Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!altos!altos86!ti From: ti@altos86.Altos.COM (Ti Kan) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: 486 computers and Unix Message-ID: <4651@altos86.Altos.COM> Date: 29 Jan 91 22:45:51 GMT References: <712@nox.se> <1049@gistdev.gist.com> <1991Jan11.024255.14681@NCoast.ORG> Reply-To: ti@altos86.UUCP (Ti Kan) Organization: Altos Computer Systems, San Jose, CA Lines: 39 In article <1991Jan11.024255.14681@NCoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes: >As quoted from <1049@gistdev.gist.com> by flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett): >Telotech upgraded its Altos 1000 to a 486 processor about a year ago. No >fancy paper to sign, nothing. But Altos did note that they did not have >problems caused by the 486 bugs on the 1000. They may have delayed the 5000 >for a while because of 486 glitches, however --- I don't know. There were a couple of 486-related bugs that caused concern in the early days of the 486 (circa end of 1989). The first of these was the bug with certain floating point operations, and the second was the bug with the 486 EISA chip set. The Altos 486/1000 was the first dedicated 486 UNIX machine to ship in December 1989, but all the units shipped were equipped with B6 or later stepping of the 486 chip, which does not have the floating point bug. Also, since the 486/1000 is not ISA or EISA based, it does not suffer from the second problem. The Altos 486/5000 is EISA-based, but by the time the systems hit the market, the EISA chip set bugs were already fixed. Again, the none of the Altos systems shipped has the above bugs. We use the 486/5000 extensively in house here in Altos software engineering, and have not seen any problems inherent in the 486. Our main development system, where all UNIX kernel, device driver, utilities, communication software, and other work is done, is an Altos 486/5000 at 33MHz. It has typically an average of 30+ users logged on, often with several users doing extensive kernel code compilations. This system also has in excess of 2GB of disk space (6 SCSI hard disks and two SCSI tape drives, one of which is an Exabyte 8mm, connected to two SCSI host adapters) and over 30 serial ports enabled, running on an ethernet of some 80+ systems. This should suffice to illustrate that the system is quite well loaded with real work, and again, no 486 problems. -Ti -- Ti Kan | vorsprung durch technik! \\\ Internet: ti@altos.com \\\ UUCP: ...!{sun|sco|pyramid|amdahl|uunet}!altos!ti /// \\\ The opinions herein are not necessarily those of Altos. ////////\