HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: turbo@cse.uta.edu (Chris Turbeville)
Subject: Re: ET4000/W32 and VESA VL-Bus
Organization: Computer Science Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:05:42 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.080653.4328@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE> roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Thomas Roell) writes:
...
>a) The performance of a DRAM based accellerator depends VERY much upon
>   the refresh frequency (i.e. dot-clock). Let's say you have a DRAM
>   bandwidth of 100MB/sec (let's assume it doesn't matter wether these
>   are RAS/CAS or RAS/multiple-CAS cycles). If you use a 1024x768 60Hz
>   resolution, you need about 65MB/sec for screen refresh only. This
>   leaves you with around 35MB/sec for doing graphics. If you use
>   1024x768 72Hz, you need 75MB/sec for screen refresh. That means you
>   have only 25MB/sec for doing graphics. If you consider that you can
>   use the fast page mode accesses for screen refresh only and most of
>   the graphics operation won't be able to use them (since they are
>   interruped by screen refresh cycles), this computation is in fact
>   over optimisitic.
...
I thought that since EGA boards have been using double ported DRAM to
avoid this?  Or are you saying 100MBs is for both ports?  I have noticed
some ads saying their S3 board uses double ported DRAM so are we to
assume that most are not?  If so then as you say this will instantly
destroy any speed a coprocessor can give as the only thing that matters
then is faster DRAM.  I am no expert (as is obvius to the experts by
now) but I am just trying to get this picture.  If ram access has always
got this refresh overhead (assuming a single port) then any board will
simply be limited by DRAM bandwidth.
-Chris
From: mark@roissy.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: idea for non-cached mem above 16M (was Which motherboard?)
Date: 14 Dec 92 22:16:27 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland

In article <1992Dec11.150512.21282@texhrc.uucp> someone@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
>I recently saw an IBM clone with 32M RAM and 256K cache running OS2.  We
>ran several benchmarks and it was blazingly fast whenever the program was
>loaded in the lower 16M.  However, when the program was loaded in the 
>uncacheable upper 16M, performance dropped to about 25% of what it was.
>This had nothing to do with DMA.  We finally took out the upper 16M and
>the machine now provides better average performance than when it had 32M.

This reminds me of something the CDC mainframes used to do:  They had
X amount of fast memory, Y amount of slow memory and Z amount of disk swap
space.  They would only execute programs out of fast memory.  When fast
memory started to fill up, they would swap out jobs/processes to slow
memory.

Likewise, when the slow memory filled up, jobs that had been hanging around
in slow memory were swapped to disk, leaving more space for jobs being
swapped out of fast memory.

It seems that Linux and 386BSD people would be in an ideal spot to try this
idea.  Yeah, it's using strange software to get around inferior hardware,
but that is what swapping to disk is too.  (Otherwise, we would all have
128 meg of ram instead of a swap area. :)

So has anybody tried this?  Any comments on feasibility?

Mark S.

Xref: sparky comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:790 news.misc:2007
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,news.misc
Subject: Re: satellite news feed
Date: 11 Dec 1992 16:34:07 -0500
Organization: Mentor Graphics -- IC Group
NNTP-Posting-Host: milk.warren.mentorg.com
Keywords: satellite news

In <1992Dec10.150448.22819@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:

>>>I would find the downtime issue a problem.  I would think they should move
>>>to compression and offer articles 2-3 times a day to avoid this.
>>
>> We don't see the need for compression at this time. We do re-send the articles
>> since we have several machines dumping articles to a common nfs directory.

>Perhaps you could explain your redundancy scheme in a little more detail.

They send a months worth of Usenet to you on tape.  Every month you re-load
the tape into your news spool using special software that changes the
message-id's and about 10% of the "From" lines.  Nobody knows the difference.

Oops, wrong reality.

Tom
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
Reality is stranger than fiction #943247:  The IRS granted
ANS approval as a 501c3 "charity" on September 14, 1992.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: vagarwal@dis9002.shearson.com (Virendra Agarwal)
Subject: Re: specmarks and dx50s
Reply-To: vagarwal@tardis.shearson.com
Organization: Lehman Brothers
	<Bz0tFy.LCs@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 16:28:35 GMT


I would like to know how much RAM and Hard disk space is needed by different 
PC Unix packages available.

1- SCO Unix
2- Coherent
3- Linux
4- BSD386
5- Mach386
6- Interactive Unix


--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Virendra Agarwal
vagarwal@shearson.com
212-464-2151
Lehman Brothers
388 Greenwich st.(9th Flr.)
NewYork, NY 10013
---------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.linux
From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr)
Subject: Re: ET4000/W32 and VESA VL-Bus
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 19:25:25 GMT

In article <1992Dec20.143035.23332@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE> roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Thomas Roell) writes:
>>All XS3 published benchmarks are run at 1024x768 clocked at higher
>>than 60 Hz. I obtained the results from netters because I don't
>>own a high resolution monitor. During candid, e-mail exchange I do
>>state my own benchmarks. In the future I will state the clock 
>>frequency and the resolution.
>
>In fact nobody accused you that you posted illegaly tuned benchmarks
>by using the lowest possible resolution. As it happens this wasn't the
>question. 

Since I don't trust you, I figured that it would be best to make
my point clear.

A different but related topic:
We could all benefit if someone starts collecting and posting
performance figures of X servers running at high clock rates 
and for the benefit of people not wanting or unable to run
high clock rates. The recent introduction of Vesa Local Bus
systems and Vesa Local Bus cards really needs to be examined
closely to determine its cost effectiveness in the 386bsd X server
arena. Over and over again, the question of what is the best 
svga card for 386bsd or Linux is asked. Personally, I am 
interested on 801 cards running at a dot clock rate of at least
72MHz and at 1024x768.



<deleted text>


Amancio Hasty

-- 
Amancio Hasty           |  
Home: (415) 495-3046    |  ftp-site depository of all my work:
e-mail hasty@netcom.com	|  sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/incoming
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: oliver@infix.de (Oliver Okrongli)
Subject: Experiences with Dell Drive Array?
Organization: infix Software-Systeme GmbH
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 13:20:59 GMT

Does anybody out there use a Dell drive array under UNIX SVR4?  What
are your experiences?  Any pitfalls discovered yet?

We are considering a Dell 466SE/2 with drive array (three 200 MB
drives) as a database server running Informix OnLine 5.0.  Im am
especially interested in raw disk transfer rates I could get out of
this box either in guarded or data striping mode.  Any performance
advantage over an EISA-SCSI subsystem with three disk drives?

Any comments on this (or related) products welcome.
-- 
Oliver Okrongli		infix Software-Systeme GmbH	  Phone +49 531 238090
			Rebenring 33			  Fax   +49 531 3801152
oliver@infix.de		D-W-3300 Braunschweig		  F.R. Germany
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386
From: witr@rwwa.COM (Robert Withrow)
Subject: Re: PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide
Reply-To: witr@rwwa.com
Organization: R.W. Withrow Associates
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:23:41 GMT

In article <id.D5VV.O87@ferranti.com>, peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
 writes:

| Unless
| you do a LOT of floating point, the FPU is about as useful as string of
| christmas lights.

Unfortunately, it seems that almost anything can involve a lot of floating point.
One surprising example is DVIPS.  The FPU changes document conversions that
used to take 5 or 10 minutes into 5 or 10 seconds...

If you write lots of documents that you print using DVIPS, you might prefer
the FPU to an extra 8MB.

As always, rules-of-thumb must be applied with great care as they can be wrong as
often as they are right.  There is no substitute for understanding the
problem you are trying to solve.  If you think ``I don't do number-crunching
so I must not need an FPU'' you may be sorely disappointed.

