Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: I need Help with the A3000!
Message-ID: <13283@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 18 Jul 90 18:05:21 GMT
References: <1027@tau.sm.luth.se> <13183@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1028@tau.sm.luth.se> <13236@cbmvax.commodore.com> <6055@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 57

In article <6055@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <13236@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup) writes:
>> 	Any Unix will require lots of hardware to make it useful (you need
>> ~100 Meg of disk, ~200 is better, and a SCSI tape drive for loading
>> release tapes, etc).

>40 Meg is plenty for UNIX, a swap device, and a small (say, 5 meg) user area.

What can you really do in 5 Megs?  Sure, that's enough space for a bit of
wordprocessing, but certainly not enough for serious Desktop Publishing.
Not to mention any CAD work, or even programming on a medium sized C program.
As long as your programs aren't very large.  The NeXT folk, who do seem to
run pretty large executable/data spaces, are using a 40 Meg drive just for
swap space.

>80 Meg is nicer. 

That's about minimally acceptible for a system that's actually going to be
used.  

>Now if you're talking about what *Commodore's* UNIX requires, that's fine, but
>I've done plenty of useful work with System V.3.2 on a single 40 Meg drive. If
>AMIX needs more than that you'll have a hell of a time competing with the 386
>clone world.

However, I have yet to play with a System V.4 on a Clone, either.  Most of
them are V.3.2 and very little else.  Certainly these vendors will _sell_
you NFS, X and Motif, some Berkeley tools, etc. to bring you up to the level 
of a V.4, but then you're not running on a 40 Meg drive with 2 Meg of RAM
anymore.  Randell's thinking of the full system here, not a subset.  Modern
UNIX ain't small.

>Older versions have been quite frugal. I remember a PC/XT with a 20 Meg under
>Xenix Version 7... I had nearly half the disk free for user files.

And I have this rather smallish AmigaOS here on my office system, with 180
megs, and have about 80 megs free at the moment.  And I'm not working with 
video stuff or anything like that.  What does the actual OS part of this
really take up, 2 megs or so.  But then you add in the good PD stuff, a
couple of commercial applications, NFS, custom applications, some source code 
directories, the chip simulation data I'm working on now, etc. and little old
AmigaOS starts eating disk space.  It's not going to be any different under
UNIX, only the OS (which of course includes things I don't have in the AmigaOS
right now like on-line documentation) is larger.  If all you're using the 
system for is a bit of wordprocessing, then a small hard disk will be just 
dandy.  But if that's it, why even bother with UNIX.  A small disk only makes
sense in a network environment, where the central file server has a large
disk to make up for it.

>Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
><peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.


-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
	"I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit" -REM