smg@eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath) (12/05/89)
I am thinking of investing in a 386 machine, probably 25 MHz. I would like to draw on the experience of people who have been running dos and/or unix on such systems to try and evaluate how valuable some options may be. I will be running dos for the immediate future, but I want to be able to run unix (of some as-yet-unspecified flavor) on the system without any hardware changes. First, I would like to know whether there is any benefit to a 1024x768 VGA display over, say, an 800x600 VGA display system. Are there many applications under dos that will use the 1024x768 mode? Is the 1024x768 VGA display supported under unix? Secondly, the disk issue. I am trying to decide whether to get an ESDI interface drive or a standard interface RLL drive. I am aware of the difference in the speeds of the two types of interface, but I would like to know what is and is not supported under current flavors of unix. I remember reading postings recently which seemed to say standard AT-interface (ST506/418 (?)) RLL drives are not supported under current versions of 386 unix systems, but that an ESDI or SCSI interface is required. Is there any truth to this? I would imagine that 60-120 Meg RLL drives are so common that most flavors of unix would support them. I would appreciate any information on these topics from those who have experience with these issues. I read this group regularly, so if you wish to post your answers I will see them; I think they would be of general interest. Thanks for your time, -Stephen Stephen McGrath Georgia Tech, School of EE, DSP Lab, Atlanta, GA 30332 (404)894-3872 smg@eedsp.gatech.edu
phil@diablo.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (12/06/89)
In article <662@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu> smg@eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath) writes: |First, I would like to know whether there is any benefit to a 1024x768 VGA |display over, say, an 800x600 VGA display system. Are there many applications |under dos that will use the 1024x768 mode? Is the 1024x768 VGA display |supported under unix? I don't know about Unix but your display will typically come with at least a Windows driver. I also just got 1024x768 support in a schematic capture program (Orcad) and it makes the difference between panning and not panning an A size page. -- Phil Ngai, phil@diablo.amd.com {uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil AT&T Unix System V.4: Berkeley Unix for 386 PCs!
smg@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath) (12/07/89)
From eedsp!eedsp.gatech.edu!smg Tue Dec 5 16:13:37 EST 1989 I am thinking of investing in a 386 machine, probably 25 MHz. I would like to draw on the experience of people who have been running dos and/or unix on such systems to try and evaluate how valuable some options may be. I will be running dos for the immediate future, but I want to be able to run unix (of some as-yet-unspecified flavor) on the system without any hardware changes. First, I would like to know whether there is any benefit to a 1024x768 VGA display over, say, an 800x600 VGA display system. Are there many applications under dos that will use the 1024x768 mode? Is the 1024x768 VGA display supported under unix? Secondly, the disk issue. I am trying to decide whether to get an ESDI interface drive or a standard interface RLL drive. I am aware of the difference in the speeds of the two types of interface, but I would like to know what is and is not supported under current flavors of unix. I remember reading postings recently which seemed to say standard AT-interface (ST506/418 (?)) RLL drives are not supported under current versions of 386 unix systems, but that an ESDI or SCSI interface is required. Is there any truth to this? I would imagine that 60-120 Meg RLL drives are so common that most flavors of unix would support them. I would appreciate any information on these topics from those who have experience with these issues. I read this group regularly, so if you wish to post your answers I will see them; I think they would be of general interest. Thanks for your time, -Stephen -- Stephen McGrath School of Electrical Engineering, smg@eedsp.gatech.edu Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (12/07/89)
In article <667@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu> smg@eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath) writes: | I am thinking of investing in a 386 machine, probably 25 MHz. I would like | to draw on the experience of people who have been running dos and/or unix | on such systems to try and evaluate how valuable some options may be. I've been running a 386 for three years at Christmas, and several at work. I did run DOS with Desqview for about six months until I could get a 386 version of UNIX. | First, I would like to know whether there is any benefit to a 1024x768 VGA | display over, say, an 800x600 VGA display system. Are there many applications | under dos that will use the 1024x768 mode? Is the 1024x768 VGA display | supported under unix? There are some DOS programs which use this now, but the only thing in UNIX which commonly uses high-res graphics is X-windows. It adds little to the cost of the card, but a good bit to the cost of the monitor. You have to decide what you current and future needs are. | Secondly, the disk issue. I am trying to decide whether to get an ESDI | interface drive or a standard interface RLL drive. I am aware of the difference | in the speeds of the two types of interface, but I would like to know what | is and is not supported under | current flavors of unix. The Western Digital RLL and ESDI controllers look like MFM versions and will work with most versions of UNIX. I'm running Xenix on one RLL and one ESDI with these controllers. If you go RLL the part is WD1006VSR2. The V means track buffered in hardware instead of the BIOS, and up to 3:1 faster on some versions of UNIX. The ESDI is WD1007xxxx (I don't have the part number handy). If you use an RLL, ESDI, or SCSI controller which doesn't look like MFM you will probably need a different version of UNIX, but it's available. There is no significant difference in performance between the RLL and ESDI controller *if you have the track buffering*. Beware of controllers which claim track buffering but do it in the BIOS... you lose performance with most version of UNIX. You want 4MB or more RAM, and absolute minimum 40MB disk for UNIX. If you want a DOS partition add that to the UNIX. With all the stuff on the net you may want to run, you probably will want even more than that (at home I run 144MB on the "personal" drive, and 62MB for the "public access" (BBS & news) portion. That includes the archive server at sixhub, which will be getting another 100MB or so next year after I add memory and modems. Note that you can run two disk controllers with Xenix and some SysV versions, and many hard drives and tape drives on SCSI. When you use small drives, <150MB, the RLL are usually cheaper, particularly if you run an MFM drive as RLL. For larger sizes the ESDI and SCSI get cheaper. What I'm saying is that you should look where you want to be over the life of the machine, like 3-6 years, and if you are going to want "big" then, go with ESDI or SCSI now. If you go with a large disk think HARD about a tape drive. The 60s are good because they are big enough to be useful, and there is a standard format. You can run the same tape on Xenix, SysV, SunOS, etc, and share data and source even if the executables won't run. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (12/08/89)
In article <662@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu> smg@eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath) writes: >...the disk issue. I am trying to decide whether to get an ESDI >interface drive or a standard interface RLL drive. >I remember reading postings recently which seemed >to say standard AT-interface (ST506/418 (?)) RLL drives are not supported >under current versions of 386 unix systems, but that an ESDI or SCSI >interface is required. Is there any truth to this? In the various UNIXes I've installed (AT&T (via INTEL); Interactive; and INTEL) they've all installed on MFM, RLL and ESDI drives as if it didn't make a hill of beans of difference. SCSI is another matter. I thinks the RLL and ESDI systems work because the controllers are register-compatible with the MFM controllers, but I'm not sure... kEITHe