Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: Altos 5000 Summary: back to reality Message-ID: <1990Aug22.171700.23382@ico.isc.com> Date: 22 Aug 90 17:17:00 GMT References: <1990Aug16.174514.2646@NCoast.ORG> <15759@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <3848@altos86.Altos.COM> Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO Lines: 96 ti@altos86.Altos.COM (Ti Kan) responds to a flame-ette from Foulk about the Altos 5000... > ...On the other hand, when you think 386-ATbus > boxes you are still thinking "Personal Computer"... Not necessarily. We use AT-bus machines for most of our "server" roles, and they work just fine. In fact, with fast disks and a good file system (like ours:-) the performance is quite good. > Perhaps I am going to sound like I am plugging our systems,... [followed by ~ 100 lines of "plugs"] Yes, you do sound that way, but let's just take it as an invitation to a "critical examination" of your claims. > Our Altos 5000 supports 200 users. What serial port card out there > with a "standard" SCO driver can support such a requirement?... This is nonsense. "Supporting" a user is very much more than allowing a terminal to be plugged in. Quite simply put, it doesn't matter whether you can handle the I/O connections or even the I/O bandwidth; you don't have the CPU power to support 200 people actually *using* the system. On terminal boards - it's good that you've got some intelligence out on the boards, since interrupt handling is one of the weak points of the 386/486, but that's really nothing particularly unusual. (Even my modem's got a 68000 in it.) > We chose to integrate many functions onto a single "Base I/O card" > card, which is shipped with every System 5000. This card has a floppy > controller, a SCSI hard disk controller, two RS232 serial ports > (corresponding to COM1 and COM2 for compatibility), a parallel port > (again, corresponds to LPT1 for compatibility), and an ethernet port. Many (most?) *motherboards* nowadays have the floppy, 2 serial, parallel built in. They also have IDE, which is a good "base" disk interface. So you're up a little from that, since you're spending one slot instead of the two (SCSI, net) that a vanilla machine would take. > ...With the largest currently supported SCSI disk at 1GB > per disk, the System 5000 can have up to 30GB of total disk space... Total expansion capacity is a useful number to look at to be sure it's not too small, but mostly it's a red herring. Again, you're going to run out of CPU power long before you run out of disk, if your users are doing anything serious. > To further improve disk performance and reliability, we offer disk > striping and disk mirroring. The parallel seeks of disk striping > decrease average seek time and the redundancy of disk mirroring > provides a measure of data security that is quite necessary in a > large system... Disk striping is truly useful, but disk mirroring is mostly a pawn in the feature game. It takes substantially more I/O bandwidth to do the double output, and it doubles the cost of disk storage. Why not spend only a few bucks extra and buy reliable disks? > You see, when we built the System 5000 we aimed very high. This > system is so capable that we position it as a mini-computer, among > the ranks of Pyramids and Sequents... People are using standard 386 and 486 machines as mini-computers, like it or not. >...Yet we priced it reasonably, > that it is in the same league as the "PCs", such as Compaq Systempro > and the HP Vectra. Let's get down to some real numbers here. We ought to look at the price: performance in quantitative terms, not glowing generalities. I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm saying you haven't told us anything on this point. > I think the Altos 5000 differs from other such 486 EISA boxes (which > includes the Compaq and HP mentioned above, as well as a zillion other > clones), precesely because we designed it, software and hardware, > from the ground up to be a non-PC. You're waving the term "PC" about like a red flag. What's the real issue? Let's get *beyond* the name game. We often use "PC" to identify the bus structure, or to denote a *86-based machine, but they're used for all sorts of stuff...not just "sitting on a desk, plunking away DOS-like." What I see, overall, is that you've got a fairly capable, quite expandable 486 EISA machine. I don't see anything qualitatively different about it. > See the review of the System 5000 in the July issue of _UNIX WORLD_... _UNIX_World_?? Oh, yeah...isn't that the magazine that just carried an article about UNIX-based BBSes without a single word about either USENET or ARPANET? I think you need a stronger source of review than that. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.