weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) (03/31/88)
I'm searching for a 386 box to run Interactive Systems Unix. I plan
to do development in support of a law office running Interactive Systems
Unix on an AT&T 386 machine.
-What is an adequate configuration? Interactive Systems recommends
>= 4 M of ram and >= 40 M hard disk. Are their recommendations valid?
-How does Interactive's Unix compare (in price, performance, support etc)
with the Microport and Bell Technology versions, and with SCO Xenix for
that matter? Would it make sense to do development on say Microport
Unix or SCO Xenix when my primary customer is using Interactive Unix?
-What is a good machine to buy? Obviously, cost is a primary consideration.
Has anyone had experience with the Northgate or Quantus 386 machines? Their
advertised prices are lower than most.
Thanks
Jim Weavernorstar@tnl.UUCP (Daniel Ray) (04/01/88)
In article <4219@ihlpf.ATT.COM>, weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes: > -What is a good machine to buy? Obviously, cost is a primary consideration. > Has anyone had experience with the Northgate or Quantus 386 machines? Their > advertised prices are lower than most. > > Thanks > Jim Weaver Hi all, this is my first USENET posting ever. Let me tell you about the Quantus MT/386 machine. When I had decided to purchase a UNIX system and all that goes with it, due to financial constraints I wanted to go mail order wherever possible. The Quantus (from Quantus Micro Systems, Spofford, NH) was the only machine that was cheap as well as having an 80meg drive and 2megs of RAM, so I was sold, not knowing any better (sometimes I do the smartest things! :@). They were real nice over the phone, and I drove down to their plant (since I live in Vt), and paid $3760 in hard cash and picked up my machine. At the time I was still waiting for the SCO XENIX software to arrive, so all I could do was to experiment by running some MS-DOS stuff I had. Exactly 8 hours after I turned it on, the machine crashed. It lost the CMOS setup configuration that told it about the hard disk, the time, etc. I also discovered that Quantus had forgot to give me the security key *and* the setup program with the machine. So I called them and asked for it, thinking that running SETUP would fix things. A week later, it came in the mail, but when I ran it it didn't work. Somehow the controller card flaked out. I decided that I wanted my money back. So I returned the machine, but they said that I'd have to wait 30 business days before I could get a refund. That time has passed, and still no word from them. They have both my machine and my money. Very soon now I shall take them to court. When I was down there waiting to give back my machine, there were two other customers in there waiting to get their machines fixed. Turns out that they bought the 286 machine, and each, independently had disk failures within a week of ownership. The moral of the story: DON'T BUY A QUANTUS! Btw, I never encountered such a mean (substitute more potent descriptor here) group of people, when I wanted a refund. I mean its only money, no need to get so bad. Oh well. northstar (of The Northern Lights) uunet!uvm-gen!tnl!norstar %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "All things I thought I knew, but now confess: the more I know I know, I know the less" -- Robert Owen
davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (04/02/88)
In article <4219@ihlpf.ATT.COM> weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes: | I'm searching for a 386 box to run Interactive Systems Unix. I plan | to do development in support of a law office running Interactive Systems | Unix on an AT&T 386 machine. | | -What is an adequate configuration? Interactive Systems recommends | >= 4 M of ram and >= 40 M hard disk. Are their recommendations valid? I certainly wouldn't go any smaller than that. | | -How does Interactive's Unix compare (in price, performance, support etc) | with the Microport and Bell Technology versions, and with SCO Xenix for | that matter? Bell TEch is selling UNIX so you can use their hardware, the real thrust of their sales. About the only thing they really support is the device drivers which they write. | Would it make sense to do development on say Microport | Unix or SCO Xenix when my primary customer is using Interactive Unix? I wouldn't do development on anything else due to postability problems. I evaluated the IS C compiler for a business, and my opinion is that it's a real piece of... NO! I am trying not to do flames, just say that I was not impressed, because about a third of the working programs I tried to compile caused the compiler to crash (not complain, like core dump). You would be ahead to use the compiler which the customer has, or to look for a version of Greenhills for IN/ix to use for development, and move the binaries. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
dee@linus.UUCP (David E. Emery) (04/04/88)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.1 of Sun Aug 2 1987 on faron (berkeley-unix) Quantus went under last week. there was a front page article on the founder, who's had several other failures, in the Manchester NH Sunday News. I strongly suggest you contact the Attorney General in N.H. to get on the list of creditors. I almost bought a quantus machine. Now I'm glad I resisted the temptation... dave emery emery@mitre-bedford.arpa faron!dee
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (04/05/88)
My friend's buddy bought two '386 machines from Quantus. He only received one before the company went into receivership. Now he's out about $2k for the machine he didn't get. The mahcine he did get came sans setup disk, so it is dead in the water until we can find some sort of workable BIOS for it. Moral of the story: try before you buy! If the advertising sounds too good to be ture -- it is! --Bill
root@uwspan.UUCP (Sue Peru Sr.) (04/05/88)
+---- weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes in <4219@ihlpf.ATT.COM> ---- | I'm searching for a 386 box to run Interactive Systems Unix. | -What is an adequate configuration? Interactive Systems recommends | >= 4 M of ram and >= 40 M hard disk. Are their recommendations valid? The *absolute* minimum RAM you want is 2Mb + 1Mb for each person/thing using the machine (you + uucp + news2.11 = 3Mb additional). You will find that the performance of the machine will almost double when going from 1Mb to 2Mb, again when going from 2Mb to 3Mb, and again from 3Mb to 4Mb. above 4Mb (and single user) you will usually keep everything in memory and not have to be swapping/paging from disk. The disk i/o on an AT bus is *slow* (compared to the CPU speed...) and the more memory you have, the faster things run. ***BE SURE*** you only use 32 bit memory - it runs at 1 or 2 wait states (depending on the machine design). A 16 bit memory card (like Everex's RAM 3000...) needs about 14 to 16 wait states!. A 16 Mhz 386 CPU with 16 bit memory runs almost as fast as a 6Mhz IBM PC-AT with a 286 CPU :-( | -How does Interactive's Unix compare (in price, performance, support etc) | with the Microport and Bell Technology versions This is the family tree for 386 Unix System5: Interactive's base port -----+--------+-------+---- | | | | | continuing development | | VP/ix & ISC dev drivers | | | | dev drivers +--> Interactive's current release | | | +----------> Bell Tech's current release continuing development Locus Merge & dev drivers | +-------------------> Microport's current release ISC and Microport support their products by enhancing, upgrading, fixing, and adapting their code; Bell Tech does NO extra "development" - you get a copy of ISC's base port, Bell Tech's device drivers for the ICC, HUB, and 60Mb Tape, and that's it. | Has anyone had experience with the Northgate or Quantus 386 machines? Their | advertised prices are lower than most. I'd stay away from Quantus - several people here at the UW have had MAJOR problems with the company (credit cards billed on receipt of order, then the order is "lost" and then "found".. + requirement of a 30-60 day wait until refund is processed...) really very bad news to deal with... Northgate is a good place - I just hope that they aren't growing too fast! | Thanks, Jim Weaver -John Plocher -- Comp.Unix.Microport is now unmoderated! Use at your own risk :-)
dick@slvblc.UUCP (Dick Flanagan) (04/06/88)
In article <4219@ihlpf.ATT.COM> weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes: > -How does Interactive's Unix compare (in price, performance, support etc) > with the Microport and Bell Technology versions, and with SCO Xenix for > that matter? Would it make sense to do development on say Microport > Unix or SCO Xenix when my primary customer is using Interactive Unix? If you look closely at Microport's Unix, you will see that it actually is Interactive's Unix with uPort mods. Under those circumstances, the two should be fairly compatible. Dick -- Dick Flanagan, W6OLD GEnie: FLANAGAN UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucscc!slvblc!dick Voice: +1 408 336 3481 Internet: slvblc!dick@ucscc.UCSC.EDU LORAN: N037 04.7 W122 04.6 USPO: PO Box 155, Ben Lomond, CA 95005
hsu@santra.UUCP (Heikki Suonsivu) (04/07/88)
In article <10208@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <4219@ihlpf.ATT.COM> weave@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes: >| -What is an adequate configuration? Interactive Systems recommends >| >= 4 M of ram and >= 40 M hard disk. Are their recommendations valid? > > I certainly wouldn't go any smaller than that. I was running microport in 1.6 M or ram. It worked but was painfully slow. Now I have 3.6 M and it still feels slow when doing lots of compilations on the background. Bottleneck does seem to be hard disk, not CPU or memory. Comparing to my old convergent miniframe, speedup is not much, and after two compilations in both machines miniframe with one meg of memory (swap, swap) feels a bit nicer to use, it has better response time, swapped out emacs comes back quicker, and so on, though timing compilations gives worse results. I agree with both recommendations, and there is still more speedup available with more memory and faster disks. >problems. I evaluated the IS C compiler for a business, and my opinion >is that it's a real piece of... NO! I am trying not to do flames, just I have compiled gnu emacs, some public domain stuff floating around and few hundred kb of my own source form microport without any problems, I was surprised as I expected much worse as an owner of V/AT. I had some funny things happening when I had lots of stuff in memory, probably I run out of swap as I had gnuemacs in all windows, two compilations and lint going on, and killing other emacses cured the problem (telling me out of memory could be nicer instead of syntax error in the end of all files or /bin/as exiting with random values, though). *= problem with chars which is documented in the manuals occured once when compiling gnu emacs (etags) and fns.c compiled with -O made emacs to core dump when called without parameters. No other problems in cc has occured yet. My own code is quite portable as I have to make it run on PCs also. cc is not specially fast, it beats miniframe 3:1 but that's not too well for 3.6M:1M and 80386@16MHz@1w:68010@10MHz@0w, uport has more buffer memory than miniframe core in total !-) (hard disks have same size and speed). This may be because of disk io, olivetti probably thought that people would be using a mess dos anyway so why bother with fast hard disk io.