Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!brunix!cs132074
From: cs132074@cs.brown.edu (Wildebeest)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: $5000 workstations (???)
Keywords: PCs, OS/2, horsedung
Message-ID: <35230@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 90 20:04:48 GMT
References: <19267@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: cs132074@cs.brown.edu (Wildebeest)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 98

In article <19267@boulder.Colorado.EDU> wallwey@boulder.Colorado.EDU
(WALLWEY DEAN WILLIAM) writes:
>Thanks for the info about prices.  UNIX for the PC, depending on quality,
>can cost from about $400 to $1500.  I think SCO's UNIX cost about $750

You can get (smaller) UNIXes for the PC for c. $200.

>means give you DS2100 performance.  A 386 pc will give you horrible
>performance for running X [at least that is what I heard from people
>limited to 4MB and not using a graphics co-proc board].  This is in part
>due to X11 being kludgy and very poor on performance!  It requires a

Yup - but they rewrote R4, and it's twice as fast.

>OS/2's Presentation Manager is much faster!

OS/2 is a dog.  On a 286, ancient history, processor, it's slow
enough.  On a 386, it curls up and dies.  Tests I've seen show
Xenix running 2 to 5 times as fast on a 386.  We have yet to see
the fabled OS/3 - three years behind schedule, and reputed to be
buggy as hell.

>(By the way Motif's look was derived from PM).

Actually, PM's look was derived from Motif, and is gradually moving
toward it.

>As far as floating point, the PC will really suffer, unless you put in a
>387, or closer to workstation standards a Weitek 3187(sp? - num?) fp
>co-proc.  
Yup.

>Likewise if you bring the price of a workstation down to the price of a
>PC, it will have the quality and performance of a PC or less.  The $5900 DS2100
>is already giving up a lot for the price--monochrome, and diskless.  
>By the time you get the just the box to about $3500,
>it won't be much of a stand-alone workstaion anymore--closer to an
>X-terminal!  Also PCs have the advantage of being a pure commodity.
Prices on workstations are falling like a rock.  A year ago you
couldn't have gotten the system mentioned above for <$10,000.
Nobody's saying they're there yet, but they will be soon.

>Finally there are some other advantages to getting the PC.  You have
>access to all the MS-DOS (the most popular operating system in the world

Doesn't exactly make it the best, just the first.

>I have been told!)programs, you can run OS/2 (witch I think is
>better than UNIX for the average user--even the engineer in the future when
>more programs are written for it--subjective I know).  And of course you can
>run UNIX programs (albeit (sp?) a little slower) if you must. One thing
>you have to realize is that the PC world is centered around the idea
>-personal, not shared, and cheap!  The UNIX workstation world, although its
>goal is the same, its origins are not--

Well, you're entitled to your opinions, but OS/2 stinks.  It's a
proprietary operating system, not compatible with anything else, slow,
running only on an archaic processor, and you have to pay extra $$$$
for IBM's crappy development tools.

>As for the engineer,  more and more software is showing up on the PC.
>Here at CU, we use PSPICE and MATLAB in horrible DOS quite easily from
>personal example. ( By the way I'm an Ungrad-Elec Eng. with quite a bit of
>workstation experience -DS3100 to be exact!) Granted there are much better
>versions of these and other programs for workstations,

Damn straight.

>but just wait till the OS/2 versions come out!

They'll cost a BUNDLE; OS/2 is a low-volume OS and people will have to
charge a lot to recoup their design investment.  Besides, we've
already been waiting two years, and there aren't >40 programs for
OS/2.

>student versions) tend to be much cheaper!

Most of the good UNIX ones are free.

>DOS!!!  With OS/2, the environment power for programs parallels that of UNIX,
>with design tools for C that make their UNIX equivalents of Vi, CC, LINT and
>DBX, look like they are from the dark ages!
What the hell are you talking about?  IBM's proprietary tools cost
huge $$, and are mostly mediocre.  Independent ones are better, but
still cost you through the nose, and are incompatible with each other.

>
>Another $.02 worth (I think?)
>	Dean Wallwey

I'd gladly pay you $.02 to quit spouting this bull in comp.arch.

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