khoo@husc8.HARVARD.EDU (Oonchye Khoo) (05/09/90)
A question for those who already have RS/6000's: The Economics Department here will be getting two Model 320's in the Fall, (the Desktop models). The configuration we are thinking of getting are with: 8-megs of memory, 320mb hard drives, ethernet cards, standard grey scale monitors and a tape drive for one of the machines. Are the 320's brain damaged in any way? ie. Should we go with the next model up instead? Is 8 megs of memory enough, or will the machine run much better with 16 megs? Are 320mb hard drives big enough (we plan to have about 50 users on each machine). We will be running statistical software with large databases on the machines, and will probably run OSF/Motif as well. I would espeacially like to hear from people with experience in SAS, TSP, RATS SPSS, MATLAB etc.... Thanks in advance. --- Ah Love! Could You and I with Fate conspire, To Grasp this sorry scheme *of things (Lawrence Oon-Chye Khoo) Entire, * Would we not khoo@husc8.harvard.edu Shatter it *and then, 35 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138 Shape it* closer to our heart's Desire. --- From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam.
mick@coggins.uucp (Mickey Coggins/100000) (05/10/90)
In article <2866@husc6.harvard.edu> khoo@husc8.UUCP (Oonchye Khoo) writes: >A question for those who already have RS/6000's: > >: 8-megs of memory, 320mb hard drives, ethernet cards, >standard grey scale monitors and a tape drive for one of the machines. > >Are the 320's brain damaged in any way? ie. Should we go with the next model >up instead? The 320 is not a crippled machine. It runs nicely. IMHO. (I *AM* an IBM stockholder ;v) >Is 8 megs of memory enough, or will the machine run much better with 16 megs? It will always run better with more memory, until all of the applications and the kernel running on it fit entirely in RAM. The main question is what performance level are you looking for, and how large are the "typical" applications your users want to run. Application size is not easy to compute, but is trivial to figure empirically (just run it and do a 'ps'). Also, the 'lsps' command will show you how much of your paging space is being used. AIX V3 is quite clever about memory usage, since almost all code is shared, so even multiple copies of a large application will run nicely in a machine with "not enough memory". >Are 320mb hard drives big enough (we plan to have about 50 users on each >machine). >We will be running statistical software with large databases on the machines, >and will probably run OSF/Motif as well. This is easy. The Machine comes with a "planning guide" with some real paper spreadsheets to calculate how much disk space for the pieces of the operating system you wish to install. Subtract the number you come up with from 304 Megabytes (the real capacity of the 320 Megabyte drive), then subtract the size of the large databases you plan to use, and subtract the result of the following calculation: (#users * amount of disk space needed/allowed per user) If the answer is less than zero, my stock goes up! Seriously, you can simply add another 320MB drive, a 120MB drive, or external 600MB or 800MB drives as needed. Have fun, Mickey Coggins ...!uunet!ibmsupt!mick 512-838-4809 or 512-838-4851 (fax) Mail Stop 2831, 11400 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78758 USA