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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!spcvxb.spc.edu!terry From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Is ISA ok? or should I wait for EISA? Message-ID: <1992Sep2.010543.3753@spcvxb.spc.edu> Date: 2 Sep 92 05:05:43 GMT References: <47065@shamash.cdc.com> Organization: St. Peter's College, US Lines: 31 In article <47065@shamash.cdc.com>, pbd@runyon.cim.cdc.com (Paul Dokas) writes: > My question is: how does 386bsd perform with an ISA bus > 386/486? I'm especially interested in SCSI (Adaptec 1542B) > throughput and X performance. > > So, here's your chance. If you bought/have a machine and are > disappointed or really happy with some piece of it (CPU, DISK, > SVGA, etc) please let me know. I'm especially interested in > whether an ISA bus is capable of supporting X performance and > SCSI disks without sluggishness. If there is interest, I will > post a summary. I've used the Jolitz's 386 port on a 386DX/25. I switched to BSDI's 386 port as I wanted to get my software developed, not work on the OS. However, for this discussion, they should be performing about the same when run on the same hardware. In short: it screams! I'm very happy with the speed of ISA systems running Unix. I'm running an Everex 386DX/25, 16Mb, 64Kb cache, motherboard SVGA, using both the built-in IDE and an Adaptec 1542B with a Maxtor 8760S I had laying around. I've also used it with all of /usr NFS mounted from a Sun 3/60 and my login directory NFS mounted from a VAX 785. Disk I/O-intensive oper- ations are faster on the 386 using NFS served disks than locally on the VAX, which is amazing considering that the VAX is serving them to the 386. Also, things that take an hour to compile on the VAX take only 10 minutes on the 386. I'm now doing most of my Unix development on the 386. Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381