the world is not all vaxen

Peter da Silva peter at baylor.UUCP
Tue Aug 20 21:28:06 AEST 1985


> True, the business world cannot afford vaxen.  But 68k boxes are as
> capable as vax/750's, and a whole lot cheaper.

I heard this rumor too, it just aint true. A mini will beat a micro, all
other things being equal, on i/o bandwidth alone.

> Your itty bitty micro is slow mainly because it has a toy 5 1/4 inch
> disk, instead of a Real Disk like an Eagle.

That's true. This 68010 with an Eagle does a great job. It also costs
damn near as much as a little vax (or at least it costs more than my
yearly salary... which comes to the same thing).

> (Chauvinist of me, I
> know, but Unix does live & die by its disk).  Floppy-disk OS's like
> CPM & MSDOS sacrifice a lot to live with that *slow* little disk -
> but why should Unix do so too?

Because those slow little disks are the only way to go, today. Us plebes
have to put up with whatever the manufacturer likes... see below for why.

> Especially when fast 8-inch disks
> like Fuji's and Maxtor's are fairly cheap (especially compared to
> the cost of your Unix license itself)?

Only if you're talking about a source license. Most of us don't have one
of those things. Also, don't you mean Maxtor 5.25"? Last I heard 8"
hard drives were pretty much a loss.

Yeh. I's LOVE a system with a Maxtor whateveritis (the 380Meg 5.25"
drive), unfortunately nobody seems to be using them. Anyone have any idea
why not?
-- 
	Peter (Made in Australia) da Silva
		UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter
		MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076



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