campbell@maynard.UUCP (03/29/87)
A little while back I requested suggestions on a cheap wonderful UNIX
box. Briefly, I wondered why there were $10,000 Sun workstations,
$3,000 PC/AT clones, and not much in between, for decent personal
UNIX computes.
Well, I've been flooded with responses, and the net result seems to be
that the box I want doesn't exist. Hardware vendors -- there does seem
to be a market hole here. Listen up!
Responses fell into four main categories:
1) Buy a 386.
This was probably the most realistic suggestion received, but perhaps
a bit premature at this point. The IBM announcement is only five days
away now, so I'll wait to see what they're going to do.
2) Buy any of several cheapo timesharing boxes. These include machines
from Altos, Convergent, Dual, Megadata, NCR, and Symmetric. These
are generally based on a National 32xxx or Motorola 680x0 chip,
except the Altos boxes, which are Intel-based. Unfortunately,
these boxes are not workstations, they're baby timesharing systems.
All you get is serial terminal ports, no graphics or windows.
3) Buy an AT&T 7300. Much as I hate to say it, this box seems to fit
my requirements better than anything else. But I've heard nothing
good about this machine, and apparently repair prices are outright
robbery. The machine has been such a failure on the market that
you can get them *real* *cheap* now, but I'm wary of switching to
yet another failed product (I'm using a DEC Rainbow right now!).
4) Buy a Mac II. This sounds promising, except that the memory
management chip required to run UNIX, and the UNIX port itself,
are vaporware at this time. Maybe in six months this will bear
another look.
There were also some intriguing components, PC/AT add-in boards, and
kits that people mentioned. Some sounded quite fast and cheap. However,
I just want to get work done. I don't want to waste a lot of time assembling
the system, debugging it, and hacking up device drivers. The box I want
should be running troff for me no more than two hours after I unpack it.
It seems to be a tossup between a Compaq 386 and the AT&T 7300... but
I just can't shake this queasy feeling about the AT&T box...
--
Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Internet: campbell@maynard.BSW.COM 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
uucp: {alliant,think,wjh12}!maynard!campbell +1 617 367 6846ron@vsedev.UUCP (03/29/87)
In article <885@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes: >A little while back I requested suggestions on a cheap wonderful UNIX >box. Briefly, I wondered why there were $10,000 Sun workstations, >$3,000 PC/AT clones, and not much in between, for decent personal >UNIX computes. > >Well, I've been flooded with responses, and the net result seems to be >that the box I want doesn't exist. Hardware vendors -- there does seem >to be a market hole here. Listen up! > Isn't this just great! :-( It seems that there really is an astounding gap in the UNIX micro market.... What a shame! I know there are plenty of engineers, including myself, that would like to have the functional capability of say a Sun workstation, maybe without *all* the bells and whistles, at a reasonable _personal_computer_ price. I was in the same situation but finally decided to bite the bullet and buy an AT clone on which I originally ran Xenix V, am now running Microport UNIX V/AT, but would *really* like to run 4.xBSD UNIX. Unfortunately I couldn't stretch my budget much beyond $7-8K. I know that if I had gone another $2K I could have bought a Sun, but how much Sun would I really have gotten for $10K... not much I suspect. I hope that with the introduction of 386 machines, some of the software vendors will come up with a way to make these boxes into real-unix-workstations, (eg, port X-windows, BSD sockets, maybe 4.3BSD UNIX itself, etc...). Until such time I guess I will have to dream on.. -- ron@vsedev.VSE.COM (Ron Flax) UUCP: ..!seismo!vsedev!ron INET: vsedev.VSE.COM!ron@seismo.CSS.GOV
mwm@eris.UUCP (03/29/87)
