hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (01/08/88)
[Please respond via mail to me for this one. I don't think it makes sense to do this sort of thing in public.] I'm looking for an inexpensive Unix machine. The 7300, for all its limitations, looks like a reasonable candidate. It seems that a local PC dealer somehow is prepared to sell one at the firesale price. (I thought that was just ATT employees?) However the dealer doesn't know anything about the machine or its support. Would somebody be willing to answer some basic questions: - What is the difference between a 7300 and a 3b1? Should I care which one this is? Can I convert one, if it matters? - I'm assuming I'm going to get something whose hardware and software is covered by a 2 year's accumulation of dust. Can I upgrade the software for a minimal fee? - What sort of hardware and software support is available? Can you tell me roughly what it costs? I have a feeling that this thing is expensive enough that paying time and materials when it breaks is likely to be dangerous. - How do I find out about addon hardware and about software available for it? - Is it silly to be thinking about doing this? If so, can anybody come up with another system that can run Unix which is within a factor of 2 of the firesale price? Charles Hedrick Internet: hedrick@aramis.rutgers.edu UUCP: rutgers!hedrick BITnet: hedrick@pisces
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (01/10/88)
Hardware: The hardware is reasonably decent quality. It is made for AT&T by Convervent Technologies. The main CPU element is a 68010 running at 10 MHz. It is about the same as an IBM AT in terms of MIPs. Subjectively, its response feels about like an IBM AT. The video display is a pretty decent green monitor. The monitor is permanantly affixed to the lid. The resolution is about 720 * 380, but I forget the exact numbers. The display is bit mapped, but not too much software is available that really uses the screen to full advantage in that department. It is relatively easy to change fonts, though (well, almost easy). The PC7300 accomodates a half-height hard disk. Typically it is sold with an OPE (yuck!) or Seagate 20 meg, 85 mS drive. With that kind of drive, it makes a pretty s-l-o-w unix machine. The most basic 7300 has 1 meg or RAM. You can swap out the hard disk and add RAM. This might be very cost-effictive if you can find a cheap enough 7300. Some dealers had them for under $800. The 3b1 is essentially the same motherboard. It seems to only come with 2 meg RAM, but I'm not sure. You can get disk drives up to 67 meg. 67 meg is the limit, regardless of the drive type, due to the particular HDC chip that is employed. There have been reports that some people have replaced the HDC with a Western Digital 2010 and added some wires to get more storage, but such an operation would not be for the faint of heart and certainly would be outside the bounds of your warranty. Supposedly ver 3.51 Unix can handle drives bigger than 67 meg, but remains bound by the hardware. The lump under the monitor is a bit bigger on the 3b1 so that it can accomodate a full height hard drive. The date code on the pieces of my 3b1 was Nov. 1985, and I bought mine in Oct. '87. Obviously, it had been in cold storage for a while. Service: One of the better features. Compared to some other companies, AT&T has been pretty helpful in answering question, and dispated a person promplty when I had [what was probably] a minor hardware problem. Rather than trace it down, they just swapped the motherboard. That was just as well, as the new motherboad is a slightly newer rev level. You get 90 days of on-site service form 8:00-5:00 with the machine and support through the customer hotline. After that, carry-in service is $46.80/month, on-site is ~$68/month and 24-hour service is ~$84/moth. I think the cheaper alternative is to buy a back-up machine and swap parts, it you have some repair finesse. Non-covered service repair prices are astronomical. Software: How annoying (or good) you find the software depends on how much of a seasoned hacker you are. It pretty much looks like Sys V, release 2. It is supposed to pass certification for 5.2, eventhough on lower levels it is sort of a concotion of various things. To be serious, you really have to get the developes set in addtion to the foundation set. For instance, the manuals for all the section 1 commands only come with the development set. Shockingly, the mail you get is pretty terrible. You only get /bin/mail that looks like a leftover from version 7. You'll want to try to scrounge mailx, mush or something similar. The c compiler works, and it does support flexnames. Some of the netters say the compiler doesn't exactly generate efficent code-- I dont' know but it is passable at least. Approximate costs: I bought my stuff from a place called Technogy Resource Center. Here's how it broke down: 3b1 2 meg + 67 meg drive $1595 Unix 3.51 foundation 219 Unix 3.51 utilities 352 Shipping via UPS blue 74 They advertise in Unix World. You can probably do it cheaper elsewhere. It isn't a bad way to get Unix on a budget. --Bill