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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!news From: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: What is a good inexpensive UNIX system ? Message-ID: <l5v7vjINNrr1@neuro.usc.edu> Date: 12 Jul 92 02:58:59 GMT Article-I.D.: neuro.l5v7vjINNrr1 References: <4909@shum.huji.ac.il> <691@cyclone.sbi.com> Sender: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 26 NNTP-Posting-Host: neuro.usc.edu In article <691@cyclone.sbi.com> bet@cyclone.sbi.com (Bennett E. Todd) writes: >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. I am running SCO UNIX SYSV/386 3.2r2.0 ODT 1.1 X11R4 on a cheap clone board (UTRON 386SX-25) with a WD8003ebt ethernet card and an ATI Graphics Vantage 8514/a compatible video card in an old IBM PC/AT case with 8 MB memory. It seems the WD card and the ATI card offload most of the work from the '386SX -- the system is not starved for processor time -- and there is no swapping or paging in the absence of large quantities of offscreen pixmaps. Alexander-James Annala Principal Investigator USC Neuroscience Image Analysis Network HEDCO Neuroscience Building, Fifth Floor University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520