System upgrade options/suggestions desired.

[Erik Ch. Ohrnberger]

I am throwing this to the collective net wisdom in the hopes that its
experience will aide me in making the more informed decisions possible.

The goal:
    By the end of 1990, have a system running Unix that will support
    small to medium X11 development.  Of course these upgrades must
    dwell in the realm of bugetary limitations (this is all comming out
    of my own pocket!).

The current system:
    16MHz 80386 system with a Micronics mother board
    40 MB Seagate ST-251-1 (MFM), 30 MB for Unix, 10 MB for DOS (the DOS
        partition is being used less and less)
    3 MB RAM (2 MB 32 bit, 1 MB 16 bit based on 256Kb chips)
    Sony 1302 VGA multisync monitor
    8 bit Video Seven analog VGA card

The first goal: (acheived)
    Start learning Unix by doing things on it.  I now have a version of
    Unix running, and I am learning about it by doing.

The Second Goal: (scheduled March 1990)
    Upgrade the disk capacity so that I can start working on and with
    the fine software and tools from the FSF.  Current considerations
    are a SCSI or ESDI hard disk 80MB to 150 MB.  It would be nice to
    be able to have DOS make use of this second hard disk for future
    system flexability, although it is not a hard and fast requirement.
    I feel that even in this short time, I'm already hooked on Unix. 

The Third Goal: (scheduled July 1990)
    Add a tape drive that supports a popular tape cartridge format in
    order to exchange tapes with a wide variety of systems.  Speed and
    capacity are not really important issues, as I'm moving up from
    flipping 30 or so floppies back and forth to two or three tape
    cartridges it will feel like living in the lap of backup luxury!
    
The Fourth Goal: (A Christmas Persent to myself 1990! or earlier or
possible)
    Add 8MB to 12MB of 32 bit RAM.  From the information that I have
    been hearing, these are the real RAM requirements for this type of
    X11 work for this type of system.  

The Fifth Goal:
    Increase the CPU horsepower.  This may not be possible, and it may
    turn out that by the time that this becomes serious bottleneck, a
    new system may already be in the works.  On the other hand, if it
    is and easy and reliable solution, it may be more economical to
    upgrade the system as it will be in existance.

A mouse, as they are usually only $100.00 or so, would be added
somewhere in there.  From my DOS experience, I prefer a bus mouse, but
I don't know if such devices are the best way to add mice for Unix.  As
I have significant experience in the DOS arena, I am biased towards a
bus mouse, not giving up one of those precious COM posts.

I have not had any experiences in purchasing and using used equipment,
but I'm willing to give it a try (how to you purposefuly destroy a hard
disk or RAM?)  

Please post or e-mail.  If I get request for a summary, I'll gladly
post them.  If you want or need more information from me, don't hesitate
to ask.  Flames and e-mail should be sent to my home address. 
		 Thanks in advance!

                Erik.       B-)


-- 
Erik Ohrnberger             Work: uunet!edsews!edstip!ohrnb
2620 Woodchase Court        Home: sharkey!nucleus!echocen!erik
Sterling Heights, MI 48310