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From: ST402248@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Scott Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX Seems Fated
Message-ID: <39304@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 17:22:24 GMT
Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu
Lines: 26


>        So setting up an Amiga-based system as a Unix box WOULD be faster,
>and most certainly WOULD be easier than on a ISA based system (which was the
>whole point of this thread). Everytime I have to hunt down which board is at
>which address, and what interupt it uses, and where it's shared memory is I
>have to cringe and wish I was working with an Amiga.


>                        Dave

This is the part I was disputing.  Since UNIX only cares about memory
and disk speed private busses for these things make the issue much
less straight forward than you are assuming.  I'm not claiming that
ISA or even EISA is faster than Amiga slots (I have no idea whether
this is true or not) but that this is not an issue especially on
most '386DX and '486 machines.  With private memory buses and the
somewhat rare private disk buses one cannot state categorically that
these DOS based machines have slower I/O throughput.  Since these are
the only devices that UNIX really cares about (Other than Ethernet, which
had a slower bandwidth than either of these buses anyway) if they aren't
on the expansion slot bus than the bus is somewhat irrelevant.  Of course
if you are doing high bandwidth Data collection like I do, you better have
something better than any of these anyway like direct access dual ported
memory, etc...

                             -- Scott (st402248@brownvm.brown.edu)