Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!sun-barr!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: <13348@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 21 Jul 90 03:20:13 GMT References: <1027@tau.sm.luth.se> <13183@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1028@tau.sm.luth.se> <13236@cbmvax.commodore.com> <6055@sugar.hackercorp.com> <13283@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1990Jul20.234155.27729@spock.UUCP> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 135 In article <1990Jul20.234155.27729@spock.UUCP> lancelot@spock.UUCP (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: >In article <13283@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) writes: >>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? ... The NeXT folk, who do seem to >>run pretty large executable/data spaces, are using a 40 Meg drive just for >>swap space. >And on my desk at work, I am using 48 meg for swap. DEC suggests, actually, >that I use *67* meg for swap on their workstations running X. When my A3000 comes in, I may opt for 50 Megs of Real Memory. Of course, AmigaOS isn't doing virtual stuff yet. But based on practical virtual memory swap spaces, I don't see a problem. But that would just be for kicks anyway; I have yet to run out of the 9 or so megs in my A2500 setup here... >We had to jump up and down just to get 208 meg drives to hold the OS and >some other niceties. And I *work* there. But isn't that always the case. I've been trying to order an A3000 for my office for two months, and they always seem to be out of stock. All the goodies go to the customers, once the thing is finished. >I can run V7 on a PDP with a single RL02 - about 10 meg. I don't mind V7, >it's rather nice after SYS V and BSD monsters. And of course, there are V7-alikes that work just dandy on 8086s or 68000s. Which is why I always say "modern UNIX" in conjunctions with the phrase "memory pig". >>>80 Meg is nicer. >>That's about minimally acceptible for a system that's actually going to be >>used. >Oh, come on. Mark Williams Co. sells a UNIX clone called "Coherent". Yeah, we played around with that at one point. GRR could tell some real stories. The Commodore Coherent Machine, or C900, was a Z8000-based computer with monochrome megapixel display, vintage 1985 and earlier. It lost out to the Amiga, which given the growth of Zilog vs. Motorola in retrospect is a good thing. But at the time, the C900 was definitely a workstation class machine, while the original Amiga was a kick-butt personal computer. >It has a 64K kernel. They recommend 10 meg of disk. I don't believe it'll >be too useful in 10 meg, but I plan to put it on my dad's laptop with 40. >UNIX is beautiful because it's SMALL. I should NOT have to pay 1/2 the cost >of the machine for disk to run the OS. I don't think anyone's claiming that a plain UNIX is a pig. After all, UNIX did run on really expensive machines that are extremely primitive by today's high end personal computer standards. Really, a PDP-11 was almost as bad as an 80286 machine. But modern UNIX includes stuff that goes far beyond the basic kernel. Most OSs do. IMHO, UNIX gets a bit carried away. After all, just how many varients of the "cat" or "grep" command do you really need? The on-line docs also eat a bit of disk space. X is a cool idea, but it's also big. So the full-blown modern UNIX needs lots of disk space, and lots of memory. That's not to say that a stripped version needs that much more space than a V7, its just that we're all expecting it to do things that V7 never did. I mean, SVR4 incorporates a GUI. V7 never had smart terminal support at the system level. >Shared libraries are a step in the right direction, as are streams, but a >SunOS kernel has those and is 600K - I suppose V.4 comes in around there >somewhere. What is the world coming to? Remember back in the 70s, when you played with a 16K or 32K computer, and the law that any program will expand to use all available memory applied? It still does, only they've had to get really clever about this, since it's a heck of a lot easier to eat up 32K of memory than it is to eat up 4 or 8MB. But we've had some of the best minds in the computer industry working on this problem. And thank the random factors we have! Hardware designers like me would be out of work if the software wasn't constantly outgrowing the available hardware. >Then "Modern UNIX" ain't UNIX. UNIX = small. LARGE = something else. Well, modern UNIX is UNIX, by definition -- AT&T sez it is. Of course, that's marketing talking, not philosophers. We tend to think UNIX is large and the Amiga OS is small, fast, and clever. Depends on your frame of reference. And both OSs have their place. >Where's a AMIX system come in with and without the manuals? I bet it's >about 30 meg or so without, and 40 with? Am I way too high? I hope so. Am >I way too low? Please, I hope not. I had hoped Commodore, who could fit >most of the functionality of UNIX into AmigaDOS, could squeeze the beast down >to size some. But That's nto really fair, I suppose. It isn't fair, but perhaps for other reasons. One of the main points of SVR4 is binary compatibility. So Commodore has very little choice in what they implement, because that's such a tremendous advantage that whatever it takes to run this OS, it's probably worth it if you really need UNIX over AmigaOS. >I wish it had stayed that [simple] way. Remember the Amoeba? Evolution, basically, just ain't going in the direction of _simple_, be it organisms or OSs. Can you think of any OS that has been growing smaller instead of larger? UNIX has a certain amount of architectural baggage it must carry, based on 70s thinking, in order to still be considered UNIX. Something like AmigaOS can be smaller, in some ways through more recent ideas, in other ways through optimizations that favor single users over multiple users, and that kind of thing. >And the reason that people still use UNIX when they're cramped for space or >are only doing a bit of wordprocessing is because enough of its original >personality remains to make it fun to use. That's true. My friend Ed MacK has had an Amiga for several years, programmed under AmigaOS, and still is looking for Amiga UNIX. I've been using UNIX for more years than anything else, though more at the "smart user" level than the "programmer/wizard" level. I don't have any serious complaints, and I do like some of the features, but I really prefer AmigaOS at this point. And I do have the free and clear choice. Of course, there is definitely the "big fish in a little pond" factor -- I can be a reasonable expert on a point or two of the AmigaOS and still be a hardware guy, while there's far too much competition in the race toward UNIX wizardhood. >>>Peter da Silva. `-_-' >>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" >*Thor Simon * Okay, just a little pin-prick...There'll be no more-* If only that trip to Germany had been for this weekend instead of last... -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy The Dave Haynie branch of the New Zealand Fan Club