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From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: OS cost component of workstation
Message-ID: <2840@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 6 Nov 90 13:38:44 GMT
References: <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> <42310@mips.mips.COM> <3686@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1990Nov1.234831.2066@ico.isc.com> <3699@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 33

In article <3699@skye.ed.ac.uk> richard@aiai.UUCP (Richard Tobin) writes:

| I merely pointed it out because when it happens, which might or might
| not be within a year, it's likely to make quite a difference to the 
| workstation market.  In particular, I think it will extend that market
| downwards to cheap 386 machines.

  If by "cheap" you mean "low part of the price range," as in "cheap
car," at the moment you just can't buy a decent unix machine which fits
the "cheap 386" class. I have been trying for over a year to identify a
configuration which will run unix cheaply, as part of my "cheap-ix"
project. I've evaluated about 15 machines (with the help of friends),
and concluded that to run a useful unix environment (as opposed to a
toy), you want 8MB RAM and 200MB disk. Otherwise you give up compilers,
or X, or news, or whatever, and you certainly give up performance.

  An SX, even at 16MHz, seems to be a reasonable chip to do the job, but
you can't get acceptable characteristics without RAM and disk. I would
therefore dispute that you will ever be able to use the "cheap 386,"
which will be forever a capon intended for MS-DOS.

  Oh, and if you get your o/s from FSF, remember the size of their grep,
bison, flex, emacs, etc. Even on V.4, with everything in the world in my
kernel, and drivers for every device ever invented, emacs is bigger than
the kernel. I have no information on what the size of their system will
be, but past software shows that in the past they have favored
functionality and performance over size reduction.

  However, the prices are coming down to the point where even the
midrange system is getting affordable.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
      The Twin Peaks Halloween costume: stark naked in a body bag