*BSD News Article 97193


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!europa.clark.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!fu-berlin.de!IN-Berlin.DE!fub!mind.de!nostromo.in-berlin.de!ripley
From: ripley@nostromo.in-berlin.de (H. Eckert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: To buy or not to buy....
Date: 5 Jun 1997 11:07:28 GMT
Organization: Private access site (FreeBSD 2.2.1), Berlin, Germany, Europe
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <slrn5pd7fg.5mt.ripley@nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de>
References: <33792404.167EB0E7@silas.cc.monash.edu.au> <337BB57A.1C0D@OntheNet.com.au>
NNTP-Posting-Host: nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.3.2 UNIX)
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42461

tonyg@OntheNet.com.au (Tony Griffiths):
> David Henshaw wrote:
> > DECstation 5000/25
> >     - 40M RAM
> >     - 424M SCSI Disk (Internal)
> 
> Hmm...  The big monitor and high-end graphics card are probably the most
> valuable things in this box.  It's a bit ligh on in memory for a RISC
> machine but probably workable.  The SCSI disk is _definitely_ on the
> ABSOLUTE MINIMUM boundary for an Ultrix-RISC install.  You won't have
> room for setting up proxy caches, etc. unless you add more!

Well, compared to my DECstation 2100 which has 8MByte memory and came
installed with a 200MByte disk only, this machine is quite nice.  It
depends a lot on what you intend to do with it, of course.
(David: In case you take it insist on getting some installation media)

> graphics!).  Also, it is probably NOT a high speed chip so the maximum
> speed you could reliably get is 19200 bps.

38400 should be possible but probably not supported by the OS.
The limited serial port was the reason I got a FreeBSD machine
as a server instead of using my DECstation for communications.
(The 2100 only has lame 9600bd w/o full modem/flow control)

> Also, I seem to recall that Ultrix only supported SLIP, not PPP, for
> serial comms.  Most ISPs still support SLIP for async serial but it is
> definitely on the "way out"!

There is a free PPP package that compiles out of the box under
Ultrix and works just fine.  In fact I never got the supplied
SLIP package (which belongs to the unsupported subset anyway)
to work...

> > 2). Would I be better of obtaining a second hand PC at the same cost ?

Do you need a graphics station or a communications server ?

Greetings,
				Ripley
-- 
H. Eckert, 10777 Berlin, Germany
ISO 8859-1: Ä=Ae, Ö=Oe, Ü=Ue, ä=ae, ö=oe, ü=ue, ß=sz.
"(Technobabbel)" (Jetrel) - "Müssen wir uns diesen Schwachsinn wirklich
anhören?" (Neelix)