Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!speck@cit-vlsi 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 Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 16 (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)?