Archive-name: pc-unix/software Last-update: Thu Jun 10 11:55:02 1993 Version: 15.0 You say you want cutting-edge hacking tools without having to mortgage your wife, your kids, and your dog? You say arrogant workstation vendors are getting you down? You say you crave fast UNIX on cheap hardware, but you don't know how to go about getting it? Well, pull up a chair and take the load off yer feet, bunky, because this is the PC-clone UNIX Software Buyer's Guide posting. Many FAQs, including this one, are available via FTP on the archive site rtfm.mit.edu in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. The name under which this FAQ is archived appears in the Archive-name line above. This FAQ is updated monthly; if you want the latest version, please query the archive rather than emailing the overworked maintainer. *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** MACH386 IS DEAD! Mt. Xinu has withdrawn its Mach386 product to concentrate on its consulting business. In reviewing the product, I had written "Right now, this product is a solution looking for a problem --- a solution I find technically fascinating, to be sure. But even the company admits to not being sure who its market is." Evidently the market wasn't there. RELEASE of UHC 4.0.4 IMMINENT My friends at UHC tell me that their 4.0.4 masters went to the duplicators this week. Expect release any time now. *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** NEWS FLASH *** What's new in this issue: * Bidirectional-port bug in Dell 2.2 confirmed. * ODT 3.0 information Gentle Reader: if you end up buying something based on information from this Guide, please do yourself and the net a favor; make a point of telling the vendor "Eric's FAQ sent me" or some equivalent. The idea isn't to hype me personally, I've already got all the notoriety I need from doing things like _The_New_Hacker's_Dictionary_ --- but if we can show vendors that the Guide influences a lot of purchasing decisions, I can be a more powerful advocate for the net's interests, and for you. 0. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION. What this posting is. How to help improve it. Summary of the 386/486 UNIX market, including 8 SVr4 products, SCO UNIX (an SVr3.2), 2 BSD ports, and Linux. What's new in this issue. II. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. A brief discussion of general hardware requirements and compatibility considerations in the base SVR4 code from UNIX Systems Laboratories (referred to below as the USL code). None of this automatically applies to SCO, LINUX, or BSD/386, which break out the corresponding information into their separate vendor reports. III. FEATURE COMPARISON. A feature table which gives basic price & feature info and summarizes differences between the versions. IV. VENDOR REPORTS. Detailed descriptions of the major versions and vendors, including information collected from the net on bugs, supported and unsupported hardware and the like. V. UPCOMING PORTS, FREEWARE VERSIONS, AND CLONES. Less-detailed descriptions of other products in the market. VI. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY TABLES. A set of tables summarizes vendor claims and user reports on hardware compatibility. VII. FREEWARE ACCESS FOR SVR4 SYSTEMS. Information on the SVR4 binaries archive. VIII. FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS. Your humble editor's soapbox. An open letter to the UNIX vendors designed to get them all hustling to improve their products and services as fast as possible. IX. INTO THE FUTURE. Things to know about where the major vendors (especially USL) think they're going. X. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND ENVOI. Credit where credit is due. Some praises and pans. What comes next.... Note: versions 1.0 through 4.0 of this posting had a different archive name (386-buyers-faq) and included the following now separate FAQs as sections. pc-unix/hardware -- (formerly HOT TIPS FOR HARDWARE BUYERS) Useful general tips for anybody buying clone hardware for a UNIX system. Overview of the market. Technical points. When, where, and how to buy. usl-bugs -- (formerly KNOWN BUGS IN THE USL CODE). A discussion of bugs known or believed to be generic to the USL code, with indications as to which porting houses have fixed them. None of this applies to the two BSD-based versions. Readers may also find material of interest in Dick Dunn's general 386 UNIX FAQ list, posted monthly to comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit and news.answers. I. