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From: d...@rice.EDU (Donn Baumgartner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: 4.3 bsd on PC/AT
Message-ID: <9200@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 17:26:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9200
Posted: Tue Sep 8 17:26:14 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Sep-87 02:04:48 EDT
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I am interested in hearing of anyone else that might be involved (or
desires to be involved) in port 4.3 bsd to the PC/AT. I got involved
with Doug Gilmore (formerly at illnois) in just such a port, and would
like to reduce any duplication of effort - if such exists. Please
reply to me directly (d...@rice.edu).
Current status of the project: we have a running kernel (pretty stable),
and various device drivers. We could use some help with the rest of the
device drivers, as currently there are only a few of us available on a
part-time basis to work on this project. We have a native compilation
system... just recently ported. If 4.3 bsd on a PC/AT interests you,
send me mail. Simple bench marks confirm that the AT is faster than
your average vax 11/780 (but that's not surprising really).
Donn Baumgartner
Rice University, Dept of CS
Disclaimer: my research advisor would deny that I exist, much less
have anything to do with my opinions...
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From: d...@rice.EDU (Donn Baumgartner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: 4.3 bsd on PC/AT
Message-ID: <9201@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 17:57:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9201
Posted: Tue Sep 8 17:57:34 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Sep-87 02:05:38 EDT
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I am interested in hearing of anyone else that might be involved (or
desires to be involved) in port 4.3 bsd to the PC/AT. I got involved
with Doug Gilmore (formerly at illnois) in just such a port, and would
like to reduce any duplication of effort - if such exists. Please
reply to me directly (d...@rice.edu).
Current status of the project: we have a running kernel (pretty stable),
and various device drivers. We could use some help with the rest of the
device drivers, as currently there are only a few of us available on a
part-time basis to work on this project. We have a native compilation
system... just recently ported. If 4.3 bsd on a PC/AT interests you,
send me mail. Simple bench marks confirm that the AT is faster than
your average vax 11/780 (but that's not surprising really).
Donn Baumgartner
Rice University, Dept of CS
Disclaimer: my research advisor would deny that I exist, much less
have anything to do with my opinions...
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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ukma!uunet!rosevax!ems!eta!lmcvoy
From: lmc...@eta.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: 4.3 bsd on PC/AT
Message-ID: <8700162@eta.ETA.COM>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 04:42:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: eta.8700162
Posted: Thu Sep 10 04:42:47 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Sep-87 10:19:55 EDT
References: <9200@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: lmc...@eta.UUCP (Larry McVoy)
Organization: ETA Systems, Inc., St Paul, MN, USA
Lines: 19
In article <9...@brl-adm.ARPA> d...@rice.EDU (Donn Baumgartner) writes:
>send me mail. Simple bench marks confirm that the AT is faster than
>your average vax 11/780 (but that's not surprising really).
Huh?!?!? I ran compile benchmarks on a AT (1 Meg, 8mhz, 28ms 30 meg disk,
running QNX) and they came out to be very similar to a VAX 750, a little
tiny bit slower, actually.
I've also sat down in front of an AT (??Mhz Zenith, 1.5meg, 28ms drive,
running Microport Unix) and that felt a whole lot slower than a 750
(vi in particular was slower than sh*t to start up).
What sort of AT are you running that you can say it's faster than a 780?
I might be persuaded to get over my distaste for intel cpu's if your
claim was true.
--
Larry McVoy uucp: ...!{uiucuxc, rosevax, meccts, ihnp4!laidbak}!eta!lmcvoy
arpa: eta!lmc...@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
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From: d...@rice.EDU (Donn Baumgartner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: AT *speed* (was Re: 4.3 bsd for PC/AT)
Message-ID: <9338@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 16-Sep-87 18:52:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9338
Posted: Wed Sep 16 18:52:17 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 11:52:52 EDT
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In response to my claim that the AT (roughly) benches above the vax,
Larry McVoy basically complained that he had seen just the opposite,
albeit "only a little tiny bit slower", and proceeded to give standard numbers
associated with AT machine's disk speeds, cpu speeds, and memory count.
The jist being that an AT running some non-BSD un*x system appeared to be
slower than a vax 750 (probably not running xenix).
To this, Ron Natalie (basically) responds that Larry's comparison is not
a fair one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apples and oranges? Maybe. Let me clarify just a little:
(1) the benchmarks are not comprehensive, and did not include disk bench
marks (I said simple benchmarks, and I meant it);
(2) a standard AT disk has a '28 ms' random access time, it's sequential
read time (for loading, etc.) is typically 2 to 3 times that;
(3) if you spent as much money on an AT disk as you will for a vax disk,
the AT would fly;
(4) an AT with only 1.5Mb of RAM running BSD or any other un*x is a crippled
machine (how much memory did your vax 750 have?) (I should mention that
AT RAM is considerably cheaper than vax RAM);
(5) the 4.3 port to the AT is using the bsd fast filesystem - theoretically
that will make it faster than your average xenix filesystem
(6) the drystone benchmark (a pseudo-typical C program) shows one very
important thing, that not all C compilers are created equal. I have
run that benchmark under DOS (3 compilers), PC/IX (it's compiler), and
a xenix (it's compiler); all the times were different, with pc/ix taking
top honors at '1215' (8MHz AT)... some of the times were slower than the
vax time on the same code (but *different* compiler).
(7) the simple bench we used for comparison ... a shell scipt which spawns
/bin/echo many times in a loop, runs faster on the AT than the vax.
The usefulness of that bench is also questionable.
OK, so what's my jist? Well, first, I only use the vax for comparison because
it has in some sense become a standard to compare against. My point was that
an AT running 4.3 bsd should make a cost effective, reasonably fast, personal
work station. It's not a vax, or a sun, and should not be directly compared
with either (especially on pricing :-). And then there's my bias; why would
I tell you negative things about the machine I'm helping port 4.3 to...
- Donn Baumgartner