In article <499@vsedev.VSE.COM> ron@vsedev.UUCP (Ron Flax) writes: >Isn't this just great! :-( It seems that there really is an >astounding gap in the UNIX micro market.... What a shame! > >I was in the same situation but finally decided to bite the bullet and >buy an AT clone on which I originally ran Xenix V, am now running >Microport UNIX V/AT, but would *really* like to run 4.xBSD UNIX. Of course, if you're willing to run something that resembles Unix, instead of _being_ Unix, there are a couple of 68K boxes around that sell for < $5K, and have a workstation-like environment. If you want them to use some specific Unix tool, you may need to spend time investigating what's out there for them. Many Unix-like tools are in the PD for these boxes; major packages that aren't tied to Unix (TeX, for instance) may well exist on them already. If you want to do code development, porting code to/from them will have the same set of problems as porting code to/from different Eunices: include files in the wrong places, non-v7 io primitives aren't quite right, and terminal handling is broken. In addition, anything that does multitasking will either have to be rewritten, or won't be possible at all (which systems I wouldn't consider). The Amiga is the box with the most visibility. It's also got the least Unix-like of the OS's around. Beyond the stuff mentioned in the last paragraph, it's also got a different file name structure. But it's a hackers toy, and you can get _lots_ of PD software for it (yacc/lex, assemblers, a smalltalk, a logo, xlisp, etc.). Various boxes running OS/9 are possibilities. The cheapest is the RS Color Computer, which doesn't beat the problems of the 6809 address space, but does have a real windowing environment. Various vendors 68K boards and systems (Hazelwood, Gimix, SSB, FHL, and probably others) are probably worth investigating. The base systems start for a grand or so (price varying depending on whether you've got a 68000, or aa grand or(price varying depending on whether you've g 68020); I'm not sure how much a "workstation-like" box would cost. I know that MicroWare (the people who produce & market OS/9) did an X port, and are working on TCP/IP. There are probably others out there that are worth looking into; most of them would probably be much better programming environments than a cheap AT clone with SysV (hey, windows is a _BIG_ win, even if you have to give up csh!). Unless you've already decided that anything not running Unix is a lossage (does the word "prejudiced" come to mind?), it's probably worth you're time to look into the 68K micro market. <mike -- Here's a song about absolutely nothing. Mike Meyer It's not about me, not about anyone else, ucbvax!mwm Not about love, not about being young. mwm@berkeley.edu Not about anything else, either. mwm@ucbjade.BITNET
howard@io.UUCP (03/30/87)
Why don't you list the AT&T 6300+? It's better than the 7300, PC compatible, runs System V AND MS-DOS and is cheaper to repair than the 7300. Also it is expandable which the 7300 is not. It fits your price range too. A 2-meg system with a 40 meg hard drive, monochrome monitor and software is under $6500 at discount stores. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Howard Moskovitz AT&T Bell Labs @ Liberty Corner, NJ !io!howard
brian@asci.UUCP (03/31/87)
In article <885@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes: >A little while back I requested suggestions on a cheap wonderful >UNIX box. Briefly, I wondered why there were $10,000 Sun workstations, >$3,000 PC/AT clones, and not much in between, for decent personal UNIX >computes.... Well, ... the net result seems to be that the box I want >doesn't exist. Steven Jobs has been promising such a product to come from his new company whose name escapes me. Word has it that it is looking so promising that H. Ross Perot (watch out G.M.) is now investing into it. Price to be under $3000. But again, its all vaporware at the moment. The race is on and whoever get out first (and gets it right (listening IBM-RT?)) will win big. Brian Douglass
Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com.UUCP (03/31/87)
Larry Campbell's otherwise excellent summary of options for "cheap wonderful Unix boxes" overlooks one small but significant point. He rejects, for his purposes, "baby timesharing systems" because they are "not workstations". It seems to me that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive, if the baby has high-speed communications capability. Convergent 680x0 machines, for example, have an option for 1 megabaud RS-422. (This is option is standard in older CT boxes.) If one could find the right inexpensive graphics terminal that will speak to the baby, one has one's workstation. Of course, I could be right in an absolute sense and quite wrong in a practical sense: for example, does all the necessary software for such a configuration exist? This is beside the point, but I have to get it in: a 7300, which Campbell *does* consider a workstation, is just a Convergent MiniFrame with a built-in terminal and some AT&T comm hardware.