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this posting is to pool public knowledge and USENET feedback about all leading-edge versions of UNIX for commodity 386 and 486 hardware. It also includes extensive information on how to buy cheap clone hardware to support your UNIX. This document is maintained and periodically updated as a service to the net by Eric S. Raymond , who began it for the very best self-interested reason that he was in the market and didn't believe in plonking down several grand without doing his homework first (no, I don't get paid for this, though I have had a bunch of free software and hardware dumped on me as a result of it!). Corrections, updates, and all pertinent information are welcomed at that address. This posting is periodically broadcast to the USENET group comp.unix.sysv386 and to a list of vendor addresses. If you are a vendor representative, please check the feature chart and vendor report to make sure the information on your company is current and correct. If it is not, please email me a correction ASAP. If you are a knowledgeable user of any of these products, please send me a precis of your experiences for the improvement of the feedback sections. At time of writing, here are the major products in this category: Dell UNIX Issue 2.2 abbreviated as "Dell" below ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 abbreviated as "Esix" below Micro Station Technology SVr4 UNIX abbreviated as "MST" below Microport System V Release 4.0 version 4 abbreviated as "uPort" below UHC Version 3.6 abbreviated as "UHC" below Consensys System V Release 4.2 abbreviated as "Cons" below Information Foundation System V Release 4.2 abbreviated as "IF" below Univel UnixWare Release 4.2 abbreviated as "Univel" below SCO Open Desktop 3.0 abbreviated as "ODT" below BSD/386 1.0 abbreviated as "BSDI" below Yggdrasil Linux/GNU/X abbreviated as "LGX" below The first six of these are ports of USL's System V Release 4. Until last year there was a seventh, by Interactive Systems Corporation. That product was canned after half of ISC was bought by SunSoft, evidently to clear the decks for Solaris 2.0 (a SunOS port for the 386). The only Interactive UNIX one can buy at present is an SVr3.2 port which I consider uninteresting because it's no longer cutting-edge; I have ignored it. Note that ODT is SCO's full system with networking and X windows; what they call SCO UNIX is missing most of those trimmings. BSD/386 is *not* based on USL code, but on the CSRG NET2 distribution tape. Complete sources are included with every system shipped! LGX is a freeware OS built around Linux, a POSIX-emulating UNIX lookalike written from scratch by Linus Torvalds and others and currently in late beta. The information given here is based on the Yggdrasil Software CD-ROM distribution, which adds the GNU tools, X and other well-known freeware. AT&T's own 386 UNIX offering is not covered here because it is available and supported for AT&T hardware only. All the vendors listed offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, but they'll be sticky about it except where there's an insuperable hardware compatibility problem or you trip over a serious bug. One (UHC) charges a 25% restocking fee on returns. BSDI offers a 60-day guarantee starting from the date of receipt by the customer and says: "If a customer is dissatisfied with the product, BSDI unconditionally refunds the purchase price." Dell says "30 day money-back guarantee, no questions asked". Some other ports are listed in section V. II. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS To run any of these systems, you need at least the following: 4 MB of RAM and 80MB of hard disk (SCO says 8MB minimum for ODT 3.0; Dell 2.2 also requires 8 MB minimum). However, this is an absolute minimum; you'll want at least 8 MB of RAM for reasonable performance. And depending on options installed, the OS will eat from 40 to 120 meg of the disk, so you'll want at least 200 meg for real work. To run X you'll need a VGA monitor and card, and 12-16MB RAM would be a good idea. Installation from these systems requires that you boot from a hi-density 3.5 floppy (some also supply a 5.25" boot disk, but the older floppy size is rapidly passing out of use). Most vendors offer the bulk of the system on a QIC 60 1/4-inch tape; otherwise you may be stuck with a hefty extra media charge and loading over 60 diskettes! CD-ROM is increasingly popular as a distribution medium; SCO and BSDI offer it, and LGX is *ony* distributed on CD-ROM. BSDI will even sell you a CD-ROM reader for US$225 (or you buy the same Mitsumi drive at Radio Shack or Best Buy for US$199+tax). In general, if the initial boot gets far enough to display a request for the first disk or tape load, you're in good shape. USL SVr4 conforms to the following software standards: ANSI X3.159-1989 C, POSIX 1003.1, SVID 3rd edition, FIPS 151-1, XPG3, and System V Release 4 ABI. 4.0.4 ports conform to the iBCS-2 binary standard. The SVr4 C compiler (C Issue 5) includes some non-ANSI extensions (however, note that as of mid-1992, no SVr4 ports other than AT&T's have been formally POSIX-certified). SCO conforms to the following standards: ANSI X3.159-1989 C, POSIX 1003.1 FIPS 151-1, XPG3, iBCS2, and SVID 2nd Edition. Despite the marketing droids hacking at its version number, SCO is not conformant to System V Release 4 or SVID 3rd Edition. All SVr4 versions include support for BSD-style file systems with 255-character segment names and fragment allocation. In general this is a Good Thing, but some SVr3.2 and XENIX binaries can be confused by the different size of the inode index. You need to run these on an AT&T-style file system. SCO (as of SCO UNIX 3.2v4 and ODT 2.0) has an `EAFS' file system which adds symlinks and long filenames. Old SCO binaries can be confused by long filenames. All SVr4.0.3, SVr4.0.4 and SCO versions include the UNIX manual pages on-line. Dell stocks Prentice-Hall's SVr4 books and will sell them to you with your system (in lieu of printed manuals) at extra cost. You can order them direct from Prentice-Hall at (201)-767-5937. Warning: they ain't cheap! Buying the whole 13 volumes will cost you a couple hundred bucks. Microport has their own manual sets derived from the same AT&T source tapes as the Prentice-Hall set, included with their system; UHC bundles in the Prentice-Hall books themselves. The SVr4.2 versions, due to malignant idiocy by USL, typically do *not* include on-line man pages. However, IF has re-inserted them. SVr4 includes hooks for a DOS bridge that allows you to run DOS applications under UNIX (the two products that actually do this are DOS Merge and VP/ix). Most vendors do not include either of these with the base system, however. All these systems support up to 1024x768 by 256 color super-VGA under X. The 640x480 by 16 colors of standard VGA is no problem; everybody supports that compatibly. However, X servers older than the Xfree86 or X11R5 version (that is, MIT X11R4 or anything previous) are hard to configure for the clock timings of your controller and monitor scan frequency unless you have one of the standard combinations USL supports or your vendor has configured for it. There are a couple of known hardware compatibility problems the USL code doesn't yet address. See the companion "Known Bugs" FAQ. III. FEATURE COMPARISON To interpret the table below, bear in mind the following things: All these products except BSDI/386, Linux, and SCO ODT are based on the SVr4 kernel from UNIX Systems Laboratories (USL), an AT&T spinoff. Thus they share over 90% of their code and features. Product differentiation is done primarily through support policy, bug-fix quality and add-on software. The `USL support?' column refers to the fact that USL support is a separate charge from the source license. With the former, a porting house gets access to AT&T's own OS support people and their bug fix database, and the porting house's bug fixes can get folded back into the USL code. These systems come either in a "crippled" version that supports at most two simultaneous users, or an unlimited version. Generally the vendors do allow you to upgrade your license via a patch disk if your requirements change, but this invariably costs slightly more than the base price difference between 2-user and unlimited systems. The "run-time" system in the price tables below is a minimum installation, just enough to run binaries. The "complete" system includes every software option offered by the vendor; it does *not* bundle in the cost of the Prentice-Hall docs offered by some vendors as an option. You may well get away with less, especially if you're willing to do your own X installation. Starting with SCO UNIX 3.2v4.2 and Open Desktop/Server 3.0, SCO is selling 3 levels of license: 2-user, 16-user and unlimited. Our "complete" liating is for the unlimited system. (Note that these tiers of license are a consequence of USL's royalty policies: each vendor must pay a royalty to USL for each license sold, and the size of the royalty varies according to how many users are allowed.) Prices are for QIC-tape configurations, except SCO and LGX which are for the CD-ROM distrbution. Some vendors will supply the OS on floppies, but they don't enjoy doing so and may charge substantially more for a diskette version. Typically, CD-ROM distributions cost less than tapes. The `Upgrade plan' section refers only to upgrades from previous versions of the same vendor's software. The numbers under support-with-purchase are days counted from date of shipment. The intent is to help you get initially up and running. The engineer counts below are as supplied by vendors; .5 of an engineer means someone is officially working half-time. The `Uses USENET' column is `yes' if there is allegedly at least one person in the engineering department who reads USENET technical groups regularly and is authorized to respond to USENET postings reporting problems. The `DOS Bridge' row gives the version number of DOSMerge