[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Fast 386 machines

as2d+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alan Henry Stein) (09/01/89)

As part of a research grant, we are going to have money to purchase a PC.
The thing is going to have to run microsimulation on pretty large datasets.
At present, a 20mHz 386 is taking about 20minutes to process about 20,000
elements.  We are planning on increasing both the size of the dataset and
the length into the future the simulation runs.

To this end, we will like purchase a 33mHz 386.  It will have to have a
large, fast hard disk and probably 4-8 megs of memory??

Any suggestions??

Thanks,
alan
as2d@andrew.cmu.edu

cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) (09/02/89)

In article <UYzeBCy00Uh-Q19ZkM@andrew.cmu.edu>, as2d+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alan Henry Stein) writes:
> 
> To this end, we will like purchase a 33mHz 386.  It will have to have a
> large, fast hard disk and probably 4-8 megs of memory??

I have a Tangent 386 super tower 33Mhz 386. The motherboard is AMIs.
I have the following additions:

	  Super tower with 10 1/2 hight bays, 300 watt ps
	  16 Meg of memory
	  80387 coprocessor (33 Mhz)
	2 650 Meg ESDI hard drives (10.7ms access time)
	  DPT intelligent disk controller with 2 1/2 megs of disk cache
	  Sigma Designs Laser View 1600x1200 X windows display
	  19" Monochrome monitor
	  60 Meg Tape Drive
	  Western Digital Ethernet Card

Total cost for the system was around $25,000 plus 3K for the OS (386/ix
unlimited users with lots of packages (X11, tcp/ip, nfs, development...).

I am pleased with tangent's service.  They delivered the system fully
installed and configured.  All I had to do was plug in the monitor, 
keyboard, and power and I was up and running. (Although I did
re-layout the data on the hard disk because I didnt want to have
on big 400meg /usr2 partition).

The only problem I have had with the system has been in adding a 
Maxspeed serial board.  There seems to be some collision with the
higher memory locations on the memory expansion card and the 
memory used for the maxspeed card.

The performance of the system is superb.  I normally have 3 people 
working on the system (myself in about 5 xterms plus the usual set
of xclock, xload, and whatever the mailbox program is) without 
any performance degredation ?sp?  even when we are making a tape
backup and receiving our daily 4 meg of news junk.

We develop UNIFY database applications and the performance gain over
the standard 16/20 Mhz systems is outstanding.   ACCELL 4GL programs
run like fire...

-- 
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| Conor P. Cahill     uunet!virtech!cpcahil      	703-430-9247	!
| Virtual Technologies Inc.,    P. O. Box 876,   Sterling, VA 22170     |
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larry@nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) (09/04/89)

In article <1112@virtech.UUCP>, cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
> The only problem I have had with the system has been in adding a 
> Maxspeed serial board.  There seems to be some collision with the
> higher memory locations on the memory expansion card and the 
> memory used for the maxspeed card.

I have never heard of the Maxspeed serial boards.  Fill me in.

> any performance degredation ?sp?  even when we are making a tape
> backup and receiving our daily 4 meg of news junk.

Which tape backup are you using?  Are you using the sample
backup scripts available through sysadm?


-- 
Larry Snyder              uucp:iuvax!ndcheg!ndmath!nstar!larry
The Northern Star Usenet Distribution Site, Notre Dame, IN USA