lm@geowhiz.UUCP (Larry McVoy) (04/21/85)
I'm faced with having to develop an accounting system on IBM PC's (sigh). I've got a very nice looking brochure that talks about a system III port called PCIX. I was wondering if anyone has used it, and if so, what their reaction was. Is it slow? Is it robust? Do you need an onsite guru? I'm currently at the planning stage and looking for the best operating system for the job. I like the idea of a Unix as we already have several 68010's running Unix; the IBM's would interface nicely if running Unix, less nicely running DOS. Any information/suggestions at all would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Larry McVoy UUCP: uwvax\!geowhiz\!lm ARPA: mcvoy@wisc-rsch.arpa
clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (04/23/85)
In article <179@geowhiz.UUCP> lm@geowhiz.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes: >called PCIX. I was wondering if anyone has used it, and if so, what >their reaction was. Is it slow? Is it robust? Do you need an onsite >guru? I used PC/IX for several months. PC/IX is pretty good considering the hardware that it runs on (XT). I was rather impressed (as were many other local UNIX gurus) with it's performance. It was pretty darn good - the response time was quite good, however, large jobs did take a little longer than you'd probably see on a 680x0. Even so, it probably won't perform particularly well with more than one user. The system was pretty solid as far as quality of implementation and robustness goes, except for one problem. It is running on the 8088 with absolutely *no* memory protection between tasks (and no automatic stack growth either - you have to specify a stack size, the default is usually large enough however). I used to have a couple crashes per week that could best be attributed to not having memory protection. Crashes occured considerably less often (possibly not at all) on machines not being used for program development. Everything else seemed to work properly and as advertised. Another, less major, problem is the problem of addressibility. I'm pretty sure that PC/IX only supported the small 8088 model. This limited programs to 64k text and 64k data (I think). Then again, people lived with non-split-space pdp11's quite well.... As an alternate big-blue route, I would suggest an AT with XENIX instead because it does have memory protection and you get somewhat more CPU horsepower than you would with an XT. Choice between XT/PCIX and AT/XENIX is basically a price/performance (and probably partially robustness) tradeoff. I have no information on AT/XENIX reliability. PCIX on the AT has no memory protection either (because it is running totally in 8088 compatibility mode), however it is faster than PCIX on an XT - I also heard rumors that indicate that it may be faster than XENIX on the AT. UNIX gurus? Well, depends upon what you want to do with it. We had several being totally run by non-UNIX-familiar people. Count upon a few calls to someone who knows UNIX reasonably well per month per system (particularly for software installs etc.). I don't think you need UNIX hackers tho. Hard disk backup on floppies is a real pain. Get a streamer if you can. I'd still prefer a 680x0 system if I could afford it. -- Chris Lewis, Computer X (CANADA) Ltd. UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!mnetor!clewis BELL: (416)-475-1300 ext. 321