supplied with the system, if any. DosMerge 2.0 has roughly the caoabilities of DOS 3.0, though it is reported to be quite flaky and hard to configure. DOSMerge 2.2 has the capabilities of DOS 5.0, and DOS Merge 3.1 has the capabilities of DOS 5.0 + Windows running in "Standard" (286) mode. The AF_UNIX row tells which versions support UNIX-domain sockets. These are a separate namespace from the INET sockets, local to each machine and used by some applications because they cannot be spoofed over the network. The `ISO9660' column tells whether the OS can read ISO9660 filesystems. The `Rock Ridge?' column tells whether the Rock Ridge extensions for UNIX are known to be supported. A dash `-' means the given feature or configuration is not offered. A `yes' means it is currently offered; `soon' means the vendor has represented that it will be offered in the near future. A `no' means it's not offered, but there's some related information in the attached footnote. Table 1: BASE VERSION AND PRICE System Price (US$) Has Reduced price Base USL Run-time only Developer's printed upgrade from Vendor Version support 2-user Unlim 2-user Unlim docs? SVr3.2 SVr4 SCO 3.2.2 - 595(g) 1595(g) 2290(g) 4590(g) y y - Cons 4.2 ?? 495 755 1270 1535 y - - Dell 4.0.4 y - - 995 1295(b) y(e) y (h) Esix 4.0.4 y - - - 1095(g) - - - IF 4.2 y 299 819 995 1490 y - - Univel 4.2 y(u) 249 1299 599 1199 y - - MST 4.0.3 - 249 449 799 849 - - (h) uPort 4.0.4 y 500 1000 3000 3500 y(f) y (h) UHC 4.0.3 ??(a) 695 1090 1990 2385 y - - BSDI BSD - - 545(c) - 1045(c) - - - LGX Linux - - - - $60 - - - Table 2: SUPPORT FEATURES With 800 Support FTP Read # Engineers Support Vendor sale number? BBS? server? USENET? Support Devel. contracts SCO 0 y y y y 60+ 55+ per year Cons 30 y y(i) - - 6 ??(m) per year Dell 90 y - y y 5 10 per year Esix (j) - - y y ?? ?? (j) IF 90 y soon soon soon 2 2 custom Univel (j) y (v) soon y ?? ?? (j) MST 30 - - - - 2 3 per year uPort 30 - y - y 4 6 per year UHC 30 - soon - -(l) 2 27 per year BSDI 60 y - y y 1.5 6.5 per year LGX - - - - y ?? ?? - Table 3: DISTRIBUTION MEDIA Floppy disk ------------- QIC tape ------------ via 3.5" 5.25" 60MB 125MB 150MB 250MB 2GB CD-ROM network SCO y y y - - - - y - Cons y(n) y(n) y - y - - - - Dell - - - - - y y - y Esix y - y(w) - - - - y(w) - IF y y y - - - - - - Univel - - y(w) - - - - y(w) y(w) MST y y y y y - - - - uPort y y y - y - - - - UHC - - - y y - - - - BSDI y - - - - y - y - LGX - - - - - - - y - Table 4: X OPTIONS X/News MIT AT&T AT&T X11R5 Open Motif X X11R3 X11R4 Xwin3 Xwin4 Look Desktop SCO - - - - y(o) - 1.2.2 3.5 Cons - - - - y - 1.1 - Dell - y - - y 4i 1.1.4 - Esix y - - y y 1.0 1.1.0 - IF - - - y - 4i 1.1.4 - MST - - y - - 2.0 1.1.2 3.0 uPort - - - y - 4i 1.1.3 2.0 UHC y - - - - 4i 1.1.3 - BSDI - - - - y - (p) - LGX - - - - y - - - Table 5: MISCELLANEA AND ADD-ONS DOS UNIX ISO9660 Rock Bridge? SLIP? PPP? sockets support Ridge? SCO 3.1 y y n y - Cons - - y - y - Dell 2.2 y - y - - Esix - y n(r) - soon - IF - - - ?? y - Univel y - - ?? y - MST - - - ?? - - uPort soon y - ?? - - UHC - soon soon ?? ?? - BSDI y y y y y - LGX y soon - y y y (a) UHC had a support contract at one time but may have let it lapse. I expect to have better information on this soon. (b) This price is for customer-installed UNIX. If it's factory-installed on Dell hardware, it's $500 less. (c) $1045 is for credit-card tape orders; POs are $50 more; CD-ROM $50 less . Educational site licenses are available for $2K each. (d) Previous issues alleged that "No unlimited licenses have been sold yet." Feedback from the net indicates that all MtXinu systems now being sold are unlimited. (e) Extra-cost option. (f) With complete system only. (g) Price is for CD-ROM; add $100 for tape, $200 for floppies. (h) Free with support contract, charge otherwise (charge ~$500). (i) Support contract customers. (j) Unlimited free phone support. (k) Charges by the half-hour phone call. (l) UHC says they used to be net-active and want to be again when they can afford the man-hours. (m) Consensys explicitly refuses to release this information. (n) There's an $80 media charge for the diskettes equivalent to the normal 60MB distribution tape. (o) SCO's own X11R5 implementation. (p) Motif for BSDI is available from a third party. (r) Mark Boucher has written a PPP driver for ESIX (t) You can get a MUI module supporting Motif for $95 extra. (u) Univel is half-owned by USL. (v) Patches are available on Compuserve and FTP; SCO also has its own CompuServe forum. (w) 3.5" floppy drive required for booting In general, the SVr4 market breaks into two tiers. The bottom tier is Consensys and MST; low-ball outfits selling stock USL with minimal support for real cheap. The top tier is Dell, Esix, Microport, UHC, Univel and IF; these guys are selling support and significant enhancements and charge varying premiums for it. Your first, most basic buying decision has to be which tier best serves your needs. One further note: it *is* possible to buy some of these systems at less than the list the vendor charges! I found some really substantial discounts in one mail-order catalog ("The Programmer's Shop"; call 1-(800)-421-8006 to get on their mailing list, but be prepared to wade through a lot of DOS cruft). IV. VENDOR REPORTS Vendor reports start here. Each one is led by a form feed. NAME: SCO UNIX System V Release 3.2 Version 4.2 SCO Open Desktop Lite Release 3.0 SCO Open Desktop Release 3.0 SCO Open Server Network System Release 3.0 SCO Open Server Enterprise System Release 3.0 VENDOR: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. 