harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) (01/08/88)
In article <1363@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > Security and convenience are opposite goals. You (the personal computer > market) rejected the security of UNIX because it was a little inconvenient. Well there is more to it than an inconvenience. You need an MMU, which means you need a 68020 (unless it's a custom MMU). Then you need a bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on your machine to compete with your "resources". To have UNIX (or for that matter ANY multiuser OS) you need a hard disk to deal with these LARGE issues. Add to that, the overhead and "non realtime" response of such an OS. We is talking HUGE bucks for this unsupported condition (for now!). But to be fair, I have absolutely no objection to a Unix OS that is backward compatible with AmigaDos, I just hate having a "dual" personality and incompatible machine that I have too boot and blow away to change environments. I live in "environments". Give me both at the same time please! Then I'll vote! BTW, all my indicators say Unix is just around the corner for the Amiga! I just wish like hell it will act like the Amiga! My dream? All these "nasty copy protected" and barfo tasks can live in their own space within the Amiga croaking OS space and do what's wrong, I don't care. CLICK! Another Amiga OS! Another "process" under UNIX. Kinda like multiple logins, except its mutiple Amigas! Well more precisely, mutiple environments, like debugging this package, compiling this package, you get the idea. Hell UNIX (AT+T, 20% stock owners of Sun as of today) doesn't hold the riegns on inovation anymore. Methinks the Amiga is perfectly poised. Yeah! Just "tweak" UNIX a bit to give the "foreground OS" a huge scheduling bias. Like right now, in real time! Yeah I like it. Uh, wait, UNIX is not real time 8^(. Well fix it, damm it! Like Charles River Data Systems. The shoe fits, wear it. Wear it big time. Go all the way. Shit, Im telling Apple how to do it. Apple reads this you know! Does anybody have a vote on this in anyway? Hello? -- Work: Computer Consoles Inc. (CCI), Advanced Development Group (ADG) Irvine, CA (RISCy business! Home of the CCI POWER 6/32) UUCP: uunet!ccicpg!harald
farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) (01/10/88)
In article <8692@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > > Well there is more to it than an inconvenience. You need an MMU, >which means you need a 68020 (unless it's a custom MMU). Then you need a >bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on your machine to >compete with your "resources". The UNIX kernel on the machine I'm at right now (an AT&T 3b1) amounts to exactly 168,707 bytes. This is bloated? Even including all of the utilities only brings the total up to 3.5 megabytes, and that is one HELL of a lot of utilities. Unix need not be, and, in fact, is not, noticably bigger than any other OS of similar capabilities. >To have UNIX (or for that matter ANY multiuser >OS) you need a hard disk to deal with these LARGE issues. Add to that, >the overhead and "non realtime" response of such an OS. The same thing is true, to some extent, for ANY OS of any sophistication. It's not limited to Unix. As it is, with AmigaDOS, to do any amount of real development work, I have to shuffle three floppies in and out of two disk drives. Are you going to claim that this is convenient? Multiuser is NOT a consideration. You can run Unix in single-user mode; such systems commonly boot off of one floppy (although you can't do much useful work with one floppy). Even in multiuser mode, only the resources actually in use are loaded - the only impact multiuser has on a system with no users other than root is in the gettys running on all the ports - programs which, typically, are idle anyway, and thus not consuming CPU. -- Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just {ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}! | dogmatize it! Reflect on it and re-evaluate unisoft!gethen!farren | it. You may want to change your mind someday." gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (01/11/88)
In article <557@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes: >In article <8692@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: >>Then you need a bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on >>your machine to compete with your "resources". > >The UNIX kernel on the machine I'm at right now (an AT&T 3b1) amounts >to exactly 168,707 bytes. This is bloated? How about old versions of V6 Unix that weighed in at 32K? I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that a VM Unix could be written whose executable size is less than the Amiga's existing ROM Kernel (192K). Sean -- -- Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitneT -- (the Empire guy) {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!sean -- University of Kentucky in Lexington Kentucky, USA -- "If something can go will, it wrong."
harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) (01/11/88)
Please everybody, this is not a discussion of OS religion, just some random thoughts about the future of the Amiga. In article <8021@g.ms.uky.edu>, sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: > In article <557@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes: > >In article <8692@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > >>Then you need a bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on > >>your machine to compete with your "resources". > > > >The UNIX kernel on the machine I'm at right now (an AT&T 3b1) amounts > >to exactly 168,707 bytes. This is bloated? > I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. Look at the Mac II with AUX, 80meg and 5 left for you. There is another problem with implementing UNIX, and that is disk performance. UNIX HAS to use a hard disk, and depends greatly on access times for performance, something that doesn't come cheap. (Well processor performance matters also!) Add to this, process context. Everytime a process is switched, caches are blown away. A problem that does not exist on the Amiga. In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and would love to have it at home. And there is yet another problem, you HAVE to have a tape drive. How else can one reasonably manage megabytes of storage. More expense. In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing market in general. It's just too expensive to implement. And its overkill for a machine that's supposed to be a personal computer, not an 80 user supermicro UNIX system. > I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that a VM Unix could be written > whose executable size is less than the Amiga's existing ROM Kernel (192K). I don't think that's reasonable. The Amiga's OS doesn't exactly pick its nose running graphics, sound, windows, and all the other stuff. There is a hell of a lot of stuff going on here, that would have to be added on top of a VM implementation. And that's if it's added. As I have stated before, I have no objection to seeing UNIX on the Amiga. What I would like to see is backward compatability of some sort, not unlike what Apple is trying to do with the Mac II. In this respect, I believe the Amiga has a huge advantage, namely addressing the issues of multiple CPU architectures. The Amiga is blessed in this respect. (Thanks CBM!) Since CBM was wise enough to address the issues of the differences between the 68000 and the 68020, an Amiga implemention of UNIX could be much less painful and more compatible than the current Mac II scenario. And all this silly talk about disk space, I finally came to the conclusion that I need at least 50 megabytes to "use" the Amiga comfortably. Thats today! 8^) Live long and prosper. > Sean -- Work: Computer Consoles Inc. (CCI), Advanced Development Group (ADG) Irvine, CA (RISCy business! Home of the CCI POWER 6/32) UUCP: uunet!ccicpg!harald
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (01/12/88)
Harald made some valid points about UNIX (tm) and its siblings. Basically while the kernel may be kept under 500K the utilities, tools and other stuff that everyone 'expects' UNIX to have usually add up to a lot of disk space. Added to that, UNIX processes can be fairly large and that requires virtual memory of some sort, etc, etc, etc. But then he goes on and says ... In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance >UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and >would love to have it at home. Five years ago (1983) the cry was for a UNIX system that cost less than $10,000, and that has been reached by a number of people. (Maybe even Apple :-)) It was only recently that the call went out for the $5K UNIX box, so maybe in another 5 years? Of course computers are on this strange exponential development path, maybe it will only take 2.5 years. > In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing >market in general. It's just too expensive to implement. And its overkill >for a machine that's supposed to be a personal computer, not an 80 user >supermicro UNIX system. Well, all I can say is don't limit yourself arbitrarily. It's coming no matter what you or I say about it. :-) >> I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that a VM Unix could be written >> whose executable size is less than the Amiga's existing ROM Kernel (192K). The above was not Harald's comment, it was obviously someone who has never looked at the inside of a UNIX VM kernel. It all depends on what you leave in the kernel and what you leave out. Window system? Network software? etc. You could do it if a) you wrote in assembler, and b) you only worried about simple tty output. (No System V tty driver for these folks). Basically, Apple is spending millions of dollars to do this, so we will get to see how well they fair when they get done. I would like to see a version