4.1 delays

[henry Balen]

girish at heasfs.gsfc.nasa.gov wrote:
>Yes, I agree. We received 4.1 for Sun3 but none for Sun4 and SparcStn's.
>And since Sun4 acts as a file and boot server, what does one do??  Wait
>for the more powerful machine to go to 4.1.  I thought Sun had finally
>gotten around to doing a good job.  I was dreaming :-)

Things appear to be slightly different in the UK. Our site has a Sparc330
and a Sparcstation with maintenance on both (hardware and software).  We
have received 4.1 for the Sparcstation (4.1c) and for our Sun 3/260 but
*not* for the Sparc330! The reason we have been given for Sun is that at
the time of drawing up the maintenance contracts Sun UK didn't realise
that the OS for the Sparc330 and Sparcstation are different. Sun UK
haven't yet decided if there should be an extra media charge for sites
with both Sparcservers (330's) and sparcstations!! A copy of 4.1 for the
330 was supposed to have been shipped to us last week (to arrive at the
end of the week).  We have to put special requests in for upgrades for the
Sparc330 until Sun UK decide what to do for sites with mutiple `Sparc
architectures'. (So much for Sparc compatibility.)

Eduardo Krell wrote:
>At least the CD-ROM with SunOS contains the binaries for sun3, sun3x, sun4
>and sun4c and can be booted from a sun4 or sun4c. This will cut down on
>the number of media we get every time. And it's free when you order the
>CD-ROM for $995 list price, until August 31st.

Yes, CD-ROM is a great idea. The major drawback is that customers are
paying $995 (or 750 pounds sterling) for a CD-ROM which gives major
savings to Sun (in cost of distribution and making of upgrades) whilst it
is unusable for anything else.

Henry Balen <balen at camscan.co.uk>