daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (The devil himself) (11/15/85)
In article <279@geowhiz.UUCP> larry@geowhiz.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes: >I have a friend (who won't be a friend anymore if Pnews chokes >again) who bought an AT&T Unix PC. He's happy with the performance >but not with the hard disk. The controller is the WD1010xx (which I >think causes all the problems). The problem appears to be that the >disk gets randomly corrupted, leading to disk errors. This poor guy >has been restoring his 40M disk from floppies about once a day... >He has not been able to get the problem fixed despite intensive (?) >efforts by AT&T (his service contract has no penalty clause). So, >two questions: >1) Does anyone know how to fix the problem? Want some quick $$$? We had a similar problem with the 6130, which uses the WD2010. The 2010 (and I suspect, the 1010) has a "misfeature", which bites you if you try and get too fancy with the disk driver. There's an easy fix, but you need source for the disk driver, which I am assuming you don't have. >2) Given that we expect minimal response to (1), he's looking for a > different system. Desired features: > > o 32 architecture (at least internally, a 16bit bus is > acceptable). > o Unix, preferably 4.2, but SysV is better than MS-DOS :-) > o At least 4 serial ports, 6 would be better. > o 1 or more parallel ports (laser printer). > o Either a reliable supplier f peripherals or a well known bus > (multi, VME, etc). > o Availibilty of solid service highly desirable (no brand X). > o Price tag of less than $15,000 (it is almost christmas :-) > > Systems we've heard of (sort of) and want info on: > > o Altos > o Symetrics > o Integrated {Solutions | Systems} > o Opus (320xx, SysV in a PC slot) > o DSI-32 (Unix ready for this yet?) > o Sun (Out of reach price wise?) > o uVaxII (also expensive?) Add the Tek 6130. The base system includes: NS 32016 running at 10MHz, 1 MB RAM, floating point unit, 20MB wini, 2 rs232 ports, ethernet, GPIB. It runs Utek, which is an enhanced version of 4.2, with some sys V things added, and a distributed file system. A system with 2 additional rs232 ports and 2 parallel printer ports is under $11k. I'll be posting an announcement to net.announce.newprod soon about the 'S' systems, which are bundled turnkey systems, and release 2.2, which includes shared memory and user configurable kernel. Snoopy tektronix!tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy