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From: info-ridge@ucbvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.ridge
Subject: Re:  general opinion from the user community
Message-ID: <8512111844.AA16646@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Dec-85 13:44:19 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.8512111844.AA16646
Posted: Wed Dec 11 13:44:19 1985
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The Ridge was purchased here as a number crunching computer to offload large
floating point background jobs from our Vax 750.  For this application I would
say that the Ridge has been a success. There have been bugs found related to
numerical computation on the Ridge but 4.2 BSD's f77 compiler for the VAX has
hardly been an example to emulate in that respect.

However for interactive use the Ridge is a disaster.  At load average 3 the
interactive reponse of the Ridge feels slower than the Vax does at load
average 10.  This is depressing for a machine that is supposed to be a fair
amount faster than the Vax 750.  The Ridge has 7 Mb of memory on it so I don't
see how paging could be the problem.

Our next system is a Sun 3 that will be dedicated to image processing.  We'll
see how that compares.  The 68020 is reputed to be a hot chip. Sun now will
give source to (most) of their software to educational institutions for $1000.
As I have an undying hatred of binary-only software distributions this gives me
another reason to prefer the Sun.  The Microvax II was the main contender.
Source for Microvax Ultrix for an educational institution is now $750.  However
we went with the Sun 3 on the assumption that it was faster and the display
software somewhat more mature.

Bill Sebok			Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,philabs,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls