mcguffey@muvms3.bitnet (Michael McGuffey) (08/10/90)
I've been configuring a lab for the Mathematics department for teaching calculus, algebra, statistics, etc, with computers. Presently the lab consists of 20 Mac SE/30's and 2 Mac IIci's connected via localtalk to a Laserwriter IINTX. All machines will have 4MB of ram and 80MB hard disks. The Mac IIci's will have color monitors using the onboard video hardware. We've chosen Mathematica, SAS's JMP, and MS Word for software. Does anyone have familiarity with labs of similar set-up? I'm particu- larly interested in the use of Mathematica on the SE/30's. I've only used it on a full-blown Mac IIci (8MB ram and color video card), but it performed admirably. Is the SE/30 enough of a machine? Does it need 5 MB or 8 MB to run well? I'll probably put an extra 4 MB in the IIci's to compensate for using on- board video, but I'd prefer not having to do that on the SE/30's. Thanks for any help. -- michael ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael McGuffey, Director BITNET: mcguffey@muvms3 Office of Institutional Research Internet: mcguffey@marshall.wvnet.edu Marshall University Phone: 304/696-3212 Huntington, WV 25755 FAX: 304/696-3601 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
smithw@hamblin.byu.edu (William V. Smith) (08/11/90)
We gave up trying to do much with Mathematica on Macs. It is simply to much of a memory hog. We installed some NeXTs instead. Seems to work fine there. -Bill-
ags@seaman.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman) (08/11/90)
In article <SMITHW.90Aug10121857@hamblin.hamblin.byu.edu> smithw@hamblin.byu.edu (William V. Smith) writes: >We gave up trying to do much with Mathematica on Macs. It is simply >to much of a memory hog. We installed some NeXTs instead. Seems to >work fine there. I find that quite a bit can be done on a 68020 Mac II, running Mathematica in a 5 Mb or larger Multifinder partition. It is noticeably slower than a NeXT, but I'm sure an SE/30 would help considerably. The main problem is that you have to be prepared to restart the program occasionally on a Mac, because Mathematica is only moderately successful at reclaiming unused memory. -- Dave Seaman ags@seaman.cc.purdue.edu
xinwei@jessica.stanford.edu (Xin Wei Sha) (08/15/90)
One good model is to distribute Mathematica across a local network: Run the Front End on a Mac and the remote kernel on a Sun (or NeXT). I've tested out various combinations of Macs (II, IIci, cx, fx), with kernel on Suns (3 & 4 Sparcstation), and NeXTs. You have the advantage of an integrated symbolic/graphic notebook interface (which can run in a fixed memory of 2-3 meg), coupled to a kernel running on a fast machine with virtual memory. There ought to be $ savings as well. We'd like to negotiate with WRI for a "distributed" license: either many copies of Mathematica on Macs (perhaps Suns), or multiple Front Ends off of a few Kernels on some compute servers on the university ethernet. By the way, on a MacIIfx, compute+graphics timings are comparable to the NeXT, because, though the NeXT still beats the fx in the symbol crunching by roughly 9:7, postscript to screen speed is much faster on the Mac. Xin Wei