of AmigaDOS which was written to work on the '020 and didn't bother with coddling up to miscreant developers. Things like MEMF_PUBLIC would be enforced, messages would be passed in shared memory segments etc etc. Then I would rewrite DOS, keeping all the calls but making a faster file system and then write a CLI that was a combination of TOPS-20 and a Sun cmdtool. But hey, if wishes were horses, dreamers would ride. Now where did I put my saddle :-) [Oh and for all of you wonderful people who sent mail Re: where UNIX figures out if something should be run by shell, thank you. One of the interesting things about working for Sun is that if you say something stupid about UNIX everyone wants to point it out to you ! :-) ] ---- UNIX and probably System V are trademarks of AT&T. ---- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
wilkes@mips.UUCP (John Wilkes) (01/12/88)
In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: <In article <8021@g.ms.uky.edu>, sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: <> In article <557@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes: <> >The UNIX kernel on the machine I'm at right now (an AT&T 3b1) amounts <> >to exactly 168,707 bytes. This is bloated? < < I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk <space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I <would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. On my AT&T 3b1 there is a 67MB hard drive that is 52% full. Before I started putting stuff gleaned from comp.sources.{misc,unix} on it, it was more like 25% full. I would say that your estimate of 50meg of disk use for unix is slightly high. What do you mean by "a reasonable implementation of unix"? I'm running SysV.2 with some .3 and Berkeley enhancements. It runs gnu emacs, uucp, news, and rn; what more do you want from unix? ;-) It even has a completely brain damaged windowing system. :-o While I'll readily admit that unix at home is not for everybody, it is available at a reasonable price. My 3b1 cost less than my Amiga, though the 3b1 was purchased as part of a severe price cut that went into affect when AT&T decided to discontinue it and rid themselves of inventory. If the A2000 had unix on it, I would have bought it instead of the 3b1, even if it meant spending a little more money. Not trying to fan the flames of a religious war here, just trying to prevent the proliferation of misconceptions. This group has had a continuing series of battles with the Atari ST folks, and I hope a new holy war between Amiga owners and 3b1 owners does not start up. I probably shouldn't even post this, but here goes... Apologies in advance. My asbestos suit is on. John Wilkes -- -- @work: -- {decwrl,ames,pyramid,prls}!mips!wilkes -- OR, for those of great faith: -- wilkes@mips.com
peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (01/12/88)
OK. I just got call-waited or something in the middle of a carefully reasoned response to this message, so I'm just going to be content with describing systems that systematically demolish each and every one of his points. In article <8692@ccicpg.UUCP>, harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > In article <1363@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > > Security and convenience are opposite goals. You (the personal computer > > market) rejected the security of UNIX because it was a little inconvenient. > Well there is more to it than an inconvenience. You need an MMU, > which means you need a 68020 (unless it's a custom MMU). Dozens of 68000-based UNIX systems make this argument a joke, from some of the early ONYX boxes (some of which were Z8000 based) onwards. > Then you need a > bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on your machine to > compete with your "resources". Thousands of PDP-11 based UNIX systems with less total memory than on off the shelf Amiga 1000 with its 256K of RAM and 256K of "Kickstart RAM". > To have UNIX (or for that matter ANY multiuser > OS) you need a hard disk to deal with these LARGE issues. HP Integral would even boot without any floppies, let alone a hard disk. Supported a mouse and windows and everything. If it hadn't been HP, it would have even been reasonably priced. > Add to that, > the overhead and "non realtime" response of such an OS. The overhead of a message passing operating system is far higher than the overhead of a monolithic lump like UNIX. I must admit it's a lot prettier, though. > We is talking HUGE bucks for this unsupported condition (for now!). We is talking the cost of one little MMU chip. Given the number of custom chips in the machine already, surely they could have come up with this? The basic problem is that "you, the Market" rejected small UNIX systems until it was too late. AT&T had no low end to satisfy so System V grew without bound. It's too late for system V, but Version 7 seems to have gained a new lease on life with Minix.
harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) (01/12/88)
In article <38467@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: > > In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing > >market in general. It's just too expensive to implement. And its overkill > >for a machine that's supposed to be a personal computer, not an 80 user > >supermicro UNIX system. > I knew I should have qualified that statement with price. In terms of "reasonable for the home computing market" I was thinking around $1000 to $2000, which I think is about the upper limit for the computer buying public at large for now. When I told my friends about the A2000 prices, they scrambled for the A500 en masse. Well some. But this is simply a marketing/ affordability issue. > Well, all I can say is don't limit yourself arbitrarily. It's coming no > matter what you or I say about it. :-) Believe me, I'm not! I'm very encouraged by the things I see happening. For instance, the MMU on the 68020 board CBM showed at COMDEX. I doubt seriously it was intended for some future version of AmigaDos, and if it appears this way in a consumer version, it certainly opens the door to UNIX. Add to this, CSA's "Over 030" board. It also sports an MMU. The ad in Amiga/World even went as far to say "capability for running UNIX (when available)". When, not if! Perhaps Im getting a bit too enthusiastic, but thats the way I am. Damm the Amiga! 8^) AmiExpo is 3 days away..tick..tick.. CSA is gonna see a lot of me! The 68030 has a "cache extensible architecture". If done properly, the 68030 can run at full speed internally. It could SCREAM like HELL. I have done numerous cache size studies for our upcomming RISC computer, and it is amazing what even a minimal cache (say 4-8k) can do with REAL slow memory (relatively speaking of course). The thing that has me bummed out, is cache integrity has to be maintened somehow. But after giving this more thought, I came to the conclusion that the Amiga "knows" at the OS level when it is doing DMA. The Amiga could appropriately purge/maintain cache integrity, BUT, is has to be built into the OS. (Hint, hint 8^)). Why not? I know Im an 030, and I know Im bad! (Ack, bad Jackson pun.) If this was done, you wouldn't need expensive 32 bit memory which does not exist in the entire Amiga address space. You would need REAL expensive cache memory, BUT you would not need as much, (since it's cached) and you would be compatible with 16 bit memory. The performance gained this way is phenomanel, and with a large enough cache (say 32-64k) memory access goes down to almost nil. (Well almost) Of course, there is a down side to this, which is how long does it take to purge a cache this size (yanking a hardware line would be wonderful!) takes in code and how often you have to do it (like every blit, DMA, etc). But this scheme still has enough benifits to warrent investigation. Somewhere along the line, this strategy becomes viable/unworkable. And I would like to put more effort into this, but then I don't work for CBM. And believe it or not, I don't know enough to talk about this, without some kind of feedback that Im totally flashed off the deep end. Oh well. Jeez, I'm rambling again and it's 4:00 in the morning. See you all at AmiExpo! I'll be there Sunday for sure. -- Work: Computer Consoles Inc. (CCI), Advanced Development Group (ADG) Irvine, CA (RISCy business! Home of the CCI POWER 6/32) UUCP: uunet!ccicpg!harald
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (01/13/88)
in article <557@gethen.UUCP>, farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) says: > > The same thing is true, to some extent, for ANY OS of any sophistication. > It's not limited to Unix. As it is, with AmigaDOS, to do any amount of > real development work, I have to shuffle three floppies in and out of > two disk drives. Are you going to claim that this is convenient? As compared to running UNIX off of floppies, it's HEAVEN. Let's compare Pineapples with Pineapples, here, eh? There are some specific design implication in UNIX that make it run slower on the same hardware than the AmigaOS will run. Thing such as it's file based message passing. These are the same things that make it work well with memory protection; messages are passed by copying, not by reference. That copy just takes additional time, that's all. > Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just -- Dave Haynie "The B2000 Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (01/13/88)
>In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: >I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk >space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I >would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. I have over 150 floppies with an estimated 80 megs of Amiga software on them. That's not a lot? If one does not have source, one can run a quite reasonable implementation of Unix with less than 20 megs of disk space. Look at Minix, it runs off floppies. Sean -- -- Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitneT -- (the Empire guy) {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!sean -- University of Kentucky in Lexington Kentucky, USA -- "If something can go will, it wrong."
dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (01/13/88)
>> Add to that, >> the overhead and "non realtime" response of such an OS. > >The overhead of a message passing operating system is far higher than the >overhead of a monolithic lump like UNIX. I must admit it's a lot prettier, >though. This is a common misconception due to the fact that UNIX context switches take a long time. In fact, message passing operating systems, which almost always utilize a buffer sharing scheme as well, can be more efficient for the same reasons a multitasking computer is more efficient than a single tasking one. And of course there is always the increased modularity you mentioned. -Matt
farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) (01/14/88)
In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > > Please everybody, this is not a discussion of OS religion, just >some random thoughts about the future of the Amiga. Fine, but you misstate several facts (not religious opinions), thus muddling the issue. To wit: >> >The UNIX kernel on the machine I'm at right now (an AT&T 3b1) amounts >> >to exactly 168,707 bytes. This is bloated? >> > > I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk >space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I >would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. Look at the Mac II with AUX, >80meg and 5 left for you. You seem to have conveniently left out the rest of my message, which I will repeat: the entire implementation of Unix on this machine, including the kernel and all of the utilities and support files needed (lacking only a few things like networking and on-line manuals, but including a crude sort of windowing system) amounts to just a little over 10 megabytes. In my book, this is NOT an excessive amount of space, especially considering that that includes a full development environment, text formatting and processing software, several editors, etc. > There is another problem with implementing UNIX, and that is disk >performance. UNIX HAS to use a hard disk, and depends greatly on access >times for performance, something that doesn't come cheap. (Well processor >performance matters also!) But with modern hard disks, this isn't such a horrible loss. Again, this system: 67 meg hard drive, 20 ms average access, and it works quite acceptably fast, even when forced to swap processes continuously. Retail price of hard disk: approximately $1000, NOT outrageously expensive. > In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance >UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and >would love to have it at home. What do you consider 'reasonable performance'? This system cost me about $2500, and outperforms (by a considerable margin) the Vax 750 Unix I was previously used to using. Admittedly, that was at 'fire sale' prices, but a brand-new 80386 system, running Microport or SCO flavors of System V, should be able to come in at or near your $5000 target figure with no particular problem. > And there is yet another problem, you HAVE to have a tape drive. >How else can one reasonably manage megabytes of storage. Not a problem unique to Unix, but one which is shared across ALL systems which support large mass-storage devices. The same problem will occur with a vanilla Amiga running a large hard drive. > In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing >market in general. It's just too expensive to implement. And its overkill >for a machine that's supposed to be a personal computer, not an 80 user >supermicro UNIX system. I have to emphatically disagree. This 3b1 is the most useful machine, overall, that I have ever owned. While Unix might not be the system of choice for Joe Amigan, the average guy, it's a workable alternative for those who could use its features and power. > And all this silly talk about disk space, I finally came to the >conclusion that I need at least 50 megabytes to "use" the Amiga comfortably. Well, I wouldn't mind, either :-) -- Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just {ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}! | dogmatize it! Reflect on it and re-evaluate unisoft!gethen!farren | it. You may want to change your mind someday." gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (01/14/88)
