Sun prices
Sun prices
Posted May 28, 2003 22:29 UTC (Wed) by Peter (guest, #1127)In reply to: Sun prices by beejaybee
Parent article: The ponytail versus the penguin (Economist)
Sun, HP etc. must make a fortune out of ignorant purchasing departments who simply don't dare buy generic components whatever the price difference.
Sometimes they even play what I consider dirty tricks.
We had a bunch of RS/6000s around here and we wanted Fast Ethernet. IBM sells a PCI card for several hundred dollars, and it's a rebranded 3C905. But it's actually an OEM part, with its own PCI ID, and the IBM AIX driver does not recognise a generic 3C905 - you actually have to get the IBM version. I once tried to binary-edit the AIX driver to try and insert the 3Com PCI IDs into it, but to no avail.
And no, this isn't about Open Firmware or anything - we're not booting off the network, so that shouldn't be an issue. It's just the general lack of third-party driver support for commercial Unix that lets them get away with this stuff.
Then there was the time I was browsing the IBM parts catalog CD-ROM, and I came across a 2400-baud modem for like $700. In 1998. We all got a good laugh out of that one....