Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!cmcl2!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request From: bywater!scifi!njs@uunet.uu.net (Nicholas J. Simicich) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Re: looking for Sun/RT comparison Message-ID: <478@scifi.UUCP> Date: 20 Dec 88 08:07:08 GMT References: <8811272156.AA27086@turing.cs.rpi.edu> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Organization: Sun-Spots Lines: 38 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu Original-Date: 11 Dec 88 01:56:35 GMT X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 63, message 11 of 11 X-Issue-Reference: v7n42 franklin@turing.cs.rpi.edu (W. Randolph Franklin WRF) writes: >Don't forget to check the absolute capabilities, as well as speeds. > >1. AIX has no job control, i.e. no foregrounding a background job. This is true. >2. The smaller RTs have small max memories, and (used to?) have no >serial ports. This statement is only partially true. The desktop machines have just as much memory capacity as the floor model machines do. Or perhaps the desktop I use really doesn't have 16 meg in it. :-) It is true that the desktop doesn't have the two planar serial ports. It also doesn't have as many of the AT/XT slots and it doesn't have internal space to plug in three hard drives. I find that I can just plug in the 'blazer card modem into the AT bus, and use it, so the serial port is not really a requirement on my home machine. Additionally, the AT serial/parallel card works, if you want to hook up an external modem, and there are also 4 and 8 port cards available. I use a 3rd party 16 port card on a work machine. >3. There are many 3rd party hw and sw suppliers for Sun. There are many 3rd party hw and sw suppliers for the RT. Remembering that the RT has an AT style bus, many of the different cards will work. Your mileage may vary, but a recent posting in comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt spoke well of getting cards that just worked. The problem is driving the cards but there is a /dev/bus protocol that allows access to the AT bus. And, of course, the PC emulator can drive many of the cards directly. At least some of the 3rd party folks will provide drivers. As for software, I walked around Unix Expo, and not only were there lots of 3rd party software people in the IBM booth, but many of the people with their own booths were advertising support for the RT. It seems that more packages are ported every day. >..... -- Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)