-- 
 Robert Withrow, Tel: +1 617 598 4480, Fax: +1 617 598 4430, Net: witr@rwwa.COM
 R.W. Withrow Associates, 21 Railroad Ave, Swampscott MA 01907-1821 USA
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386
From: charles@gremlin.muug.mb.ca (Charles)
Subject: Re: For sale: 8 port INTELLIGENT serial card for DOS/UNIX PC's
Organization: The Haunted Unix Box
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 04:39:45 GMT

nabil@ogicse.ogi.edu (Aaron Nabil) writes:


>For sale:  DigiBoard DigiCHANNEL PC/8e's, UNUSED, $200/ea

Does anyone know if the driver for this board supports dial in/dial out on
the same port for UUCP and GETTY?

I need a parallel non blocking open so I can use a smart getty to program
a modem, while having it wait for a RING from the modem.

I'm doing this with FAS right now and it works fine, but I don't think FAS
is going to work with this board.

Charles

Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386
From: hst@heinihh.hanse.de (Heiner Strauss)
Subject: Re: PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide
Organization: JONAS
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 22:06:16 GMT

snelson@ptdca0.intel.com (Shannon Nelson) writes:

>In article <id.PPIV.GDK@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>>And what would I use the FPU for? The only think I run that uses the FPU
>>much is troff and ghostscript, and that's an offline job anyway.

>Careful, there.  Awk was kind enough to point out some bad 80387's for me
>in Intel's sVr3.2 a couple of years ago.  I would imagine that anything
>that does floating point is going to expect an FPU: UNIX linkers don't
>normally have switches for software emulation like most DOS linkers.

>Bottom line: I wouldn't try running UNIX without an FPU.  (Yes, I know that
>I work for a company that makes FPUs, but that doesn't change anything.)

I'm running Xenix on an 80386 2 years and I never miss the FPU. Ok, sometimes
I wish things would run faster, and if you have an FPU installed and it's
broken, oh yes, this is a disaster.
   Heiner
-- 
	Heiner Strauss				hst@heinihh.hanse.de
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: someone@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt)
Subject: Re: Which motherboard?
Organization: Texaco
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 15:05:12 GMT

In article <1992Dec8.144629.17255@microware.com>, adam@microware.com (Adam Goldberg) writes:
|> In <1992Dec7.193454.4397@texhrc.uucp> someone@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
|> >I want to put 32M RAM and a 256K cache and would like to 
|> >have EISA.  Howver, I know that most motherboards have
|> >a limitation in the cache controller which cripples systems
|> >which have more than 16M of RAM (anything above 16M cannot 
|> >be cached) :^{   I don't want to buy a crippled board.
|> 
|> The biggest problem isn't a caching problem; it's a DMA problem.  The
|> standard ISA-bus DMA will only work for memory <=16MB.  In fact,
|> although many boards support more than 16MB of memory, none of them
|> (to my knowledge) have implemented a DMA system which is backward
|> compatible, and will work past the 16MB line.  I don't believe it is
|> possible.
|> 

Does EISA solve this problem? And, if so, do any OS's take advantage of it?

I recently saw an IBM clone with 32M RAM and 256K cache running OS2.  We
ran several benchmarks and it was blazingly fast whenever the program was
loaded in the lower 16M.  However, when the program was loaded in the 
uncacheable upper 16M, performance dropped to about 25% of what it was.
This had nothing to do with DMA.  We finally took out the upper 16M and
the machine now provides better average performance than when it had 32M.
I am not all that concerned with I/O speed, but I want to be able to 
load a medium sized (30Meg) program and have it run effeciently.

-- 
Larry D. Pyeatt                 The views expressed here are not
Internet : pyeatt@texaco.com    those of my employer or of anyone
Voice    : (713) 975-4056       that I know of with the possible
                                exception of myself.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: uad1127@dircon.co.uk (Neil Stratford)
Subject: Re: Dell support?
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 14:54:16 GMT

shwake@nearside.UUCP (Raymond Shwake) writes:

>richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:
>
>>What's the current status of support and development for Dell Unix?
>
>	Don't know, except that Dell seems to be moving toward Solaris,
>	rather than SVr4.2.

