HGB%sch-huey-duck@BRL-VGR.ARPA (07/12/83)
(This message is for my personal information only; no connection with Symbolics is implied by this message.) Are there any 68K vendors supplying a UNIX system with the following features? - vanilla UNIX-looking with Berkeley extensions; virtual memory interesting, but not necessary; - at least 1 megabyte of main memory, more is desirable; ECC RAM would be nice; - at least 15 megabytes of Winchester disk memory (4 Mbit/second or better transfer rate); - Multibus, with at least two slots left over after adding Ethernet board; - 4 serial lines with 9600 baud capabilities; - parallel printer driver (DMA) would be nice; - single box for CPU, power supply and disk, but built-in terminal not necessary; - reasonably quiet fan and disk; - floating point not necessary; bitmapped graphics not necessary; ------------------- NOW COME THE HARD REQUIREMENTS: - full speed disk controller, capable of reading at least a full track from the disk directly into main memory without missing revolutions, and a UNIX swapper/pager that takes advantage of it; - full speed serial line capability, which can actually accept a reasonable number of characters at 9600 baud (256? 1K?) before giving XOFF, and not lose characters; serial DMA would be nice; - autorestart after crash capability; autorestart after power failure would be nice; - built-in CMOS calendar clock with battery backup; - memory mapped RAM management with scatter load capability, so that swap space fragmentation doesn't waste all the RAM and disk memory, and a UNIX system that takes advantage of it; ------------------- I would be interested in what people are "gunna do", but I would be more interested in those that are already delivering such a box. Thank you.
MHARRIS%bbnf@sri-unix.UUCP (07/12/83)
I have an NCR Tower, which meets most of your requirements. Your full-speed disk need is a glaring exception: I have their 30mb unit which is quite slow (39msec access); their 80mb is 20msec access but needs an "expansion chassis". Don't know about max-speed disk transfer capability, but I'll try it out soon. Other than that, it has everything you want, is quite inexpensive, and support has been okay. Please copy me on any other responses you receive. Thanks. --mh
svr@wjh12.UUCP (Rosenthal) (07/20/83)
I second the recommendation for MASSCOMP as a vendor of 68K based systems. We took an early delivery of one (in January) which is used to support a research project in cardiac electrophysiology at Massachusetts general Hospital. It's been an absolute delight - rock solid hardware, a very faithful port of system III plus Berkeley enhancements, with a good bit-mapped graphics display (800 X 600 monochrome). The firm has been most pleasant to do business with. You might find the price a bit steep (I blanched a little, but it has the fastest A-D converter in the West which was an important requirement for us) but the reliability has been outstanding. Their user-friendly menu front end to unix is a little too friendly in my opinion (user-amorous ?) but you don't have to use it if you don't want to. I've benchmarked it using the prime number benchmark n C that appeared in BYTE earlier this year, and it's right up there with 11/750s - and not much slower than our 780 (2.4 seconds versus 1.6 seconds cpu time). Simon Rosenthal. (decvax!linus!genrad!wjh12!svr)
mark@zinfandel.UUCP (07/24/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-302900:zinfandel:12400035:000:220 zinfandel!mark Jul 16 10:04:00 1983 Try looking at MassComp. We got a talk from them and it sounds like they offer everything you want, and more. Mark Wittenberg ...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark ...!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!mark ...!teklabs!zehntel!mark