beilke@puff.UUCP (04/01/87)
In article <132@asci.UUCP>, brian@asci.UUCP (brian) writes: > In article <885@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) > writes: > >A little while back I requested suggestions on a cheap wonderful > >UNIX box. Briefly, I wondered why there were $10,000 Sun workstations, > >$3,000 PC/AT clones, and not much in between, for decent personal UNIX > >computes.... Well, ... the net result seems to be that the box I want > >doesn't exist. > > Steven Jobs has been promising such a product to come from his new company > whose name escapes me. Word has it that it is looking so promising that H. The name of Steve's new company is NEXT. I guess he thinks he's stumbled on to the _next_ generation of computers. - - - ---> Matt Beilke <--- - - - ============================================================================== | | | // ARPA: beilke@puff.wisc.edu | | // CSNET: beilke%puff.wisc.edu@csnet-relay | | \\ // AMIGA UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,seismo,topaz,etc.}!uwvax!puff!beilke | | \// RULES!! SNAIL: 451 Witte B, Madison, WI, 53706, USA | | | ==============================================================================
jtr485@umich.UUCP (04/04/87)
In article <601@puff.WISC.EDU>, beilke@puff.UUCP writes: > The name of Steve's new company is NEXT. I guess he thinks he's > stumbled on to the _next_ generation of computers. No. It's just Steve's Next Company. > - - - ---> Matt Beilke <--- - - - --j.a.tainter
sprankle@kodak.UUCP (04/08/87)
For the person inquiring about cheap wonderful UNIX boxes:
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal states that Sun Microsystems has cut the
price of their 3/50M low-end workstation by 36%, to $4,995, targeting the
same markets as the new IBM Personal System/2s and Macintosh IIs.
I'm not sure what you get for your $5K; perhaps some Sun person in net land
could provide more information. At least you get hardware and software that
have been in use, not vaporware :-). In my mind, this is probably one of
the better "cheap wonderful UNIX boxes" around, though it's not as cheap
as an AT clone, it's built to run UNIX, not MS-DOS.
--drl
# ###### Daniel R. Lance ####### Purdue University
# #### (working for, but not to be ## ## Electrical Engineering
# ## taken as speaking for,) ###### "Illegitimati
# #### Eastman Kodak Company ## non
# ###### #### carborundum"
"Tell us what you've seen/In far away forgotten lands
Where empires have turned back to sand..."
--Moody Blues
UUCP: ...{ucbvax,inhp4,decvax,cbosgd}!pur-ee!lanced
...{topaz,decvax,seismo,harvard}!rochester!kodak!sprankle
ARPA, BITNET: lanced@ei.ecn.purdue.edu sprankle@kodak.uucp
ICBM: 43 01' 40" N, 77 37' 49" Wbzs@bu-cs.UUCP (04/11/87)
Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 >I'm not sure what you get for your $5K; perhaps some Sun person in net land >could provide more information. MC68020 @ 15MHZ, 4MB, 19" 1152 X 900 Monochrome, 2 Serial ports, 1 Ethernet port, SCSI Port and built in controller, Sun Single User Binary License (4.2 Superset, includes things like NFS, 4.3 performance enhancements, SunWindows (also can run X), C, Pascal, Fortran, SunCore, SunCGI etc etc etc.) Ok guys, this is professional quality stuff. Now for my question: Does anyone know any inexpensive, even slowish, disks that can be hooked up to the SUN3/50 SCSI port? Off-the-cuff Requirements (try me!): 1. Probably at least 100MB. 2. By slowish (this isn't PC world) I mean, say, 35msec or thereabouts. 3. Nice if there were a tape option, even a mediocre one for occasional backups (I could UUCP incrementals.) 4. Price: Well, Sun's 141MB costs us $4830, half that would be worth considering. The 71MB is probably a little small for me, almost... Note: Sun's disk options are fine and much better than I need at home, I'd be happy with a little less for personal use. Please, I'd like to hear from users, not "well the foo has a SCSI interface so it *should* work", I know, but I don't have time to tinker around (well, I'd write a driver if need be, but I don't want to be a hardware guinea pig for this usage.) -Barry Shein, Boston University