Well according to Dell's Advanced Systems Group here in the 
UK, Dell would seem likely to take Univel's Unixware product 
rather than develop their own Sys V R 4.2 based product.  They 
would seem to be taking Solaris on as an option.

regards

Neil Stratford

nstratford@dircon.co.uk
neil@neilspad.demon.co.uk  (preferred)
From: magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Re: specmarks and dx50s
Date: 11 Dec 92 19:03:58 GMT
Organization: DarkTower Software
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Mark Ramsell (mramsell@gandalf.ca) wrote:
: I don't think I will even try to run Unix.  It looks like it would be
: painfully slow.  I have seen our SparcStation take long pauses when you
: get a few things going.  It may be a non-problem for the DX50 if the cpu
: loading is kept light.

Mmm. Not necessarily.  I've run a bunch of different ones on a 386/40,
and it's not too bad.  If you have a fast drive, it's not bad at all.

Remember also that access time is sped up since you don't have to travel
over a network to get something loaded.  So the DX50 should beat sparcs
there.  Execution time will be slower, but like you said, you're not paying
the $5000, and an added benefit is that you can also convert it to
other operating systems while you are kind of stuck with Unix if you have
a Sparc.

-Louis
--
---------------------------------------------------------
 Louis J. Giliberto, Jr.   ! magus@drktowr.chi.il.us
   -sysadmin drktowr       ! lgilibe@orion.it.luc.edu
  Chicago, IL  USA         ! 
---------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:08:22 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.203324.1227@texhrc.uucp> pyeatt@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
> In article <id.D5VV.O87@ferranti.com>, peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
> |> I'd take a system with 16M and no FPU over 8M and an FPU any day.

> I think I would go the other way around, ( 8M and an FPU over 16M without
> one ) but that is because I need the 1000% speedup that the FPU will give
> me.

Let me guess... seismic analysis?

You need to check out your news configuration. Your address comes out as
"someone@texaco.com".
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
+1 713 274 5180                            "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"
From: wayne@backbone.uucp (Wayne Schlitt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Re: idea for non-cached mem above 16M (was Which motherboard?)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 17:26:48 GMT
Organization: The Backbone Cabal
	<17543@umd5.umd.edu> <1992Dec14.231244.22459@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
NNTP-Posting-Host: helios.unl.edu

In article <1992Dec14.231244.22459@klaava.Helsinki.FI> torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds) writes:
> 
> The problem seems to be caching: the 16MB+ area doesn't get cached at
> all for some reason.  
> 
> >This reminds me of something the CDC mainframes used to do:  They had
> >X amount of fast memory, Y amount of slow memory and Z amount of disk swap
> >space.  They would only execute programs out of fast memory.  When fast
> >memory started to fill up, they would swap out jobs/processes to slow
> >memory.
> >
> >So has anybody tried this?  Any comments on feasibility?
> 
> I haven't tried anything like that, and frankly, I don't want to.

well, it really shouldn't be toooo hard or kludgy to implement.  "just"
create a RAM disk driver, and fix it so that it allocates the
uncacheable memory.  Then, put the swap drive on the RAM disk.


(I don't know Linux well enough to know how easy this would be to do,
what restrictions there are on the swap drive, etc...  just an
idea...)


actually, this wouldn't entirely fix the problem because now some
programs would just swap quicker than others.  To do it entirely
right, you would have to implement a second level of VM.  This could
be done in software fairly easily since you don't read or write pages
in very many places, and it doesn't have to be super quick.  


This kind of secondary swapping would be useful for when you have one
slow (or real busy) disk, and one new (or idle) disk.  



-wayne
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unis.sys5.r3
From: "David Herron" <david@twg.com>
Subject: Adaptec 1742A on ISC-3.0
Sensitivity: Personal
Encoding:  44 TEXT , 4 TEXT 
Conversion: Prohibited
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Conversion-With-Loss: Prohibited
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:37:13 GMT

Greetings!

