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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: FACTS ABOUT WB2.0 (Was: Re:WB2.0 for non-A3000)
Message-ID: <1991Mar8.044302.28835@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 8 Mar 91 04:43:02 GMT
References: <1991Feb17.004210.5827@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Feb22.014212.681@NCoast.ORG> <1991Mar1.120528.2418@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 74

In article <1991Mar1.120528.2418@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>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.
	What I mean is that you are getting a basically 16-bit machine to
run Unix with X, and you will have no way to ever go to 32-bit without replacing
the entire machine. Who cares what it is inside. It's the I/O interfaces
(which are 16-bit) and the RAM interfaces (which are usually 32-bit, but
require special, nonstandard RAM boards, and only go to 16 meg anyway). Plus,
at least right now, you can only get 25 Mhz 386SX's, which is certainly a dog
when compared to a 3000 of the same speed.
>> >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.
	Absolutely. Now take a look at what a machine with the vastly
better Zorro III bus would give you, running in a real, full-32 bit
environment.
>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.
	Exactly. The 3000 makes an EXCELLENT Unix box. So far ahead of a
box designed to be DOS compatible that it isn't funny. There are many reasons
to go with a 3000 other than running AmigaDOS. It is simply a better
platform for Unix than any ISA or EISA system.
>> 	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".
	So what. You would need more of them to accomplish the same thing,
and for every box you buy you need a monitor, hard drive, and the same
amount of RAM. And the performance, which is more important, is far below
that of the 3000. I really don't see what the big deal is about the 386SX
being 32-bits internally. It's not your internal speed that usually limits
Unix operations, but rather the speed of your I/O subsystem. In any case,
the 68030 in the 3000 is 32-bits inside and out, and is a faster
CPU at the same speeds anyway (when compared against the 386DX).
>
>Also... the RAM isn't on the ISA bus, so it's not so bad.
	But RAM access is not that big of a deal. On any machine on a
network or being used by more than one person the main limiting factor is
the speed at which things can pass over the bus. And on ISA and EISA
systems this is very much a limiting factor. Plus the design of the bus
itself requires more work on the part of the main CPU to handle and
drive it, unlike the Zorro bus systems, which are capable of working in a
multiple bus master situation reliably.
>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.
	I understood you to mean that you had located most of your other
work on the other machines, and were for some reason using the machine with
the faster CPU as a computing box.
>
>That's exactly what we do. The right box in the right place. And there are
>plenty of right places for PCs.
	And just as many for Amigas serving the same purpose as the PC.
Only on the Amiga you would have a better windowing system (if you were
using the native Amiga mode), or at least a faster local end to work
with as well.

			Dave