400 Encinal Street PO Box 1900 Santa Cruz,CA 95061-1900 1-(800)-SCO-UNIX (sales) 1-(800)-347-4381 (customer service and tech support) info@sco.com --- product info by email, sales requests support@sco.com --- support requests (support contract customers only) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: All of SCO's products include printed documentation; however, special "limited documentation" editions of the multiuser Open Server offerings are available at lower cost for use in large multi-system installations, by VARs creating embedded applications, etc. The actual products used for the price table were: Run-time 2-user: SCO UNIX 3.2v4.2 2-user CD-ROM Run-time 16-user: SCO UNIX 3.2v4.2 16-user CD-ROM Run-time unlim-user: SCO UNIX 3.2v4.2 unlim-user CD-ROM Development 2-user: SCO Open Desktop Lite 3.0 CD-ROM + SCO Open Desktop Development System 3.0 CD-ROM Development 16-user: SCO Open Server Enterprise System 16-user CD-ROM, limited docs + SCO Open Desktop Development System 3.0 CD-ROM Development unlim-user: SCO Open Server Enterprise System unlim-user CD-ROM, limited docs + SCO Open Desktop Development System 3.0 CD-ROM Add $200 each to the last two for full docs. Aescription of ODT Lite appears below; basically, includes UNIX+TCP+X but not NFS, LAN Manager Client, or DOS Merge. In addition to all the other things, a bundle is currently on sale to qualified developers (which means "pick up the phone and call SCO to find out whether you're qualified"). The bundle offers ODT 2.0 Personal System (i.e. 2-user) and ODT 2.0 Development System plus the SCO Optimizing C Compiler, all on floppy + tape (QIC-60) media, for a total of $795. You do not have to be a member of a developer's program; that's the total cost. Down sides: 2-user system, limited quantities, limited support, must qualify, and down-rev software (but can be upgraded). Up sides: currently the only way to get the Intel Optimizing C Compiler, and a very good price (list price of the two ODT components is like $2500, not even considering icc). SCO's package and option structure is (excessively) complicated. At the moment the `bundles' to keep track of are: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.2 "UNIX" SCO Open Desktop Lite Release 3.0 "ODTL" SCO Open Desktop Release 3.0 "ODT" SCO Open Server Network System Release 3.0 "OSNS" SCO Open Server Enterprise System Release 3.0 "OSES" The "SEPARATE" column indicates whether and how that item is available separately, e.g. if you were building a system starting with SCO UNIX and adding unbundled components. UNIX ODTL ODT OSNS OSES SEPARATE SCO UNIX 3.2v4.2 x x x x x 2-user license available x x x 16-user license available x x x unlimited-user license available x x x "License pack" limited printed doc package avail x x Yes X11R5, Motif 1.2.2, X.Desktop 3.5 x x x R4/1.14/no xdt DOS Merge 3.1 x x Yes MS-DOS 5.0 x x Bundle w/Merge SCO LLI (net card) Drivers 3.1.1 x x x x Download SCO TCP/IP 1.2.1 x x x x Yes SCO NFS 1.2.1 x x x Yes SCO IPX/SPX 1.0.3 x Yes LAN Manager Client x **LAN Man Server PC-Interface server x From Locus SCO IPX/SPX is an implementation of the Novell IPX/SPX protocol stack. Applications exist which use this. The only application SCO provides is a network login service; this does not provide Novell filesystem client or server facilities. LAN Manager Client provides UNIX access to DOS / OS/2 LAN Manager filesystems; it is not a server. ** LAN Manager Server is available separately; it is not a client and the client portion of ODT cannot coexist in a system with LAN Man Server. PC-Interface server interfaces to Locus PC-Interface clients for DOS. There is a Locus PCI product for the Mac; a separate server product from Locus is required to interface to that. ADD-ONS: There are piles of them. I was most impressed by the docs for the CodeView debugger and MASM assembler, but the presence of ISAM support would probably be more significant to the ordinary commercial user. Development systems: UNIX development system includes compiler, tools, base UNIX libraries. ODT development system (which is for ODT, OSNS or OSES) provides that plus libraries