Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!linus!gwr
From: gwr@linus.UUCP (Gordon W. Ross)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Mylex & ISC UNIX ??
Message-ID: <88371@linus.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 90 16:43:31 GMT
Reply-To: gwr@linus.mitre.org
Distribution: usa
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, MA
Lines: 38

In article <259f8f41:664comp.unix.i386@vpnet.UUCP>,
	vrona@vpnet.UUCP (David Vrona) writes:
> I recently purchased a Mylex MWS386-20 motherboard with 4 MB...

May I congradulate you on your excellent choice!  I'm not sure who was
bashing Mylex, but I've been very happy with the Mylex 386-20 (4 MB)
I purchased about six months ago, and I've never heard from a Mylex
owner who was dissatisfied with the board.  The board comes with good
documentation, a 4 year warranty, and it's made in the USA!

ISC UNIX will probably run fine on the Mylex.  I'v had ESIX on my
machine for a few months.  No problems (except for user error).

Note well about ESIX:  Lots of people here are bashing ESIX based on
experience with their Rev.A and Rev.B releases, especially the
terribly slow X servers that were included.  However, be assured, the
X server in ESIX Rev.C (now current) is completely different.  The new
X server supports several graphics cards and hi-res modes and runs at
a very respectable speed.  The ESIX people claim they worked hard on
the X server for Rev.C and I think it shows.  The other major
improvement (and reason I paid the $99 upgrade fee) was the cartridge
tape driver (for Wangtec and others) which now can keep the tape
streaming.  The Rev.B tape driver always did a painfully slow:
start,stop,start,stop,... for as much as a half hour!

Here's a useful tidbit on setting up your Mylex board for UNIX.
I initially had trouble installing UNIX (the boot floppy would hang
the machine) and it turned out that the Mylex BIOS feature of
emulating an 80387 chip was confusing the UNIX boot program.
I turned off the '387 emulation feature and UNIX works like a charm.

I have no affiliation with either Mylex nor ESIX other than as a
satisfied customer.  I think ESIX is a bargain.

-- 
Gordon W. Ross (E025)	ARPA:  gwr@linus.mitre.org
The MITRE Corporation	UUCP:  {decvax,philabs}!linus!gwr
Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730	(617) 271-3205