Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 22:15:47 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Cc: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <15368.22899.323884.742712@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <mfelmfr3iy.lmf@localhost.localdomain> References: <15367.37543.15609.362257@guru.mired.org> <040701c179af$4bda25f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15367.43943.686638.723011@guru.mired.org> <003301c179ea$8925d270$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.2156.193643.17139@guru.mired.org> <005601c179f3$a4030640$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.5624.255357.964607@guru.mired.org> <mfelmfr3iy.lmf@localhost.localdomain>
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Gary W. Swearingen <swear@blarg.net> types: > Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes: > > I don't believe there was any way they could have sold Unix > > workstations at PC prices. You can't build a reasonable Unix > > workstation using PC parts for PC prices today; why should they have > > been able to do it with proprietary hardware back then? > > Remember late '80s Apollo/DOMAIN workstations? 68000 CPU; ISA > peripheral bus; PC-class hardware, but still twice the cost of a > top-of-the-line IBM PC clone, IIRC. Not really, but I remember other 68000 based Unix workstations. The 68000 couldn't handle a page fault properly, so there was custom hardware in the system to help deal with that. At least one of them used a second 68000. The hardware held the "memory wait" line high while it went and fetched the page that was faulting. Of course, if you wanted to get a *really* good system - the kind that the people who wrote the Unix-haters Handbook used - you could put some serious cash down, and get a Symbolics box that used a couple of 68000's for handling low and medium speed I/O. > Workstation buyers wanted/needed better-than-PC systems. Like huge 200 > MB disks, big B&W monitor with custom, better-than-PC video, token-ring > network interface, mouse. Plus enough memory to run really good GUI > document publishing software like Interleaf or Framemaker. Those huge 200MB disk drives were all SCSI as well. IDE couldn't deliver the performance a real worstation needed. > Plus they had to pay for the cost of developing their GUI OS which > was better than M$ could come up with in years of foot dragging. > Actually they said it was really a custom OS (DOMAIN?) simulating Unix. > (I think you could also run X, but we normally didn't.) Yup, the OS was called DOMAIN. They used the slogan "The network is the computer" before Sun did. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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