Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site wivax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!wivax!dyer From: dyer@wivax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro.16k Subject: Re: LMC Mega-Micros - (nf) Message-ID: <18448@wivax.UUCP> Date: Sun, 17-Jul-83 02:05:55 EDT Article-I.D.: wivax.18448 Posted: Sun Jul 17 02:05:55 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 17-Jul-83 04:18:00 EDT References: <2379@uiucdcs.UUCP> <855@umcp-cs.UUCP> Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma. Lines: 21 LMC had their "MegaMicro" 16032 system at the Toronto USENIX on display at the HCR booth (HCR having done the 4.1BSD port.) To say that the system was slow is an understatement. Just about every vendor's machine had the Sieve of Eratosthenes program on-line. Having just come from Coherent's demonstration of their IBM PC/XT UNIX lookalike, and seen a "cc -O sieve.c" finish in about 30 seconds, it was quite sobering to see the same operation take almost 90 seconds on the LMC with only myself logged in! Otherwise, it was a faithful VAX/4.1BSD clone; just too slow. The LMC technical representative blamed the system's speed problems to a Winchester with an 85ms seek time, and secondarily to the fact that the 16032 was running at 4mhz rather than 6 or 10. Apparently, the slow Winchester was all that was available in time for the show. Right now, I am willing to believe him. I think that the LMC is certainly something to keep watching as it matures. With a faster disk and CPU, it should be quite nice. By the way, NSC also had its own 4.1 system on display. It was much faster, probably for the reasons above. Unfortunately, it was described by a technical rep as having a proprietary bus; the LMC uses the Multibus for non-memory transfers.