Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!gamer!markd
From: markd@gamer.UUCP (Mark Davidson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: BEYOND DOS ? WHAT NEXT !
Summary: 386 Unix speed
Message-ID: <213@gamer.UUCP>
Date: 7 Nov 89 05:28:19 GMT
References: <13110@s.ms.uky.edu> <1989Nov4.185710.809@rand.org>
Organization: Mark E. Davidson, Plantation, FL
Lines: 28

In article <1989Nov4.185710.809@rand.org>, edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) writes:
> In article <13110@s.ms.uky.edu> munish@ms.uky.edu (Munish Mehra) writes:
> >I recently installed Unix (Microport) on a 20 MHz (Non Caching) Compaq
> >386 portable. It has a 100 MB 28 ms HardDisk and 3 MB of 80 ns RAM.
  [...stuff about slowness deleted...]
> 
> I have a 25MHz uncaching no-name 386 with a 61ms, 65MB disk drive
> (temporary) and only 2MB of RAM (also a temporary restriction).
  [...Ed talks about the speed of his Interactive system...]

I must agree with Ed.  I have a lowly 16 MHz 80386 with only 2 megabytes of
RAM running SCO Xenix System V/386.  Currently, I use a 65 MB 28 ms RLL
drive.  While logged on reading news (in addition to having a root session
on another screen), I logged onto a third virtual screen and tried your little
test.  "hello, world" compiled and linked in 6.5 seconds; with an extra brace
added to cause a syntax error, the error occurred in about 1 second.  Turning
on FULL optimization in the C compiler increased the compile/link to about
12 seconds.  Considering how little RAM I have in this computer, I am very
happy with Xenix's performance.  I will admit that one time 'lc' took four
seconds to respond, but that was in a directory that contained some 500 files;
also, the system was processing the news at the time.  Perhaps the version of
Unix you were trying was at fault.  Those numbers you got are pathetic.  
However, as Ed has pointed out, there are others using other ports that respond
EXTREMELY well on our systems.

Just a happy SCO customer...

Mark E. Davidson, ...!novavax!gamer!markd