From: adams@pdv2.fmr.maschinenbau.th-darmstadt.de (Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,biz.sco.general,comp.unix.sys5.r3,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: PC Unix/Xenix vendors
Date: 28 Jan 93 02:16:10
Organization: TH-Darmstadt
	<ADAMS.93Jan23013219@PDV2.pdv2.fmr.maschinenbau.th-darmstadt.de>
	<2B62D876.3982@tct.com>
	<ADAMS.93Jan25234455@PDV2.pdv2.fmr.maschinenbau.th-darmstadt.de>
	<2B66DBDF.3964@tct.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pdv2.fmr.maschinenbau.th-darmstadt.de
In-reply-to: chip@tct.com's message of Wed, 27 Jan 1993 19:00:47 GMT

To: 
In article <2B66DBDF.3964@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:

>   >microSPARC by Ti integrates ALL onto ONE dice. Period.
>   Even the hard disk?  Please enumerate what "ALL" means.

I was referring to your previous mail. All mentioned components,
CPU, FPU, Cache, DRAM and expansion bus controller are integrated.

>   >>And common peripheral boards for the ISA bus are
>   >>so cheap you can practically give them away.
>   >
>   >Right. Some vendors give necessary peripheral interfaces away
>   >all on a mother board. Why should I pay additionally for SCSI, 
>   >ISDN, UART ? 

>   Because when you need eight serial ports, Sun will charge an arm and
>   a leg, because they're the only ones with an inside track on the
>   development of peripherals for their own custom busses.  Or are
>   third-party serial boards a thriving market in the Land of SPARCs and
>   I haven't heard about it?

We need 8 lines very seldom, and if so, we buy a terminal server for
about 1200,-- DM. Much cheaper than the [proposed] 8*SIO card 
by Technosoft,Niederlenz,  Switzerland for AT for about 3800,--DM,
which is a kind of standard here around.

>   >>PC UNIX rides that wave of good and cheap hardware, 
>   >
>   >Given price/performance ratio a GSX board by SUN is competitive to
>   >video cards of a PC. 
We need them. And for industrial application, it is even meanwhile
forced by law. ( Or why do think sell the expensive NOKIA monitors
like sliced bread.)
[ pixel jitter less than 0.05%, contrast of black/white/black strips,
one pixel wide, at least 1:30, 71 Hz refresh rate for b/w monitors 
up to 15", 83HZ for b/w up to 17", ... colour is suggested to have at least
100 HZ refresh rate.  Taken from faulty memory without ECC ...]

>   But most people don't need the performance.  I don't care if a Ferrari
>   has good price/performance if I can't afford it.

It depends, whether it is taken to be tool (for hard work) or toy
(recreation). If you are going to earn enough with your Ferrari,
why bother?

>   >NO. It is the add-on policy. To set up a competitive workstation
>   >for CAD [...]
>
>   CAD is always highest-of-high-end.  Talk more typical usage, please.

It is typical usage here. Please have a look at my mailheader.
"maschinenbau" stands for "mechanical engineering".  I will not
talk about a "more typical usage", as I know nothing about such.

>   >>>Window NT is targeted to processors like Mips R3000/R4000 and DEC/alpha.
>   >>
>   >>And the 486.
>   >
>   >Window NT developments are done on R3000, as Olivetti provides a
>   >special development station for Windows NT at better than usual
>   >conditions. All I know about Windows NT on 486: It is said to be
>   >unusable slow.
>
>   Oh, now _there's_ a good reason to sell Intel stock.  NOT!
>   There is _no_way_ that Microsoft will pass up the huge market that
>   the 486 presents.  If NT is too slow, Microsoft will speed it up.

Why? Microsoft did give up the Z80 market rather fast, as they
focussed on 8088 and IBM.

Are you sure they will speed it up considerably? Might it be, 
that Intels architecture does not fit well on a message passing kernel?
In cycles, how expensive is a context switch, how expensive 
is a page remap? You know, how many descriptor tables you have to reload.

>   >>OS/2, microkernel or no, will run on the 486 for the forseeable future.
>   >
>   >OS/2 development is done by IBM, and IBM told the world, that 
>   >OS/2 is regarded to be an "intermediate step to Distributed Computing
>   >Environment (DCE)" (Hope to have cited correctly.)
>
>   What, you have the impression that DCE won't work on a 486?

Up to now, there is no vendor. MS will do Windows, IBM will run RS/6000
and PoweRisc. SUN may provide an aproach by Solaris4.1. OSF themselves 
are not willing.

that's it, adams


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