Xenix on a 386 box + 4 or more terminals

[Steven M. List]

sean at unix.cis.pitt.edu (Sean R Owens) writes:

>Has anyone here had experience with hanging four or more terminals off a Xenix
>box? (Preferably 36 20mhz or faster, also 386sx 16mhz).  How was the response
>time for the users?  I'm interested in doing an I/O bound database system
>for up to 4 or more users, but I'm worried about degradation of response time.
>I'm also worried about compatibility, as I was hoping to develope on a Sun
>SPARC station, and then port to Xenix. 
>     Is anyone aware of any peculiarities with Xenix that might cause problems 
>in porting code?  

We're running an Everex Step 25 (25MHz 386) with a Specialix board and 16
ports.  We also have it connected, via Ethernet, to another 386 box and
to two PCs.  We have five users directly connected to the system on eight
ports (three users have two terminals each), as well as having three modems
(one Hayes 2400 and two Telebit TB+) and one serial printer.  And then each
of the users on the other system also has at least ONE rlogin session
running as well as reading the news that is stored on the disks on this
box.  So, we have a fairly heavy load.  And the users are doing software
development using ACCELL (designing forms and the like) as well as working
with C and reading mail and reading news (some EMACS users with multiple
buffers and some MultiView users with multiple windows).

I'd say that you should be concerned, but not about I/O if you use any
of the intelligent systems (Specialix, Stallion Tech, and such).  One
of our customers has had some performance problems, but mostly from
swapping!  That is, the disk becomes a bottleneck, but only because some
processes get up to 2MB of memory on an 8MB box.  With four users and
the O/S and other stuff, that pretty well maxes out!
-- 
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 :                Steven List @ Transact Software, Inc. :^>~                  :
 :           Chairman, Unify User Group of Northern California                :
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