geoff@moss.ATT.COM (03/05/88)
I am in the market for a 386 machine running UNIX. I hope this issue has not been beaten to death already, but I would like some recommendations. In the latest computer shopper a company called Sunnyvale Memories has a complete 20 MHz EGA system with 48 MB hard disk, 1 Meg memory, and a color monitor. Memory is upgradable to 10 or 18 Meg, I don't recall which (2Mb on motherboard, 8 or 16 Meg expansion board). All of this for $2875 (well, when I called them they said that the price had gone up to $3100 because of a temporary hike in the price of 256k DRAMs and would come back down in around a month and a half). This seemed to be far in away the best deal on a 386 clone, but I am leery of a company I have never heard of before (especially when sending >$3000). Anybody out there with any words good or bad about Sunnyvale Memories? Any other clones? Secondly, I need to purchase a UNIX operating system running System V r2 or r3. The only one I am familiar with at all is Microport's SysVr3. I have to port code back and forth between a VAX running SysVr2 and an AT&T UNIXPC also running that version, so a BSD system would probably give me more headaches than it is worth. Microport wants about $750 (something like that) for the full development system which is reasonable as long as things work well. I saw a reference to some article which blasted Microport, but I am not familiar with the article. Any comments or recommendations? Many thanks to anyone who can give me any information on either the computer or the operating system. geoff sherwood ...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd allegra ]!moss!geoff
davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) (03/08/88)
About the hardware... when something sounds too good to be true, it
probably is. I would check with the BBB and get a personal
recommendation from someone on the net before buying.
About the software... if you want a cheap 386 package, Bell Tech sells
386 UNIX for about $399 (runtime w/o doc for $99!). For reliability you
may want to use Xenix, even though the system administration is not
identical to vanilla SysV. After serious problems with the serial
drivers in V/AT and serious documentation and usability problems in
386/ix, I bought a copy of Xenix/386 for my home machine. It's not
perfect, but I'm still waiting for my first software crash (since Dec
87). 386/ix hung several times and the compiler didn't want to compile a
number of net programs.
All of these products may have changed since December, and you may
have diferent needs than I did.
--
bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me