for X, Motif, TCP, NFS, LAN manager, IPX/SPX, PC/Interface, and the "Software Mastering Toolkit" for producing installable distributions of your code. We now have an Intel Optimizing C Compiler package, a compiler from Intel which understands 486 and Pentium CPU pipeline behavior and produces code optimized for those processors. TCP, NFS and Merge are all available as add-ons to the base UNIX product (but pricing is more favorable in the above bundles). LAN Manager Server is available, provides file service to DOS, OS/2, Windows LAN Manager clients. VP/ix (alternative DOS compatibility service) is available. MPX: provides support for multiprocessor 386/486/Pentium machines with up to 30 processors (though I've not seen a live machine with more than 8 -- that waits on the hardware designers). SCO bundles with X also include 18 clients (what in marketingese are called ``personal productivity and groupware accessories and controls'') which include: mail, help, edit, paint, term, print, login, clock, color, session, mouse, lock, and admin (official names all prepended with "SCO") as well as DOS, load, and calculator clients. (The supplied clients have changed a bit for 3.0; I don't have details yet.) SUPPORT: Dell accepts software problem reports from anyone, Dell or non-Dell hardware and whether or not they have a support contract (email to support@sco.com). If you don't have a support contract, don't count on getting a reply acknowledging the report. Starting with the new releases, there is no warranty support period. Defective media etc. are warranted; but if you want to talk to someone on the phone about technical issues, you pay. My source thinks, but is not really sure, that you can still get questions handled via Internet mail or the sosco BBS system for a limited time, either 30 or 60 days. Support contracts are available for various periods and with various levels of support. SCO has BBS coverage and a local support operation in the UK as well as the US; BBS coverage only Germany. Local support is, in theory, to be provided by distributors. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. SCO provides a Hardware Compatibility Guide with its software. COMMENTS: The docs are impressive; you could get a hernia trying to lift them all. TECHNICAL NOTES: There's an `MPX' kernel available from SCO that supports multiprocessing. Though this is a 3.2 kernel, SCO has added support for SVr4-like symbolic links and long filenames to Version 4. SCO has a standard driver announcement protocol which allows the utility hwconfig(C) to print out detailed configuration info on hardware attached to the machine. SCO's cross-development and DOS emulation support is unusually rich. It includes lots of system utilities for I/O with a DOS filesystem, as well as cross-development libraries and tools in the Development System. Microsoft Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.0 applications are supported (in real mode), and Windows 3.1 and applications in "standard" mode (which means the Windows kernel runs in '286 protected mode). Graphical MS-DOS applications are supported in CGA graphics mode within an X window, and VGA graphics are supported in full-screen mode. The SCO install process auto-configures a proper set of drivers for your configuration based on what it finds by polling the hardware. KNOWN BUGS SCO tar(1) chokes horribly on long filenames and symbolic links. This has been fixed in the MSv4.2 maintenance supplement. SCO tar also fails to back up empty directories. SCO provides "pax" (Portable Archive Exchange) which does what you expect. Petri Wessman has reported that SCO 3.2.4 sometimes gets into a state in which exec(2) succeeds called from a binary but exec reliably fails called from a shell. WHAT THE USERS SAY: XENIX is the UNIX port hackers love to hate, but at 70% of the market SCO must be doing something right. In general, SCO UNIX and XENIX are reputed to be a very polished and stable systems. Unfortunately, they also drive developers crazy because of numerous tiny and undocumented divergences between the SCO way and the USL-based releases. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: The SCO support system is heavily bureaucratized and prone to thrash when processing questions of unusual depth or scope. While probably adequate for the random business luser, hackers are likely to find the contortions required to get to a master-level developer very frustrating. SCO in general has the fairly serious case of corporatitis you'd predict from their relatively large size --- no-comment policies and compartmentalization out the wazoo. On the other hand, they sent me an unsolicited free copy, and I got huge amounts of useful technical and hardware-compatibility info "unofficially" from SCOer Bela Lubkin . Gee. Maybe I should flame vendors more often... :-) NAME: Consensys System V Release 4.2 VENDOR: Consensys 1301 Pat Booker Road Universal City, TX 78148 (800)-387-8951 (sales and support both) {dmentor,dciem}!askov!root SOFTWARE OPTIONS: None. ADD-ONS: Basically this is a stock USL Destiny system with the stock USL bugs. It doesn't seem to carry over the Consensys 4.0.3 changes. SUPPORT: You get free phone support until your system is installed, to a maximum of 30 days. After that they charge per half-hour of phone time. They like to do support by fax and callback. They'll sell support contracts by the year. They have a support BBS at (416)-752-2084. Knowledgeable customers report they're good about supporting the bits they wrote (see below) but terrible at dealing with generic SVr4 problems. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. KNOWN BUGS: Trying to install the system administration package *after* first installation of the OS with v4pkg doesn't work. You can work around this by using `pkgadd -d ctape1'. WHAT THE USERS SAY: During the life of their 4.0.3 release, Consensys had a dismal reputation on USENET; horror stories of nonexistent followup on bugs abounded. However, David Mason writes "they appear to be installing a lot more telephone support. In fact for a yearly fee they will sell support and they apparently have been hiring people for a few months now. Additionally, when I talked to a support person there, he seemed actually willing to help me, as opposed to the hostile go-away attitude I encountered shortly after we bought their SVR4 product 9 months or so ago. Maybe they are learning." One 4.0.3. customer (J.J. Strybosch, ) reported that Consensys charged his credit card for more than they quoted him. If you deal with them, watch your credit card statement carefully. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: These people used to be the bad boys of the SVr4.0 market --- not a company you wanted to deal with unless low price was the most important thing. There's some reason to believe they're trying to improve their act with 4.2; if so, more power to them. Consensys explicitly refuses to say how many development engineers they have on staff. In this and some other matters they've adopted a corporate style that appears defensive, evasive, secretive, and not conducive to trust. I couldn't make their V.P. of sales understand that this appearance is a serious liability in dealing with UNIX techies and distinguishes them from the competition in a distinctly negative way. NAME: Dell UNIX System V Release 4 Issue 2.2. VENDOR: Dell Computer 9505 Arboretum Road Austin TX 78759 (800)-BUY-DELL (info & orders) (800)-624-9896 (tech support: x6915 to go straight to UNIX support) info@dell.com --- basic Dell info support@dell.com --- support queries SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Basically, there aren't any. You get the development system with all the trimmings for a lower list than anybody else in the top tier. Whaddya want, egg in yer beer? ADD-ONS: Dell bundles a DOS bridge (Locus 2.2, supporting DOS 5.0) with their base system. They also include cnews, mmdf, perl, elm, bison, gcc, emacs gdb, Tex, network time protocol support, and other freeware, including a bunch of nifty X clients! Also included: the Xylogics Annex server for TCP/IP network access. FrameMaker is also included, but runs in demo mode only until you buy a license token from Unidirect. SUPPORT: Dell *does* support their UNIX on non-Dell hardware. They are quite definite about this. They will deal with software problems reported from non-Dell hardware, but you're on your own when dealing with hardware incompatibility problems unless you can reproduce the problem on a Dell PC. However, it is also policy that if you lend them the offending hardware, they will work with the vendor to come up with a fix, and if they can't make that work they'll refund your money. You get 90 days of free phone support on a toll-free number, starting on resceipt of your registration card (no card, no support). Yearly service contracts range are $350 per year for the limited license, $500 for the unlimited. There are 6 engineers in their first line and 4 in their second-line support pool. Dell accepts software problem reports from anyone, Dell or non-Dell hardware and whether or not they have a support contract. If you don't have a support contract, don't count on getting a reply acknowledging the report. Dell maintains a pair of Internet servers (dell1.dell.com and dell2.dell.com) which hold patches, updates and free software usable with Dell UNIX. About upgrades, Dell says "If you have a support contract, the upgrade is free, unless we've added something with significant royalty burden to us. We may make a charge at that point. We didn't when we added Graphical Services 4.0 at the introduction of Dell UNIX 2.1. If you don't have a contract, then the