SYSBDES@TCSVM.BITNET (Dan Smith) (02/27/86)
I'm currently looking around for a unix machine to do software
development work on. I have priced some of the stride systems and
have looked at the IBM-RT (gasp!! overpriced!!) As far as I can tell
the Stride 440 with 40MB disk and 1MB of memory should do the trick
for me but I would like to see if any other systems exist in the 4K
to 6K price range (hardware & basic software) which have given people
good service.
I would prefer a 680x0 or a 32xxxx processor machine and the
load would be at most 2 users (i.e. 4-6 user processes). Question:
is my estimate of hardware realistic to give reasonible performance
with unix I don't have any firsthand experence balancing the
performance/hardware considerations for a unix system, but I have
seen many times that if you can swing it feed the machine memory till
it bulges. Also from the software end of things, who has a good
system 5 port in the given price range without any nasty quirks or
undocumented 'features'. As far as I can tell Stride has been doing
a good job in both the hardware and software arena for several years
and still seem to give a lot of bang/buck. Comments and curses are
welcome.
Dan Smith (aka MadMan)
BITNET: SYSBDES@TCSVM
ARPA: SYSBDES%TCSVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
UUCP: You Tell Me??
Ma Bell: (504) 865-5631
Real Paper: Tulane University
Tulane Computer Services
Attn: Dan Smith, Systems Group
6823 St. Charles Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70118-5698zrm@GCC-MILO.UUCP (Zigurd R. Mednieks) (02/28/86)
If I HAD to go but a Unix machine with my own money, I would get a Radio Shack AT clone and run Xenix on it. If I had a going business and could afford something nicer, a Sun 3 would be the ticket. Hope that help, -Zigurd
simon@SIMON_PC.UUCP (03/01/86)
Look at the AT&T 7300 (Unix PC). It has a 68010 CPU, real demand
page virtual memory, good keyboard, good screen, reasonable graphics
resolution, true Unix System V (release 3.0), small & quite. I enjoy
both my machines very much, and still have to see a program that will
run on a VAX 750 any faster (actually the 7300 is almost twice as
fast [same load] as the 750. The way to buy it cheap is this (works
for me..):
1. Go to computerland / Microage / mail order / etc place.
2. Buy the 512K, 10mb machine (useless as is, but wait).
3. Make sure you haggle the price (10% off list or better).
4. Buy a 2mb memory board from Alloy Engineering
(+1 617 875 6100).
5. Load system software ONLY, run some messy cpu/memory bound
process for few days, test the modem (built-in), the
serial port, the parallel port, etc.
6. In the mean time order a "74mbyte" (actually ~59) for IBM
AT from 47th Street Photo (N.Y.) +1 800 847 4191
(+1 212 260 4415)
6a. Buy an external disk expansion box (1 full height disk)
as well as two ribbon cables (female on one side, card
edge (female) on the other. They need to be long enough
to reach from inside the expansion box to the back of the
computer.
7. Buy/steal/make two ribbon cable extentions (female on one
side, male with mounting flanges on the other). One of
these cables needs to be 34 conductors, the other one
20. Length of no more than 12 inches each.
8. Open the computer (2 screws in the back, 2 under
keyboard's latches.
9. Remove & discard 10mb disk.
10. replace OEM cables with short extension cables, route
cables neatly to the outside & mount (using flanges).
11. Close computer, carefully.
12. Connect long ribbon cables (coming from disk, inside
expansion box) to ribbon cables coming from computer.
13. Boot diagnostics, if hard disk spins but will not talk to
computer, you have one (or both) ribbon cable(s) installed
backwards.
14. Use the format, test winchester procedures to prepare
disk. (use the multi-user option of formatting (4000
blocks swap partition.
15. Re-load Unix, etc. to the machine.
16. Test Carefully
17. Enjoy in good health.
As an option to the above you can buy the 3B1, pay $2-3K more and
have a little pretier version of same. The only diference is in the
amount of memory; the 3B1 has 1/2mb mother board therfore will run up
to 4mb RAM, the 7300 has only 512K and can use only 2.5mb max (enough
for me).
If 2mb of memory are enough (vs. 2.5mb) you can buy the EIA/RAM board
from AT&T. Buy it as .5mb board, buy 120ns 256K RAM chips
mail-order, and install them yourself.
