From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Nov 30 20:15:54 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4214237B405 for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 20:15:48 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 56787 invoked by uid 100); 1 Dec 2001 04:15:47 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15368.22899.323884.742712@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 22:15:47 -0600 To: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Cc: "Anthony Atkielski" , Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) In-Reply-To: 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> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Gary W. Swearingen types: > Mike Meyer 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. 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