the world is not all vaxen

[Stan Barber]

In article <488 at baylor.UUCP> peter at baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> 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.
>
Wrong! WRONG! >WRONG!!!< 
For the sake of arguement, let's define a micro as a computer with 
a standard semiconductor chip-set (68000-series, 32032, 80286, NCR-32, etc.)
and a mini as something like a VAX, a RISC machine and others....

Machines with high speed memory buses and SMD disks will run FASTER than
a VAX 780 and certainly faster than a VAX 750 (not to mention a PDP-11
running V7 :-)) I have run benchmarks on many machines from CONVEX to
PDP-11/23 and I KNOW that for computation the VAX is bad in price/performance.
In terms of I/O bandwidth, it becomes of function of controllers, buses, and
disks as well as memory and CPU. With the wide variety of all those things
in the mini market, there are machine that optimize all those things and
beat the vax hands down.

>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?

The 8" are. The OEM's I work for on occasion use the 140 version which is
VERY reliable. They are still waiting on the 380 to evaluate. This implies to
me that they are available yet, so people CAN'T use them.

>-- 
>	Peter (Made in Australia) da Silva



-- 
Stan		uucp:{ihnp4!shell,rice}!neuro1!sob     Opinions expressed
Olan		ARPA:sob at rice.arpa		       here are ONLY mine &
Barber		CIS:71565,623   BBS:(713)660-9262      noone else's.