Total Cost (Estimate):
7300 $4,200.00
RAM $1,400.00
Disk $1,500.00
Expansion Box $150.00
Unix foundation $275.00
Unix Utilities $450.00 /* See Note */
Taxes, Delivery, Agony $800.00
Total Damage $8,775.00
Oooops! This is more than you asked for. As a matter of fact this
is more that I though (or told my wife!). But it makes for a neat
system.
/* Utilities Note: This will make an almost complete Version V
release 3.0 (troff is excluded). You do get vi, ex, ksh (not csh,
but just as good (bad)). It also gives you SV documentation, etc. */
--EOB--
p.s. If you care, give me a call or drop a note. You may even
convice me to sell you one of the two I have so I can buy another toy
and play some more.
Simon Shapiro ...!ihnp4!lll-lcc!simon_pc!simon
1335 Creekside dr. #4 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 +1 933 9468ludemann@UBC-CS.UUCP (Peter Ludemann) (03/02/86)
A friend of mine has a Whitechapel MG-1. It's got a 32032 (32x32
coming "sometime soon") and runs 4.1bsd (4.2 is apparently in
beta-test). He describes it as a poor man's Sun and is very pleased
with it. It cost him around cdn$10,000 which would be us$7000 or so,
I think (>1meg memory, 20meg disk, 800x1000 bit-map screen, un*x,
window manager, various ports, mouse, ...). I'll give you more info
if you want.
--
-- Peter Ludemann
ludemann@ubc-cs.uucp (ubc-vision!ubc-cs!ludemann)
ludemann@cs.ubc.cdn (ludemann@cs.ubc.cdn@ubc.mailnet)
ludemann@ubc.csnet (ludemann%ubc.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA)smith@ETHOS.UUCP (03/02/86)
Have you looked at the AT&T 7300 UNIX pc or the 3B1?
---
Gary J. Smith @ ETHOS, Durham, North Carolina
======================================================================
uucp: ihnp4!burl!ethos!smith usm: 707 Ninth St #13 phn: 919/286-7055
mcnc!rti-sel!ethos!smith Durham, NC 27705 bbs: 919/286-3573dml@BU-CS.UUCP (David Matthew Lyle) (03/03/86)
Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC. I am about
ready to get a machine, but have not yet decided if I want to get a
UNIX machine or a MS-DOS(PC-DOS) machine.
Thanks!
--
=====================================================================
David Matthew Lyle Boston University
BITNET: cdstdt1@bostonu
dml@buenga
ARPA: matt@mit-mc(Until it Dies) 233 Bay State Road
CSNET: dml@bostonu Boston, Massachusetts
02215guy@SUN.UUCP (Guy Harris) (03/03/86)
> Look at the AT&T 7300 (Unix PC). It has a 68010 CPU, real demand > page virtual memory, good keyboard, good screen, reasonable > graphics resolution, true Unix System V (release 3.0), small & > quite. ... ("Small and quite" what? You meant, I presume, "small and quiet".) That's "true UNIX System V" as in "true UNIX System V, Release 1". Not System V, Release 2, and definitely not System V, Release 3, which from what various AT&T Information Systems representatives have said will be out sometime this summer or so (I believe that's what Jack Scanlon, or was it Mike DeFazio, said in response to the rumors circulating around UniForum). "Release 3.0" of UNIX *for the UNIX PC* is still based on S5R1, although bits of S5R2 may have crept into it. (For that matter, so is the UNIX for the IBM RT PC.)
freed@DUAL.UUCP (Erik Freed) (03/03/86)
I don't know if your realize it, but the low-end Sun 020 workstation is about 8K without disk. It seems that this your best bet if you do not need bus expansion... Call your Sun salesman to find out more. p.s I am not connected with Sun
simon@SIMON_PC.UUCP (03/05/86)
Hi, I have two AT&T Unix PC and love them! Great performance for the money, very intriguing window manager, good korn shell, etc. I answered another request like yours that ended beeing posted by the receiver. As a matter of fact, I also posted recently offer to sale one of these machines (I thought I will need two to handle my load, but one is just enough, and the proceeds of the sale of the second will pay disk expansion of the primary (this) machine. Simon
jack@MCVAX.UUCP (Jack Jansen) (03/05/86)
>A friend of mine has a Whitechapel MG-1. It's got a 32032 (32x32 >coming "sometime soon") and runs 4.1bsd (4.2 is apparently in >beta-test). He describes it as a poor man's Sun and is very pleased >with it. Some corrections: - The MG-1 has a 32016, not a 32032. This doesn't matter that much, since the 32032 is only about 10% faster. - We've been running 4.2 now for over 4 months, so it must be out of beta test by now. - poor man's sun? *poor* man's sun? *POOR* man's sun??? I wouldn't swap mine for a room full of suns!!! (agreed, the sun 3 has better performance than the mg-1, but the user-interface seems to be just as lousy as that of the sun-2. The mg-1 interface isn't perfect either, but at least it is *much* better than what sun gives you). -- Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP The shell is my oyster.