In article <38467@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >Harald made some valid points about UNIX (tm) and its siblings. Basically >while the kernel may be kept under 500K the utilities, tools and other >stuff that everyone 'expects' UNIX to have usually add up to a lot of >disk space. Added to that, UNIX processes can be fairly large and that >requires virtual memory of some sort, etc, etc, etc. But then he goes on >and says ... >In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: >> In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance >>UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and >>would love to have it at home. > >Five years ago (1983) the cry was for a UNIX system that cost less than >$10,000, and that has been reached by a number of people. (Maybe even >Apple :-)) It was only recently that the call went out for the $5K UNIX >box, so maybe in another 5 years? Of course computers are on this strange >exponential development path, maybe it will only take 2.5 years. > >> In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing (forwarded from root@gryphon without permission) (gryphon is a 286 running Xenix) uh, and what is this I have here? Oh, forgot, not real Unix. Well, let me tell you that after four days I got ksh to make "bus error" on the [expletive deleted] cci machine. Now I discover that cci doesn't seem to be using SV directories. Oh, well, it's real Unix. So, what I have here -- real numbers -- retail -- with profit margins: AT , 1 meg ram, 40meg hd, ega, mono monitor 2300 2nd 40 meg 600 Xenix 900 ----- 3800 ( good for single user) 8 ports 600 2.5 meg ram 600 ---- 5000 ( you're running on it) -- It's too dark in Santa Fe in my ignition, or something like that. richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax, philabs!cadovax, codas!ddsw1} gryphon!richard
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (01/15/88)
In article <2136@gryphon.CTS.COM> (Richard Sexton) writes: > So, what I have here -- real numbers -- retail -- with profit margins: > AT , 1 meg ram, 40meg hd, ega, mono monitor, 2nd 40 meg, Xenix = $3800 > adding >8 ports, 2.5 meg ram = $5000 Yup, you could even do it cheaper if you went with a single 80Meg drive rather than two 40's (although it might be slower). But when I worked at Intel and used Xenix on the 286/310 box, while being real system 3 UNIX it had some real limitations in the compilers and memory models. It really broke down when valid 'UNIX code' played games with pointers etc. But so that it is perfectly clear ... Yes, the AT box with Xenix, heck with AT&T's UNIX System V/286 is "real" UNIX. However, until '386 boxes become more common and just about all the code your likely to run into will work with only minor semantic changes accounting for system calls or library call differences, I would argue that it would not be as 'fun' to use. All personal opinion mind you... --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (01/16/88)
In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP>, harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > Please everybody, this is not a discussion of OS religion, just > some random thoughts about the future of the Amiga. Fine, so keep your eye on Amy and stop taking pot-shots at UNIX. > I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk > space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I > would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. Look at the Mac II with AUX, > 80meg and 5 left for you. HP Integral with HPUX: no hard disk, 1 floppy. Had at least all the capability of AmigaDOS under the same circumstances. Gotta remembet that those megabytes contain useful programs. If you want no more programs than MS-DOS or AmigaDOS comes with, you can delete 95% of that. Xenix for the IBM-PC takes up about 5 Meg for the standard system... with no online manual, but including the compiler. > There is another problem with implementing UNIX, and that is disk > performance. UNIX HAS to use a hard disk, and depends greatly on access > times for performance, something that doesn't come cheap. (Well processor > performance matters also!) For a given computer/disk setup, UNIX gives you better disk performance than any other O/S I know of... at the cost of a little reliability. AmigaDOS gices you even less reliability AND lower performance. > Add to this, process context. Everytime a process is switched, > caches are blown away. A problem that does not exist on the Amiga. I can't see that there would be much retained from the time you do a context switch to the time you get CPU back again on the Amiga, either. > In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance > UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and > would love to have it at home. What do you mean by "cheap and reasonable performance". If you mean "Sun-class performance"... well AmigaDOS doesn't even get you that. If you mean "at least as much performance as existing operating systems", then you can get a 3b1 with a 20 Meg hard disk for less than the cost of the Amiga 500 plus a monitor. And it does windows, even. 68010, 10 Mhz, ... > And there is yet another problem, you HAVE to have a tape drive. > How else can one reasonably manage megabytes of storage. Same way you manage megabytes on the Amiga. What, you don't have them? Backing up 35 MEG to floppies once a month (with smaller incremental backups in between) is a LOT less hassle than swapping floppies all the time. I've done both, and I know which I prefer. If you have any more questions, I'll do my best to answer them. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.
