I sent out my request on Friday for other peoples experience with
Sun PCi cards.
Those that replied seem to be happy with the their PCi cards. I now
suspect that some our problems are because our "C:" drives are not big
enough.
Incidentally there is a new version of the PCi software available v 1.2.1
(which doesn't support Solaris 2.5.1 or Windows 95). It can be down-loaded
from
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/
Release notes and other information about the cards is also available
at the above URL.
My original question is below with some of the replies received below that.
I'm very grateful to David Forness, Michael Connolly, Mark Fromm,
Brian Laughton and Jeff Kennedy.
- David -
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
> Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 11:13:32 +0100 (BST)
> From: David A Stewart <das@postbox.ee.ed.ac.uk>
> Subject: SunPCi card
> To: sun-managers@sunmanagers.ececs.uc.edu
>
>
> We are having problems running Office 97 under Windows 98 on a
> SunPCi card in an Ultra 10. If we access files via NFS then it
> is very slow, if we use samba then after a while it crashes/locks up
>
> Has anyone had any better success than us. If you have what is your
> configuration (amount of RAM C drive size etc etc).
>
> Thanks
>
>
> - David -
>
>
RESPONSES
From: David Forness
I have not actually tried Win98 but we found that Win95 had many problems with
networking and Office 97 so that may be related. We decided to go with WinNT
4.0 and it is a VERY stable environment, relatively. We are using the AMD400;
192MB RAM; 2GB (max) C drive; Solaris boxes are Ultra 5 with 256MB RAM; Solaris
2.6.
From: Michael Connolly
What version of SunPCi?
I have noticed that if there are a lot of files in an NFS mount then access
to that directory is slow, too. I just find the file I need and copy it to
the winblows desktop and work there. The I put it back when I'm done. (Also
using StarOffice more than Orifice97.) One with fewer files is not so bad. I
have:
SunPCi 300Mhz
64 Mb RAM
750Mb C:\
SunPCi 1.2.1
prom flashed to version 57 (i believe)
Oddly enough I also can run Softwindows95
and don't experience that same slowdown on an NFS mount.
From: Mark Fromm
I have a couple Ultra 5's with SunPCI cards in them, and they are
working great for me. On my home Ultra 5, I ran Win95 for 6 months, then
converted to Win98 (with office 97). No problems.
On my work Ultra 5, I have been running WinNT 4.0 with office 97.
Between these two Ultra's, my SunPCI machines map drives to Unix
NFS mounted disks (home and work), NT servers (work), and Linux machines
running Samba (home).
By chance are you running your C: drives over NFS? This would be a
killer. I run my C: drives as files on the local Ultra 5 machines disk
drive. This helps performance enormously.
From: Jeff Kennedy
I'm running 95 not 98 but I can access all files via nfs from both
novell servers and netapp's. We don't use samba so I don't know about
that.
I have the 300MHz AMD chip with 64 MB's RAM, a 500 MB hard drive, and
several mapped drives to 2 novell servers, a netapp's, and my local
Ultra 5. Haven't had any issues like what you are describing. I use
Netscape mail from windoze and have not had an abnormal problem.
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