meyer@WWIII.UUCP (Mike Meyer) (03/06/86)
In article <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA> you write: >Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC. I am about >ready to get a machine, but have not yet decided if I want to get a >UNIX machine or a MS-DOS(PC-DOS) machine. > I've owned a PC7300 since last May, and I recommend the machine quite heartily. At the time, the only thing that came close to it in price/ performance was the IBM AT. I found, however, that the 7300 was more cost-effective by the time you bought an AT with a 20MB hard disk, a modem, and software. For 500 dollars, you can get the UNIX Utilities, which includes a c compiler, two debuggers, editors, nroff, lex, yacc, awk, the Korn shell, and lots of other stuff. My particular machine has 1MB RAM and a 20MB hard disk (essential - UNIX and the Utilities take up 7 or 8 MB). I paid list at the time (about 6K, plus printer, tax, and the Utilities), but I've seen the prices go down in the LA area such that you can get a comparable machine for about 4400 dollars now. The machine has a lot of good points. It is very fast on data crunching, the built-in modem is nicely integrated with the system software (a very slick communications package), it has an excellant monitor, and it has the best keyboard I've found. I'd recommend stuffing it with 2 megs of memory - it swaps a lot with one, and I've heard that 1.5 megs and up makes a big difference in speed. There are a lot of third party things available for it now,too, like big hard disks. Third party software is picking up. As far as the UNIX/MS-DOS quandry, it really depends on your intended use. I bought the machine to learn more about system programming and to program in C (lots of other languages are available, too). I consider UNIX to be more of a REAL operating system, and I think the programming environment is superior to anything I've seen for MS-DOS machines. I wasn't impressed with Xenix. However, if you don't expect to program much and you want a machine to do fairly standard applications, like word processing, databases, etc., you might want to get an MS-DOS machine. I'd recommend a Compaq Deskpro, myself. You can get them rather cheaply these days, too, at least in LA. I hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions about the 7300, please feel free to E-mail me. My experience has been that sales people are not very knowledgable about this machine at all, even from AT&T. You can get some advice about the 7300 from people in net.micro.att as well. Do shop around, and check out the third-party options. Mike Meyer Hughes Aircraft EDSG Image and Signal Processing Lab El Segundo, CA (213)616-8141 ...!seismo!scgvaxd!tcville!meyer
njh@ROOT44.UUCP (03/06/86)
I suggest you look at the Torch TripleX. 1Mb basic, up to 4 users, ethernet, X.25, colour monitor. Very pretty, very nice.
cs111olg@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Oleg Kiselev) (03/06/86)
In article <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA> you write: >Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC. I am about >ready to get a machine, but have not yet decided if I want to get a >UNIX machine or a MS-DOS(PC-DOS) machine. > >Thanks! One description : it is S----L----O----W!!!!!! And The ones I've seen (and played with) were *N*O*I*S*Y*!!!!! (Two fans humming away, a hard disk making grinding noises all the time [ swapping?])... With hardware it might have been just those few units I've seen, but that would not account for some particularlu UGLY window interface and particularly SLOW window operations. Also, I *TRIED* to run a WP program on it (Microsoft WORD??? It was there on hard disk). I was typing ahead up to 10 characters -- they would appear on the screen in bursts, and every operation took over a second - you could hear the drive start grinding more furiously (while it was looking for the page???). Now, it could have been the memory size.... My advise to you : benchmark and generally run side by side the UNIX PC (AT&T 7300 PC) and AT&T's AT clone (AT&T 6300+ PC). See which one performs better. Or just get SUN-3!!! (I have seen it advertised for <$9,000 with 40MByte drive and full UNIX 4.2BSD here on UCLA campus) -- DISCLAMER: The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect those of UCLA or it's emloyees and faculty. The might not even be mine for all I know... +------------------------------------+----------------------------- | "VIOLATORS WILL BE TOAD !" |From the steam tunnels of UCLA | The Dungeon Police | Oleg Kiselev, student again +------------------------------------+ ...{ WORLD }!ucla-cs!cs111olg
larry@GEOWHIZ.UUCP (03/10/86)
