Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!news1
From: news1@texbell.swbt.com (Greg Hackney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ncr
Subject: Re: Tower Sys V.3 upgrade
Message-ID: <4482@texbell.swbt.com>
Date: 20 Jul 90 23:32:21 GMT
References: <4382@texbell.sbc.com> <4383@texbell.swbt.com> <282@fdls.odag.or.gov>
Reply-To: news1@tnessd.UUCP (Greg Hackney)
Organization: texbell gateway, dallas
Lines: 28

In article <282@fdls.odag.or.gov> dougw@fdls.odag.or.gov (Doug Walker) writes:

>As long as the issue has been opened, what kind of performance change (if any)
>have users experienced when they went from 02.xx to 03.xx?

texbell, which is an overloaded byte pump, became more responsive with
S5R3, I assume due to the addition of paging, although I didn't bother
running any benchmarks. It has more idle time now, and programs
like Elm run snappier.

The main thing I wanted S5R3 for was for WIN TCP/IP. The Excelan
package that NCR sold us was awfully crude in my opinion, and not suitable
for use by a serious internet site. The WIN stuff is quite an improvement.
Much of the BSD type of networking code will compile and run without
much effort. I personally haven't gotten sendmail and RFS working
to my satisfaction, but just got the software and haven't given up on
it entirely yet.

In summary, the major feature improvements for me were paging and
WIN TCP/IP. If my system was not loaded, and I wasn't networking
it probably wouldn't have been much advantage for me to upgrade.

NCR, if you are listening, I'd be happy to be a beta test site
for System 5 release 4.0. Someone was saying the other day (Interactive
Communications Concepts, Houston, Texas) that the price for a
full 4.0 release for a 386 was $5K. Wow.
--
Greg