*BSD News Article 1834


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From: bet@cyclone.sbi.com (Bennett E. Todd)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: What is a good inexpensive UNIX system ?
Message-ID: <691@cyclone.sbi.com>
Date: 6 Jul 92 20:43:48 GMT
References: <4909@shum.huji.ac.il>
Organization: Salomon Brothers, Inc
Lines: 20

In article <4909@shum.huji.ac.il> klein@sunrise.huji.ac.il () writes:
>[...]
>I am interested in getting the cheapest UNIX system with X Windows
>that I can. I figure this means going with a 80486 PC Machine.
>[...]

I almost agree with your thought above; where I'd differ is that I don't
think a 486 is a proper choice for ``cheapest UNIX system with X Windows''.
If you go for a 386SX-25 ISA, stuff in 8M (for Linux) or 16M for anything
else, get the smartest SVGA supported by your X server, and stuff in an
Adaptek 1542B with a good disk, you'll have a balanced system. To keep a 486
from being I/O starved down to the same performance, you'd need EISA boards
for SCSI and graphics --- and at that point I think you've abandoned
``cheapest''. But then if you go for one of the commercial SVR4 releases, or
Solaris god help you, then you might not get acceptable performance with a
low-end system. It seems like there are a hell of a lot of programmers being
paid to conjure up a market for faster hardware.

-Bennett
bet@sbi.com