jdp@killer.UUCP (Jim Pritchett) (01/18/88)
In article <528@nuchat.UUCP>, peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > OK. I just got call-waited or something in the middle of a carefully reasoned > response to this message, so I'm just going to be content with describing I dont remember the codes to dial, but there is a code to dial that will disable the call-waiting feature while you are using your modem. Try calling the phone company and ask them how to temporarily disable the call-waiting feature. Or, maybe someone here will jump in and tell us? [ stuff deleted ] > > We is talking the cost of one little MMU chip. Given the number of custom > chips in the machine already, surely they could have come up with this? Remember that the Motorola 68851 chip is still very expensive. By the way, does anyone out there know what the current price for them is? [ more stuff deleted ] Jim
trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) (01/18/88)
In article <2136@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >In article <38467@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >>Harald made some valid points about UNIX (tm) and its siblings. Basically >>while the kernel may be kept under 500K the utilities, tools and other >>stuff that everyone 'expects' UNIX to have usually add up to a lot of >>disk space. Added to that, UNIX processes can be fairly large and that I agree with Harald on this one...My Symmetrics came with 35 megabytes of tools, languages, utilities, etc, and I have aquired another 20 megs or so of necessary stuff that I find handy to have on-line...Note that this is a BSD system and that SYSV systems seem to come with less tools included 'free' (i.e. documentation workbench, prolog, apl, lisp, uw, window, etc). >>In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: >>> In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance >>>UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and >>>would love to have it at home. Sorta true...my Symmetrics cost $4995 (4-rs232/1-centronics/2 meg model), but if you don't mind putting up with sorta-unix on a PC then you can get pretty close with an AT runing minix or micro-port. I looked at that approach first because it was cheaper ($3000), but I also value my time and hate wasting time playing the workaround game. The 386 machines might be a different matter, though...they are fast. >>> In summary, I don't feel UNIX is reasonable for the home computing Symantics here...the average person - who is not a programmer in a unix (or unix like) environment at work - would probably have no use for it even if it was in the $3000 range. (I think that this is related to the point that Dave Meile was trying to get across in the mulit-tasking war). HOWEVER, if you are a unix programmer for a living and like to program in your spare time (what is spare time?), then it does make sense. Or if, like me, you just want a good base for furthering your knowledge of languages and unix, then it also makes sense (except when you are explaining it to your wife :-) ). -Todd Burkey trb@stag.UUCP
chekmate@athena.mit.edu (Adam Kao) (01/19/88)
In article <2965@killer.UUCP>, jdp@killer.UUCP (Jim Pritchett) writes: > Remember that the Motorola 68851 chip is still very expensive. By the > way, does anyone out there know what the current price for them is? $219.95 for the 12 mHz version, $299.95 for the 16 mHz version. This is quantity one from Jameco electronics. Adam
cs178abu@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU (John Schultz) (01/21/88)
In my area, call waiting can be suppressed by using *70 before you dial: *70,5551234 John
keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (01/25/88)
In article <773@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU> cs178abu@sdcc8.ucsd.edu.UUCP (John Schultz) writes:
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. In my area, call waiting can be suppressed by using *70 before you
.dial:
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. *70,5551234
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. John
How do you disable it when you ANSWER the phone?
Keith Doyle
# {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (01/31/88)
In article <2965@killer.UUCP>, jdp@killer.UUCP (Jim Pritchett) writes: > In article <528@nuchat.UUCP>, peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > > We is talking the cost of one little MMU chip. Given the number of custom > > chips in the machine already, surely they could have come up with this? > > Remember that the Motorola 68851 chip is still very expensive. By the > way, does anyone out there know what the current price for them is? You don't need a 68851 to support UNIX. All you need is a base register to relocate 0, and a bounds register to protect other tasks. I'm sure adding base and bounds registers to Gary would be a lot cheaper than a 68851. -- -- a clone of Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva `-_-' -- normally ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter U -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.