a SS2 (trusty old box) which I use at home. This thing has worked
> great for 5 years. Now that I am running Solaris 2.5.1 I would like a
> little more speed if it won't wreck other things. So, I think about the
> Weitek power-up chip.
>
> Some questions:
> I suspect that the increase in speed will cause some increase in heat
> being generated. Fixing this box comes out of my own pocket so I don't
> want to cause unnecessary expenses. Does anyone have bad experience
> with disks or memory problems after installing a Power-up chip? Any
> other things to worry about?
>
> TIA,
>
> -sen

For what it's worth, I've got IPX's with Weitek's in them. In addition
one of them has a 64MB SS-2 memory board for a total of 128MB of RAM (Yes, I
know Sun says 64MB is max, but the SS-2 memory board works fine in the IPX).
In another box I have two SCSI controllers. Haven't had any noticable heat
problems.

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James J. Hall

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Nov 21, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/21/96

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I don't know what you are paying for this Weitek Upgrade, but you may
consider putting in one of those 70Mhz SPARC 5 clone boards instead.
you might be able to find a used one for just a little more then the
Weitek, and the performance difference is much better.

Just my two cents, Jim

Bob Hoekstra

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Nov 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/27/96

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Mike Guilbault wrote:
>
> I installed the Weitek in two SparcIIs 12 months ago. No problems
> encountered. The increase in cpu speed is perceptable but not
> obvious.

I have been using a SS2 with Weitek, 64MB memory at home (UK) for nearly 1 year.
Previously it was used very heavily by about 12 users at a commercial site
(Switzerland) for over 1 year and also about 1 year before the upgrade. They
recently upgraded to a big Ultra, which is why I now have the machine :-).

I have had no problems at all. When it moved from Switzerland (back) to the UK, it
came in a suitcase and suffered no distress.

As far as speed increase is concerned, I tested it before and after doing the Weitek
upgrade. The standard SS2 was about half the speed of a SS10/51 and with Weitek it
was about 85% as fast. This was done using a "real world" calculation (I was working
for a software house producing processor-intensive calc-type software). Your results
will be very different if your processes are disk or io bound (of course).

I reckon it is an excellent upgrade at the price.
--
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Bob Hoekstra: Consultant from Hoekstra Systems Ltd.
Home email: b...@khamsin.demon.co.uk
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