Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!lobster!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Re: FACTS ABOUT WB2.0 (Was: Re:WB2.0 for non-A3000) Message-ID: <1991Mar1.120528.2418@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 1 Mar 91 12:05:28 GMT References: <1991Feb16.014403.11533@NCoast.ORG> <1991Feb17.004210.5827@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Feb22.014212.681@NCoast.ORG> Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX Lines: 80 I said: > You can buy a 386SX box with VGA and room for 8 MB on the motherboard > for $875. That's big enough to run UNIX, easily. In fact you can probably > get the box, a big disk, and the UNIX license (V.3.2) for the neighborhood > of $2000. In article <1991Feb22.014212.681@NCoast.ORG> davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright) writes: > Sure you can, and it will be: > 16-bit, with no way to ever go to 32-bit. What do you mean by this? The 80386SX is *purely* a 32-bit CPU inside. This is strictly a performance consideration... the VGA sucks from that viewpoint too. The point I'm making is that it *is* available, and *does* work. And the 80386 is far enough up the curve of intels slugfest with real processors that you won't be hurting too much. Me, I spent the money on a 3000 running Intuition. But I *have* a cheesy cheapo UNIX box already. > >Makes even the base NeXT educational price look sick. > If you are willing to settle for such a limited amount of power. Well, I have a *smaller* machine than this (16 MHz 80386 with Hercules and only 4M on the motherboard) and it's more of a usable UNIX box than a base NeXT simply because there's less disk/CPU spent on the interface. > >As is the Amiga 2000, remember. Zorro-II is a 16-bit bus. > Sure it is, but is is much faster than the ISA bus, supports multiple > bus masters, and is even more important, an autoconfig bus. The ISA and EISA > buses suck for a heavily used Unix system. Once you start sticking in 7 or > 8 cards you have to really fight to find a free interupt, I/O port, etc. Once you stick in 7 or 8 cards you're looking at a whole different type of system. Neither the NeXT nor your ISA bus based machine are suitable for the sort of heavy use you're talking about. A 3000 might be. We use Multibus II. > >VGA is way slow, and for a windowing system the A3000 is way better. But > >for a base UNIX box -- fileserver or terminal server/timeshare system -- > >it's hard to beat a 386SX. > This is not true at all. A 3886SX sucks, no way around it. It's 32 bit internally and it's *cheap*, spelled "I can buy more boxes than you". > And as someone who knows quite a bit > about Unix, I am suprised you would even consider a bus that has such severe > overhead to be a viable alternative to the Zorro II bus, in any way but price. An alternative for *what*? You place computers by what you need done and what you can afford to use in that slot. Also... the RAM isn't on the ISA bus, so it's not so bad. > >Yes, the Intel 520 is a nice box: Multibus-II, runs 2-headed UNIX on > >486 cards. A real honker. But we still use PCs for network capability > >servers (tapes, terminals, etc). > Using an ISA device for your server when you have faster machines on the > network is silly. Why? Should we load down the 520 with real-time control stuff like terminals or streaming tapes when we can buy a PC for that for about the same cost as 4 dumb terminals? > Why load the most accessed resources like the storage and > network server on a slower machine? The big disks are on the 520. All the boxes are on the network. The slow or infrequently used devices (terminals and printers are *not* high speed devices) are on the slow boxes. These are our capability servers. > You should put them on the fastest machine, > so your more expensive hardware isn't always waiting for the slower machine to > service it. That's exactly what we do. The right box in the right place. And there are plenty of right places for PCs. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' .