In article <510480039-17273-cs111olg@PEGASUS.LOCUS.UCLA.EDU> you write: >In article <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA> you write: >>Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC. I am about >One description : it is S----L----O----W!!!!!! And The ones I've >seen (and played with) were *N*O*I*S*Y*!!!!! (Two fans humming away, >a hard disk making grinding noises all the time [ swapping?])... Ummm, I'm a little confused here. Are you refering to the AT&T 7300? If so, you're dead wrong. The 10 meg disk is slow, the terminal is slow, true. But I've used one with an 86meg disk (ST506) and a Zenith h29 terminal (19.2Kbaud) and it runs like a bat out of hell. Somewhere between a 750 and a 780. The cpu benchmarks passed around bear this out, it rates with a Sun-2, a masscomp 500, and above AT's. Not surprising as they all run 68010's. There are a couple of problems though. 1) They didn't bring out the drive select lines so you can only put one hard disk on it. 2) No job control. No job control, no job control, no job control, how I miss job control! Ah, well, I'll just give up hacking :-} Larry McVoy ----------- Arpa: mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu Uucp: {seismo, ihnp4}!uwvax!geowhiz!geophiz!larry "Just remember, wherever you go -- there you are." -Buckaroo Banzai
nazgul@APOLLO.UUCP (Kee Hinckley) (03/13/86)
I don't know what you want your computer for, but if I were to get
any computer for software development I'd get an Apollo DN3000. "Of
course," you say, "you work for Apollo." True, but all biases aside
I still don't think you can beat it, particularly if you want to
develop software for a number of systems. It comes with BSD4.2 *and*
System V. It has a PC bus and will take PC and PC/AT cards, and
there is a PC co-proccessor card on the way. Right there you have a
development system for 3 popular operating systems. Then when you
add in that the black&white version has a 1024/1280 screen (or you
can get the smaller 4 plane color version) with a real windowing
system (transcript pads, icons, invisible windows, dynamically
sizeable windows, default window positions, user-definable
keydefs...) and a 68020 processor -- I used to think that I could
put up with a Mac at home to program on, now I don't think I could
even deal with that. It's too easy to get spoiled by a screen that
allows you to have 4 windows that each are more than 80 characters by
24 lines. Now if I can just persuade Apollo to let me take it home!
(Fat chance, pretty soon they'll come to take my Alpha test one away
and I'll have to go back to a 68000 800x1024 DN400).
Kee Hinckley
Oops, I almost forgot - pricing is in the 9 to 10K range, including a
disk (I think 70Meg is the default) and 2Meg of memory. And of
course, if you get more than one they all network, so you can move
all the system software onto one node and have that much more space
on the other.
*** The above opinions are, of course, mine, and should not
reflect the views of Apollo Computer. ***davidsen%kbsvax.tcpip@GE-CRD.ARPA (03/14/86)
In article <510480039-17273-cs111olg@PEGASUS.LOCUS.UCLA.EDU> cs111olg@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Oleg Kiselev) writes: >In article <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA> you write: >>Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC. I am about >>ready to get a machine, but have not yet decided if I want to get a >>UNIX machine or a MS-DOS(PC-DOS) machine. >> >>Thanks! >One description : it is S----L----O----W!!!!!! And The ones I've >seen (and played with) were *N*O*I*S*Y*!!!!! (Two fans humming away, >a hard disk making grinding noises all the time [ swapping?])... > I ran some benchmarks on a 7300 and a Sun-2, and there was NO difference in CPU performance. If you are having slow response to the window interface you either (a) have the older release 2 interface, an upgrade should be free, or (b) have something running in the background which is eating LOTS of cpu cycles. I use Sun-2 (and Sun-3) machines for Interleaf and a little software development, and I am very pleased with the 7300 for a personal machine at a decent price. With UNIX and 1MB the list is ~$6500, with discounts available. If you don't like the internal drive (fairly slow and noisy as you said) spend $1k and buy a fast 40MB drive from the back of {Byte|PC week|Inforworld|any other computer rag} and hang it on ($1k should include the external box and cables). For more info talk to Randy Suess (ihnp4!chinet!randy)_ who has done some larger disks. I wouldn't give up my DOS machine until all the utilities are available at the same prices, but all my software development is being done under UNIX. Of course, in a year I expect the 386 machines to be out, and I may get one machine which does both.