jkimball@SRC.Honeywell.COM (John Kimball) (10/11/89)
I've started to think about acquiring a home Unix machine, to replace my
CP/M machine.
The main purposes would be
o email and news
o ability to run most of the freely-redistributable software we use
at work (mainly GNU stuff)
Obviously I'd want a lot of disk (80+ meg?). I think I'd prefer to have a
machine with a 32-bit nonsegmented address space. I'm not sure how much
horsepower is advisable. I don't feel any strong desire for bitmapped
graphics.
I'm more comfortable with BSD-derivatives, but I'm not afraid of System V.
Anybody done this recently? Does anybody have any immediate suggestions as
to a reasonable configuration, and a place(s) to purchase it? What are
some ballpark figures for the components? How cheaply can this be done?
Thanks in advance . . .
John Kimball
Inet: jkimball@src.honeywell.com Honeywell Systems and Research Center
postmaster@src.honeywell.com, etc Computer Sciences/Software Technology
uucp: <any-smart-host>!srcsip!jkimball 3660 Technology Drive, MN65-2100
phone: 612-782-7343 fax: 612-782-7438 Minneapolis, MN 55418-1006davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (10/11/89)
In article <34345@srcsip.UUCP>, jkimball@SRC.Honeywell.COM (John Kimball) writes: | I've started to think about acquiring a home Unix machine, to replace my | CP/M machine. | | The main purposes would be | o email and news | o ability to run most of the freely-redistributable software we use | at work (mainly GNU stuff) If you really only want what you describe, buy a used unix-pc. It's slow and somewhat limited, but it will do what you want and should be <$1000 for the machine and software. If you want more performance buy a cheap 386 and cheap UNIX. The unmodified SysV versions like ix/386 and ESIX have the AT&T compiler, Xenix has it's own, more ANSI features, cross compiles to DOS, costs more. Having used both I find about the same number of bugs in each, but diferent bugs. If you don't need ANSI or DOS go with the regular SysV or SCO UNIX, has both compilers and does OS/2 (whoopee?). If you want cheap BSD look for a refurbished Sun-2. A friend of mine got one with mono and color for about $2k. They are advertised in the magazines from time to time. Repair ====== unix-pc - good luck. There are places which do it. 386 - warantee, lots of places repair. Sun-2 - ask locally, it varies. Usually not cheap. -- 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