We just received an Everex 486 DX2 (25/50 MHz) EISA system.  It
has an Adaptec 1742A with Maxtor ~600 meg SCSI drive.

I plug in the boot disk, it asks for the install disk & that goes in.
Then it asks about the keyboard (US_English), &c until there's a screen
with big box & menu.  Pick the Install choice.  It goes through a couple
of steps and tries to read the disk geometry and fails, dumping me back
to the shell.  The message is something about being unable to read/write
the disk geometry.

I've been going around on this problem for a few days now & have been
communicating with Everex without much help.

The Interactive manual says that for many EISA + SCSI systems you
must drop it to a `standard' mode (versus `enhanced' mode) for the
initial install & then after installation put it back in enhanced mode.
It started enhanced, I switched to standard, with no other effect.

Presence (or lack thereof) of the 3c503 seemed to make a difference
at some point, but it is not installed now.

A suggestion from Everex was to set the memory limit to 15 megs.  It
didn't make any difference & just truncated away some memory.

The other cards are; a serial card (for the mouse), an Everex "Viewpoint
Premium" SVGA card, and a memory card.  We also have an old Adaptec
ESDI controller from which a couple other disks will be hung but this
isn't installed now.

If I start the install while the ESDI controller is installed, the system
wants to install there.  This lead me to a section in Interactive's manual
describing this situation (2 controllers & wanting to boot from SCSI)
and told me to do install with ESDI removed & add it later.  This is
when the "cannot read/write disk geometry" error came back.

There aren't any I/O address or BIOS address or DMA channel conflicts
that I can determine.


Any ideas or suggestions??



<- David Herron <david@twg.com> (work) <david@davids.mmdf.com> (home)
<-
<- During the '80s Usenet's mantra was: "Not all the world's a VAX".
<- During the '90s I hope it becomes:   "Not all the world's DOS (ick)".
From: bfornshe@s850.mwc.edu (Ben John Fornshell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Unix operating systems, which is best?
Date: 11 Dec 1992 16:38:41 -0500
Organization: Mary Washington College, CPSC Dept.
NNTP-Posting-Host: s850.mwc.edu
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

     I would like to put up a machine that will run as a multi-user
system into which I can port GNU C code and use for general purposes on
on ethernet.  I was wondering what, if any OS's suppor these features,
and that will not cost a fortune (I'm a student) or that have educational
discounts.  Also, if I could find out any information on how well they
work, and how hard they are to install I would be most gratefull.

					 Thanks in advance,

					 bfornhse@s850.mwc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: someone@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt)
Subject: Re: Which motherboard?
Organization: Texaco
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 20:46:06 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.035047.14778@unislc.uucp>, martin@unislc.uucp (Martin Cryer) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec8.144629.17255@microware.com> adam@microware.com (Adam Goldberg) writes:
|> >In <1992Dec7.193454.4397@texhrc.uucp> someone@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
|> >
|> >>I finally have enough money to buy a 486 motherboard.  :^)
|> >
|> >Yeah!
|> >
|> >>I want to put 32M RAM and a 256K cache and would like to 
|> >>have EISA.  Howver, I know that most motherboards have
|> 				  ^^^^
|> 				  "some"

I stand corrected.

|> >>a limitation in the cache controller which cripples systems
|> >>which have more than 16M of RAM (anything above 16M cannot 
|> >>be cached) :^{   I don't want to buy a crippled board.
|> >

(stuff deleted)
|> 
|> On some boards it is a caching problem (and a DMA problem)...
|> 

(stuff deleted)

But I still don't know _which_ boards, or cache controllers to
stay away from.  Does anyone have any specific information?

Thanks.

-- 
Larry D. Pyeatt                 The views expressed here are not
Internet : pyeatt@texaco.com    those of my employer or of anyone
Voice    : (713) 975-4056       that I know of with the possible
                                exception of myself.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit