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> An Onyx would be half the price of that Y-MP, with superior graphics.

As someone who used both: it also would be a massive downgrade in terms of reliability and system stability. The Onyx I had access to had regular problems with various system hangs and lockups.

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Interesting. I'm sorry to hear that; I actually never used an Onyx but I went from a Cray 2 to a Cray X-MP to a Power Challenge. I was skeptical about Irix and the Challenge, mostly because a bunch of consumer-ish processors seemed like a downgrade, but it turned out to be both fast and rock solid for my workload. That said, I was a consumer, not an administrator, so it's very possible that our admins kept the reliability issues from affecting me.

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