Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!bellcore!texbell!killer!elg From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 80386 vs. 68030 Message-ID: <6360@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> Date: 9 Dec 88 02:23:37 GMT References: <3283@mipos3.intel.com> Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas Lines: 39 in article <3283@mipos3.intel.com>, rajeevc@mipos2.intel.com (Rajeev Chandrasekhar) says: > In article <18266@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> kirkaas@cs.ucla.edu (paul kirkaas) writes: >>I'm really thinking about the NeXT vs. an 80386 based Unix machine. > NeXT runs MACH which is more 4.xlike, with the 386 you can run > the sysV/386 which is one of "Products of the year" (courtesy Unix World) > I am not sure how compatible Mach is with Sys V, so you probably want to > find that out .. Sys V sux. I'm typing this from a 3b2 running Sys V.3 (the latest/greatest), and while it may have some nice underpinnings (streams and everything), it's currently missing some of the best-loved pieces of BSD4.x -- e.g. I can't type "what" or "finger" or "talk" or "uptime" or .... not to mention that it totally lacks job control signals, so that if I run something like, say, "shl" to get the same functionality, my editors don't know they've been suspended/resumed and thus can't redraw the screen automagically for me. Not to mention that half of Sys V doesn't understand the pseudo-ttys that "shl" uses, e.g. good old "write", primitive as it is, barfs and aborts when I try to run it under "shl". "Product of the Year" for Bell Technologies Sys V/386 simply signifies that people are desperate to have Unix, any Unix, on their 386-based microcomputers, and BSD4.x isn't easily commercially available (need a lot of resources to port it to new architectures, because so much of it assumes VAX, and it needs a lot of memory and disk space because, well, must admit it's a bit of a hog). Re: 68030 vs. 80386 -- what I'd love to see on the '386 would be a Multics-like system. The hardware looks so Multics-like... seems a shame to stuff Unix onto it, Unix which was designed for linear address spaces, PDP-11s and Vaxen.... Unix in a single segment isn't exactly taking advantage of the '386's best parts. Unix and the 68030, on the other hand, were practically made for each other.... -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 "We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the moment, we have no treatment for disturbing persons." -- Dr. Island