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From: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (The devil himself)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.workstations
Subject: Re: Inexpensive Unix box?
Message-ID: <8511192231.AA05216@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, 15-Nov-85 13:40:54 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8511192231.AA05216
Posted: Fri Nov 15 13:40:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 06:47:36 EST
Reply-To: tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 55
Approved: works@red.rutgers.edu

In article <279@geowhiz.UUCP> larry@geowhiz.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes:
>I have a friend (who won't be a friend anymore if Pnews chokes
>again) who bought an AT&T Unix PC.  He's happy with the performance
>but not with the hard disk.  The controller is the WD1010xx (which I
>think causes all the problems).  The problem appears to be that the
>disk gets randomly corrupted, leading to disk errors.  This poor guy
>has been restoring his 40M disk from floppies about once a day...
>He has not been able to get the problem fixed despite intensive (?)
>efforts by AT&T (his service contract has no penalty clause).  So,
>two questions:

>1) Does anyone know how to fix the problem?  Want some quick $$$?

We had a similar problem with the 6130, which uses the WD2010.  The
2010 (and I suspect, the 1010) has a "misfeature", which bites you if
you try and get too fancy with the disk driver.  There's an easy fix,
but you need source for the disk driver, which I am assuming you
don't have.

>2) Given that we expect minimal response to (1), he's looking for a 
>   different system.  Desired features:
>
>   o  32 architecture (at least internally, a 16bit bus is
>      acceptable).
>   o  Unix, preferably 4.2, but SysV is better than MS-DOS :-)
>   o  At least 4 serial ports, 6 would be better.
>   o  1 or more parallel ports (laser printer).
>   o  Either a reliable supplier f peripherals or a well known bus 
>      (multi, VME, etc).
>   o  Availibilty of solid service highly desirable (no brand X).
>   o  Price tag of less than $15,000 (it is almost christmas :-)
>
>   Systems we've heard of (sort of) and want info on:
>
>   o  Altos
>   o  Symetrics
>   o  Integrated {Solutions | Systems}
>   o  Opus (320xx, SysV in a PC slot)
>   o  DSI-32 (Unix ready for this yet?)
>   o  Sun (Out of reach price wise?)
>   o  uVaxII (also expensive?)

Add the Tek 6130.  The base system includes: NS 32016 running at
10MHz, 1 MB RAM, floating point unit, 20MB wini, 2 rs232 ports,
ethernet, GPIB.  It runs Utek, which is an enhanced version of 4.2,
with some sys V things added, and a distributed file system.  A
system with 2 additional rs232 ports and 2 parallel printer ports is
under $11k.

I'll be posting an announcement to net.announce.newprod soon about
the 'S' systems, which are bundled turnkey systems, and release 2.2,
which includes shared memory and user configurable kernel.

Snoopy
tektronix!tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy