Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!beta!egdorf From: egdorf@zaphod.lanl.gov (Skip Egdorf) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Useful? (was OS cost component of workstation) Message-ID: Date: 11 Nov 90 19:53:38 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> <2840@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Sender: news@lanl.gov Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 33 In-reply-to: peter@ficc.ferranti.com's message of 8 Nov 90 03:38:38 GMT In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > Sigh. 4 Meg and 72 Meg disk is planty for a useful UNIX development > system. I've done real work with a 40 Meg disk, but it's not very > happy. > > Peter da Silva. `-_-' > peter@ferranti.com In 1976, my UNIX system was a PDP-11/40 96KB 4-RK05 (10MB) machine With the 4 disks, all of V6 was on line, and I thought it was a very useful environment. OS cost was $20K, machine was (think now...) $50K In 1979, my 11/70 had 256K and 67MB. I thought it was a useful development environment for UNIX. OS cost $25K, Machine was $120K. In 1982, my VAX 750 (sn 219) had 2MB and 67MB. I thought it was a useful UNIX development environment. OS cost $30K, Machine was $120K. In 1984, my Sun 2/120 had 2MB and 130MB. I thought it was a useful UNIX development environment. OS cost was free (but binary only...) and the machine was $40K. Do I detect a common thread here somewhere??? My current machine is a Solbourne 500 with 32MB and 1.8GB. The disks are full. I TRIED to make do with only 1.2Gb while one disk was being replaced, but found that it just wasn't a useful development environment. I can hardly wait 'til next year. Skip Egdorf hwe@lanl.gov