goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (01/01/91)
I have a friend working as the legislative director for a downstate Illinois congressional representative, and they have been using an old mini for about fifteen years now. It's high time they replaced it, and they are looking for alternatives. I'm going to offer a brief resume of their situation here. If anyone has any ideas to pass on, I'd like to hear them (especially from anyone in the Wash- ington area, whom they can call directly). Basically the situation is this: There is a < 2 MIPS mini with 1 meg of main memory and a 40 meg fixed disk serving a small office of about ten people. They want to upgrade. The question is to what? Do they install a minicomputer (50-100k)? Too expensive for them, and they don't have enough users. They would like to use popular micro-based word processors (e.g. WordPerfect), but in or- der to keep everyone connected to their central constituent data- base, they would need to install a network of some kind. The worry there, though, is how seamlessly the networked database will inte- grate with the separate PC environments. Would it be better for them simply to go with a Unix CPU, and run something like WordPerfect off of their existing terminals? Or should they go with a bunch of connected DOS machines? Or should they mix Unix with DOS using a popular networking system (e.g. No- vell)? I'm an academic, and have no idea how the various solutions compare. Probably the things they are most concerned with are: 1) cost 2) reliability 3) portability 4) ease of use The reliability issue hinges on how much intervention and system maintenance will be necessary, and on how likely they are to need to get help outside the office to solve routine problems. Porta- bility is a concern, in that they don't want to have to keep in- stalling maintenance upgrades, or worse yet, entire system upgrades and conversions. The ease of use thing is on their minds because they don't want to spend a lot on training clerical people. I figured that if WordPerfect really did run well under Unix, they could just drop in a Unix CPU in place of their old mini, and then work off of existing (or cheap replacement) terminals. WordPerfect, being an office standard, would be easy to get training for, and the Unix environment would make the usual DOS print spoolers, schedulers, and special networking software unnecessary. Is this a pipe dream? Has anyone really tried it? Other ideas? -Richard (goer@sophist.uchicago.edu)
mike@bria.AIX (Mike Stefanik/78125) (01/02/91)
In article <1991Jan1.032757.1967@midway.uchicago.edu>, goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes: [deleted] > Basically the situation is this: There is a < 2 MIPS mini with 1 > meg of main memory and a 40 meg fixed disk serving a small office > of about ten people. They want to upgrade. The question is to > what? Do they install a minicomputer (50-100k)? Too expensive > for them, and they don't have enough users. They would like to use > popular micro-based word processors (e.g. WordPerfect), but in or- > der to keep everyone connected to their central constituent data- > base, they would need to install a network of some kind. The worry > there, though, is how seamlessly the networked database will inte- > grate with the separate PC environments. [deleted] I work for a company that does multiuser accounting packages and a good portion of my life is upgrading old IRIS systems to our UNIX platform. A vast majority of our clients who have upgraded their system have gone for 386's or 486's running SCO XENIX 2.3. Now, many of these same clients were thinking along the lines of PC networks because they also liked their WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. The solutions that we offer for a ten-user system with WP and Lotus are along these lines: 80386 running SCO XENIX 2.3.2 Minimum of 12M of memory (preferably 16M) Minimum of 320M of disk (preferably 600M) 320M tape deck 24 port Equinox, with Wyse WY60 terminals as replacements WordPerfect 5.0 (UNIX flavor) Lotus 1-2-3 (UNIX flavor) For those poor souls that *insist* on running other DOS applications, we'll install that wonderful kludge known as SCO VP/ix. As far as accessing your database, since you have only ten users, a centralized solution makes more sense (IMHO) than some flaky PC network. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Stefanik, Systems Engineer (JOAT), Briareus Corporation UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike "And on the seventh day, God said: 'Damn! I forgot to create UNIX!'"