m1rcd00@fed.FRB.GOV (Bob Drzyzgula) (06/01/91)
We're a SPARC shop, but are looking to put together a couple of inexpensive 386SX boxes to run SVR4 and do uucp and SLIP communications. These are not going to be user workstations, but we will be doing compiles and stuff there to set things up and keep them running. The obvious choice seems to be DELL, but so far we've been getting a run-around there on pricing for low-end configurations. What we have in mind is something like the following: 16 or 20 MHz 386SX, roomy tower cabinet 8 or 16 MB; SIMMS sockets pref., esp. for 4MB SIMMS SCSI controller 300-600 MB SCSI Disk 5.25" & 3.5" Floppies Super VGA graphics card Small (14" or so), high-resolution monochrome monitor 101 Keyboard & Mouse Ethernet Controller 8-port serial card SVR4 unlimited user license C compiler TCP/IP software w/SLIP X windows software Any suggestions/comments, especially wrt hardware/software combinations known to be relatively trouble-free and non-fascist (recent exchanges concerning various vendors' customer-control tactics have been noted), are welcome. I'd also like it if we could use hand-me-down Sun peripherals on these systems. In particular, I'll probably be able to allocate some 91 MB Wren SCSI drives we had been using as "paging packs", and I might come across an old SCSI QIC-24 tape drive. Even more extreme, I might be idiot enough to consider using some old Micropolis 1558 327MB ESDI drives out of an old Sun 3/160. How likely are these things to work? Any words of advice? One other thing: does anyone know if internal Telebit modems are commonly supported by SVR4 implementations? It'd save some space on the table... Thanks, Bob Drzyzgula Federal Reserve Board Washington, DC rcd@fed.frb.gov
johnl@n3dmc.svr.md.us (John Limpert) (06/01/91)
m1rcd00@fed.FRB.GOV (Bob Drzyzgula) writes: >We're a SPARC shop, but are looking to put together a >couple of inexpensive 386SX boxes to run SVR4 and do uucp >and SLIP communications. I would suggest that you look at 386DX 33 MHz motherboards. Nothing wrong with the 386SX, that is what I run my UNIX system on. While looking at clone parts at a Hamfest last week I found that most of the clone dealers were selling 386DX 33 MHz motherboards with 64K cache for $500-$600. The boards were expandable to 32M with 4M SIMMs. -- John A. Limpert The strongest reason for the people to retain the right johnl@n3dmc.svr.md.us to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect uunet!n3dmc!johnl themselves against tyranny in government. T. Jefferson.
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (06/02/91)
In article <8808@fed.FRB.GOV> rcd@fed.frb.gov (Bob Drzyzgula) writes: >We're a SPARC shop, but are looking to put together a >couple of inexpensive 386SX boxes to run SVR4 and do uucp >and SLIP communications. These are not going to be user >workstations, but we will be doing compiles and stuff there >to set things up and keep them running. The obvious choice >seems to be DELL, but so far we've been getting a >run-around there on pricing for low-end configurations. >What we have in mind is something like the following: > 16 or 20 MHz 386SX, roomy tower cabinet > 8 or 16 MB; SIMMS sockets pref., esp. for 4MB SIMMS > SCSI controller > 300-600 MB SCSI Disk > ... This doesn't really look like a low-end configuration. You'd be widening your potential vendor base if you went to the 80386DX processor. Not to mention boosting your speed by somewhere in the range of 40% (at the same clock speed). The price difference between DX and SX is insignificant when you start talking about 300+ Mb disk or 8Mb+ memory. SX's are convenient when you talk about *real* low-end, shave every last penny, ie: < 4Mb RAM, 1-2 user. The market being what it is, you'd often find perfectly reliable DX boards from lessor-known vendors at prices comparable to SX's from the better-known vendors that considered the SX worth doing. You shouldn't have any trouble with reusing other SCSI disks or tapes. Other than making sure you have the parameters right in the system reconfigs. The 1558's will work if you get an ESDI controller. Can't hurt to try (provided you do backups ;-) >One other thing: does anyone know if internal Telebit >modems are commonly supported by SVR4 implementations? I was under the impression that all internal modems had the same interface at the device driver level as "dumb" RS232 serial ports. All you'd have to worry about was the upper-level configuration, which you'd have to fiddle with anyways even if the modem was external (eg: UUCP Dialers files). -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Domain: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: ...!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List: ferret-request@eci386; Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries: psroff-request@eci386 or Canada 416-832-0541. Psroff 3.0 in c.s.u soon!
mju@ganglion.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (06/04/91)
In article <2100@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes: >>One other thing: does anyone know if internal Telebit >>modems are commonly supported by SVR4 implementations? One thing to watch out for is that the Telebit internal modem has a non-16550 UART in it, which means that the CPU is interrupted on every character. If you're downloading news at 1300cps or so, that means that the CPU winds up servicing a serial input interrupt about every 3/4ms or so. This can really put a strain on the CPU, and can also lose characters on input. If you have a serial port with a 16550 UART and a serial driver (such as FAS) that supports it, you only need to interrupt the CPU every 16 bytes or so, which is much easier on the CPU. The UART on the TB modem also isn't socketed, which means in order to replace it, you have to unsolder it -- which, naturally, voids your warranty. Finally, internal modems are a bad idea in any case. They can't be moved from one bus architecture to another, which means your modem won't work on a Sun workstation, DECstation, or anything else that doesn't have an ISA bus. Internal modems also can't be turned off without turning off the whole system, and you don't want to have to shut down your Unix system just because your modem got confused. Finally, internal modems tend to be very good at shunting lightning spikes that come across the phone line onto your bus, which means if your phone line gets hit, you could well fry your motherboard and some of your other expansion cards. If an external modem takes a lightning hit, it usually dies, but at least it doesn't take the rest of your system with it. -- Marc Unangst | mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | "Bus error: passengers dumped" ...!hela!mudos!mju |