From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.msdos
Subject: Re: PC-unix plea for help!
Date: 16 Nov 92 22:15:17 GMT
Organization: University of Edinburgh Dept. of Computer Science, Scotland

In article <1992Nov13.092813.22918@kth.se>, f91-gal@nada.kth.se (Gran Alterland) writes:
> Nntp-Posting-Host: byse.nada.kth.se

> Hello netters!

> I represent a student body that will soon spend something like
> 200.000 USD on hardware, I'd really appreciate if you could inform
> me about some aspects of PC unixing.  We will be buing a Sun4 and
> terminals to attach to it. At present it looks like these
> 'terminals' will probably be sparcstations, but there is a strong
> movement that wishes to see a PC-based solution instead.  However,
> our list of requirements on such a system is long and though.

Have you thought about running PCs with Linux installed?  To answer
your particular needs:

> We need:
> 1) A system that can connect up to the Sun4 as 'dummie terminals'.

Linux offers serial terminal connectivity over serial ports; kernel
tcp/ip for networking over ethernet; SLIP for tcp/ip over serial
lines; and NFS (not currently part of the official kernel release, but
reportedly very stable and useable).

> 2) In terminal mode It must be able to run X11R5, with Motiv, with
> at least 256 colours and a resolution of 1280x1024.

Should be no problem.  With my (Tseng-labs ET4000 graphics card) I run
at 1024x768 resolution, but the card only supports 16 colours in
1280x1024 so I can't experiment with X at that resolution - the X
server requires either a mono or a 256 colour display.  Other cards
may give better resolution and colours - there is X support for
S3-based accelerator graphics cards, and you will probably be able to
find one of those which fits the bill - and the Tseng card itself can
be pushed up to 1152x900 at 256 colours with a multisync monitor.

> 3) This must go throught a fast link - screen update must be as quick
> (or only marginally slower) than a sparcstation solution (any recommendations
> the link? I think a Lan/Ethernet solution would be too slow, but I don't
> really know...)

I don't think you'd have any real problems with an ethernet
tcp/ip-based solution here.  Running on a standalone colour sun at
University here, there is no noticable difference in speed when
running remote applications over ethernet against local applications.
I don't have a network on my Linux PC at home (more's the pity...) but
Linux tcp/ip is reported to be rather quick, even when compared to
stand-alone dedicated PC tcp/ip systems.  Unless you overload your
ethernet, response time is unlikely to be a problem; and that
constraint is independent of which type of machine you install.

> 4) It must also be able to run 'standalong unix'. (Is SCO the best that's
> available as far as Unix is concerned?)

Linux is a rapidly maturing, full-featured unix system which has the
twin advantages of being 1) extremely well supported by the internet
community (with its own mailing lists and the comp.os.linux usenet
group), and 2) free.  Don't let that put you off; I've been running
Linux (heavily - with a remote terminal, X-windows, typically with
half a dozen to a dozen windows active at any one time) for coming on
two months now, and it has NEVER crashed.  I wish I could say the same
for the Suns I use at work.  I believe the record is held by a network
of PCs running a hospitable database under Linux which was taken down
for a kernel upgrade after 47 days of continuous active duty.

> 5) Of course, it must run Dos, Windows and OS2 as well.

Linux coexists happily with DRDOS, MSDOS, windows and OS2.  It will
even provide fully integrated support for mounting DOS filing systems
(on hard disk or floppy) within the Linux file system, for ease of
sharing data between the two.

> Is there any hardware that's able to do this for us?
> Would any 486DX50 or DX266 solution suffice or are we better off waiting
> for the Pentium? Is Local Bus necessay? VESA or PCI? 
> Any help at all would be much appreciated!

Linux will run quite happily on much more limited hardware than that.
My own setup is a 486DX at 33MHz, but it will run on a 386SX if you
like.  For performance, low memory is a much more serious problem than
a slow processor.  4MB will happily support stand-alone mode in text
mode, even with several users logged on.  To run X simply as a
terminal, 4MB should again suffice; but to use it as a proper X system
running local X clients, you should have at least 8MB.

Highly recommended - see the comp.os.linux forum for more information.
You might also want to take a look at 386BSD, another free unix
discussed on comp.os.bsd.  It has more mature network support than
Linux, but is reportedly harded to port non-BSD unix packages to
(whereas Linux is pretty much compliant with the POSIX standard).

---
Stephen Tweedie <sct@uk.ac.ed.dcs>   (Internet: <sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk>)
Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, Scotland.
Newsgroups: comp.os.dos.programmer,comp.unix.msdos,comp.unix.dos-under-unix