mcvoy@uwvax.UUCP (04/13/87)
In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: >Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 > >MC68020 @ 15MHZ, 4MB, 19" 1152 X 900 Monochrome, 2 Serial ports, 1 >Ethernet port, SCSI Port and built in controller, Sun Single User Macs have SCSI ports, so we're in luck. I found only one prcie, though I'll look some more. What I found is $1200 for 40 meg. Sorry, but I know that up 370M drives exist for the MAC, I don't have a price, though. The thing that I'd look at is a bernoulli box with a hard drive. They sell things that have 80meg hard drives with one 20 meg floppy ($50/floppy). If you could get that in a 160Meg version, heaven.... Spool sources forever. Don't dismiss those floppies - I've worked with no hard drive, just using them. Access and transfer time is good (access is about 40millaseconds if it's spinning, you write a ping process to keep it spinning). -- Larry McVoy mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu or uwvax!mcvoy "It's a joke, son! I say, I say, a Joke!!" --Foghorn Leghorn
jdg@elmgate.UUCP (04/14/87)
Sun make some great hardware, and a full release of UNIX to boot (pun
?), and all this for $5k. Sounds great right?
Remember Sun runs their hardware fast and hot (near the limit? I don't
know). But like a LOTUS Esprit, running fast and hot means a bit less
reliable and VERY costly to repair. I'm not saying Sun systems are
unreliable, far from it. I'm just saying that as a personal UNIX box
the cost of repairing a 3/50 motherboard can be very expensive.
Remember EVERYTHING is on one board. To my employer it may be pocket
change. To me it may be 3 weeks GROSS pay!!! And I can't take it down
to the local Radio Shack to have it repaired....... 8^)
--
Jeff Gortatowsky {seismo,allegra}!rochester!kodak!elmgate!jdg
Eastman Kodak Company
These comments are mine alone and not Eastman Kodak's. How's that for a
simple and complete disclaimer? jensen@utgpu.UUCP (04/14/87)
Yes the system comes complete with 4 MB of Ram, UNIX 4.2BSD and 19" monitor looks like the best deal around.
richard@islenet.UUCP (04/14/87)
In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > > Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 > Perhaps I dreamed it, but I seem to recall a recent bit in a trade rag about the prices on the 3/50 being lowered by 36% Was I dreaming? -- Richard Foulk ...{dual,vortex,ihnp4}!islenet!richard Honolulu, Hawaii or ...!islenet!bigtuna!richard
rkh@mtune.UUCP (04/16/87)
In article <3449@rsch.WISC.EDU> mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Larry McVoy) writes: >In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: >>Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 >> >>MC68020 @ 15MHZ, 4MB, 19" 1152 X 900 Monochrome, 2 Serial ports, 1 >>Ethernet port, SCSI Port and built in controller, Sun Single User > >Macs have SCSI ports, so we're in luck. I found only one prcie, though I'll >look some more. What I found is $1200 for 40 meg. Sorry, but I know that >up 370M drives exist for the MAC, I don't have a price, though. Jasmine Computer Systems offers a 40 Mb drive for $999, and an 80 Mb, using the half-height Quantum Q280 with 30 ms access, for $1380. Address/phone from the MacWorld ad are: 555 De Haro St, San Francisco CA 94107 (415)621-4339. I have no connection with this place; just interested in seeing how cheaply a Sun could be configured. Bob Halloran, Consultant, ATT ISL ========================================================================= UUCP: rutgers!mtune!rkh DDD: (201)251-7514 eve ET Internet: rkh@mtune.ATT.COM USPS: 19 Culver Ct, Old Bridge NJ 08857 Disclaimer: My opinions are my own. Quote: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (04/16/87)
>In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: >> Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 In article <3223@islenet.UUCP> richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) writes: >Perhaps I dreamed it, but I seem to recall a recent bit in a trade >rag about the prices on the 3/50 being lowered by 36% > >Was I dreaming? No. But the price was lowered by 36% TO $4995 (it was higher). It's not (not yet anyway) going to be lowered 36% more. -- - Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck seismo!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck {pesnta,tymix,apple}!epimass!jbuck
tommy@ssds.UUCP (Tommy Phillips) (04/18/87)
In article <3223@islenet.UUCP> richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) writes: >> Re: SUN3/50 selling for $4995 >Perhaps I dreamed it, but I seem to recall a recent bit in a trade >rag about the prices on the 3/50 being lowered by 36% >Was I dreaming? the $5000 reflects the 30-odd % reduction. they were $8000 -- Tommy Phillips {hao,nbires}!isis!ssds!tommy
tomk@sunlamp.UUCP (Tom Kessler) (04/20/87)
> >rag about the prices on the 3/50 being lowered by 36% > >Was I dreaming? > the $5000 reflects the 30-odd % reduction. they were $8000 Yes the list price really is $4995 discounts apply on top of that. -- Tom Kessler Sun Consulting, Rochester NY. sunrock!tomk
tts@agaton.lu.se (Teletrafiksystem) (04/20/87)
In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > > Does anyone know any inexpensive, even slowish, disks that > can be hooked up to the SUN3/50 SCSI port? > > Off-the-cuff Requirements (try me!): > > 1. Probably at least 100MB. > > 2. By slowish (this isn't PC world) I mean, say, 35msec > or thereabouts. > > 3. Nice if there were a tape option, even a mediocre one > for occasional backups (I could UUCP incrementals.) > > 4. Price: Well, Sun's 141MB costs us $4830, half that > would be worth considering. The 71MB is probably a > little small for me, almost... > We have the following experience of using (non SUN) SCSI-disks on SUN 3/50: Using a preformatted Micropolis 1375 (5 1/4"-disk, 170 Mbyte unformatted, 23 ms): - The disk was labeled and set up using standard "diag" program - Then it was just to mount it on the system and run it as a local disk. - We also removed the SUN 3/50 from the fileserver and booted it from tape (Archive 5945S, also SCSI) and built a unix-system on the Micropolis. It worked out perfect. We also used the 3/50 as bootserver and fileserver for another 3/50. It worked OK, however the disk is a bit to small for this purpose. (With a bigger disk it seems to be a cheep way to run 3/50(s) without a special fileserver.) - We have NOT tried to reformat the disk, due to our experiense with the Maxtor disk (see below). Using a Maxtor 3170 (5 1/4", 170 Mbyte unformatted, 30 ms): - We were not able to format the disk. The diag-program and the disk seems to have different opinions on format commands. However we could get contact with the disk. Any hints, pointers or programs to solve the problem are welcome. A 170 or 350 Mbyte disk plus a streamer tape station (all on SCSI) and powersupply built in in a box have (in Sweden) approx one third of the price from SUN. The performance (on a low-loaded 3/50 with SCSI-disk) was approx the same as using a SUN 180 as fileserver. We have not performed any deeper test-suites to measure accesstime at heavy load or with a 3/50 as fileserver. Please note the problem with using the diag-program to format the disk, anyone out there that can help us with that? Richard Niklasson, Dept of Communication Systems, Lund Institute of Technology, SWEDEN UUCP: rn@erlang.sunet.se or ...!mcvax!enea!agaton!erlang!rn BITNET: erlangrn@seldc51