Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: NeXT >> 386SX Message-ID: Date: 17 Mar 91 01:31:21 GMT References: <1002@stewart.UUCP> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 33 In-Reply-To: jerry@polygen.uucp's message of 11 Mar 91 18:42:20 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: sunws5.sys.cs.psu.edu In article <1002@stewart.UUCP> jerry@polygen.uucp (Jerry Sheckel) writes: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >> You're going to need at >> least a 25MHz 486 to even be in the ballpark. > >For what? What are you getting the machine for? As a personal UNIX box the >NeXTstation is short of the mark: it just doesn't have the disk space for >its Mach: it requires something like 30M of virtual memory right out of the >box for NeXTstep, plus the operating system executables and all the bitmaps >and there's not damn much left of that 100M disk. > Quite true. About processor speed: I'm running UNIX with X and Motif and all that stuff on a supercheap (REALLY CHEAP) 16 MHz 386SX with 8MB RAM. I find that the processor is plenty fast enough. It seems that for UNIX, especially for a personal UNIX box, the disk performance is much more of a limiting factor than processor speed. About disk space: 100MB is simply not going to cut it for a modern UNIX workstation, especially if you plan on doing any software development for a GUI subsystem. My UNIX/X/Motif/DevSys installation consumes about 60MB, and when you add 20MB for swap space, you can see that 100MB is going to be a bit tight. If you want to run any useful software, like a desktop publishing or spreadsheet package, you WILL need a bigger disk. Then buy more disk space!! The NeXT comes in either 105MB, 200MB, 400MB, or 660MB configurations. Why buy a cheap Unix machine and another "neat" computer when you can have everything in one box? -Mike