Sun/IRAF Site Manager's Guide

Sun/IRAF Site Manager's Guide

6. Host System Requirements

IRAF is currently supported on all Sun models, i.e., the Sun-3, Sun-4, Sun-386i, and SPARCstation (as well as many systems other than Sun of course). Any of these system will make excellent IRAF hosts. Be aware that the 386i is architecturally incompatible with the other Suns, which will cause problems in client/server configurations.

In a typical installation there will be a large central compute server, usually a fast Sun-4 with several Gb of fast SMD or IPI disk and 32-64 Mb of memory, serving a number of SPARCstation or Sun-3 or 4 nodes. For scientific use, a color screen (16 inch is fine) and several hundred Mb of local disk is desirable. The local SCSI disk is comparatively slow and is no substitute for the large, fast disks on the server, but is cheap and is worthwhile for server independence alone. The GX graphics accelerator option available on the newer systems is attractive and is recommended, finances permitting.