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From: speck@cit-vlsi (Don Speck)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: the world is not all vaxen
Message-ID: <767@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 13:31:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.767
Posted: Fri Aug 16 13:31:17 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 21:33:33 EDT
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(Summary:  itty bitty microcomputers slow way way down if asked to run a
    pipeline to perform a function instead of one monolithic program).

True, the business world cannot afford vaxen.  But 68k boxes are as
capable as vax/750's, and a whole lot cheaper.	On integer problems
a 68010 Sun will even *outrun* a 750, and is not bad on floating point
(I do all my SPICE simulations on Suns).  We have the vaxes mainly
because we got them years ago, for half price.

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.  (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?	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)?