cost is basically Media+Royalty+Admin+Shipping." FUTURE PLANS: X.desktop 3.0 will be supported soon. NeWS isn't going to happen at all; they couldn't get it to work reliability. Dell has demonstrated a 486 port of NeXTSTEP at trade shows. Dell is going to move to Solaris someday. Declared policy is that they're not going to phase out SVr4 until at least a year after their first *reliable* version of Solaris, in order to provide an upgrade path. However, there is some evidence that they're bailing out of 4.0 UNIX early; mainly, that it gets less and less play in the Dell catalog (the Spring catalog didn't list a price) and Dell employees have been notably evasive on the subject of Dell UNIX's future. Dell employees have unofficially said that they are working on a new release (due shortly), called 2.2.1. It is a major bug fix release. Many bugs that were introduced by the gcc-2.1 compiler that was used in 2.2 are now gone, as 2.2.1 will be compiled with gcc-2.3.3 (or maybe later). This release supposedly fixes the "who -r" malloc overrun problem, the inetd bug with long /etc/passwd files and others as well. TECHNICAL NOTES: The big plus in the Dell code is that they've fixed a lot of the annoying bugs and glitches present in the stock USL tape. The installation procedure has been improved and simplified. You can install Dell UNIX through your network from another Dell box once you've booted the hardware with a special disk provided. Both benchmarks and anecdotal reports make them significantly faster than a stock USL system. Interestingly, Dell's manager for UNIX development tells me this is all due to bug fixes and careful choices of some OS parameters. A source at Dell has asked me to point out that Dell's SLIP can be set up, configured, and stopped while UNIX is running; some other versions (such as SCO's) require a reboot. Dell device drivers are *very* unlikely to work on other SVR4 versions. Dell includes some kernel extensions (not required, so other SVR4 device drivers should work) to make life in support a little easier. A program called showcfg will list all recognised device drivers and the IRQ, I/O address, shared memory and so on. The device driver has to register this info. Dell has told USL how to do this, it's up to them when or even if they want to use this in a future release. Dell device drivers are also auto configuring, for the most part. Check out /etc/conf/sdevice.d/* and see how most of the devices are enabled, but with zeroes in all fields for IRQ, I/O and memory. Those are autoconfiguring drivers. Dell thinks that this makes life much easier; you only need to set one of the configurations that they probe for! The device registration helps this, by eliminating possible overlapping memory or I/O address usage. (On the other hand, idconfig(1) is no longer helpful, when I/O, IRQ and mem are all zero). The 2.2 release adds a utility `setcfg' which can be used to remove unneeded drivers, shrinking the kernel. Dell UNIX also has drivers for the Dell SmartVu found on some machines (a little four character LED display on the front panel). By default this shows POST values, then disk accesses, finally "UNIX" when running and "DOWN" when halted. You can write to the device. Dell's SCSI tape driver includes ioctls to control whether hardware compression is used. Some Dell systems have a reset button. On the Laptops these are wired directly to the CPU. On the desktop and floor-standing systems Dell UNIX can catch the interrupt; it's used to do a graceful (init 0) shutdown. Other UNIXes will do a processor reset when the button is pushed. About 95% of 2.2 was built using GNU cc for a significant performance improvement over pcc. KNOWN BUGS: Dell's serial comm port apparently cannot be made to work bidirectionally, neither with uugetty nor ttymon. This was reported by Bob Kirpatrick after systematic testing with the aid of Dell's support staff, and confirmed by Karl Denninger . Karl says "The only solution I have ever seen is to install something like SAS...the base ttyxx drivers are hosed, have been hosed, and continue to be hosed in this release." SAS is a freeware tty driver available for FTP from most major archive sites. Performance monitoring of uucp transfers doesn't work. Creating /var/spool/uucp/.Admin/perflog results in uucico logging statistics to the file correctly. However, using uustat -tsysname results in either a memory error or you just being returned to the shell with no output. This bug is known to Dell and being worked on now. It's still broken in 2.2. Merge is seriously buggy in many areas. It takes ages to start up in an xterm and then sometimes crashes in the process. Attempting to use its simulated expanded memory results in the system becoming slowly corrupted which later results in virtual terminals disappearing and the system gradually locking up. