positron@cosmic.berkeley.edu (Shigeki Misawa) (03/13/90)
Does anyone out in Netland have any advise to give in assembling an inexpensive UNIX system? The application that I am going to be running is Spice 3C. Since I have the source code, I need a C compiler that can generate code for a 387 and is capable of addressing more than 1 megabyte of memory (I am assuming that this latter requirement is already satisfied by any C compiler running under UNIX). The specific information that I am interested in are : 1) What versions of Unix are out there? (This is of interest since the Spice code that I have was designed for 4.2 or 4.3 BSD.) 2) Is System V release 4 available and how compatible is it with 4.3 BSD? 3) What commercial packages are out there ? I have heard of Esix, and SCO but don't know anything about them. 4) Who sells this stuff and how muchis it going to set me back ? 5) What other software questions should I be asking? 6) Where can I go to get more Information ? (I have read Unix world Unix review, Personal Workstation Mag, Byte, Info world PCWEEK, etc but these are essentially worthless) 7) Being a relatively inexperienced unix user, how long will it take for me to figure this all out ? On a hardware side, I have the following questions : 1) What is the minimum hardware configuration that I am going to need? Specifically, I currently use about 40Meg of disk space on my PC AT clone for applications programs. How much disk space am I going to need if I intend to have a Dos partition of about 40 MEG and at least 10 or 20 Meg available for applications program under unix? (I guess this translates into how much disk space does unix itself need) 2) How fast a box am I going to need to get the equivalent performance of a 286 box at 10 Mhz running MS DOS ? 3) How fast does the hard disk have to be ? 4) What type oc controller is necessary (SCSI, ESDI, MFM, RLL) ? 5) How much main memory do I need to run a task that uses at least 1.5 to 2 meg of memory ? ( or if the available unixes support virtual memory, how big does core have to be in order to run a program that takes up at least 1 meg of space under MS DOS without slowing significantly do to constant paging ? 6) How sensitive to mother board, display board and disk controller board brands are the commercially available UNIXes. 7) What are the acceptable brands of boards and controllers etc ? 8) What other questions should I be asking ? Finally, are there any other hardware platforms that I should be looking at , i.e. Amiga, Apple Sun, Next etc? If anyone has any advise they would like to give me please respond via email (unless the answers to these questions may be of interest to others banging there heads on the 640K barrier.) Thanks in Advance -- Shigeki Misawa -> Physics grad student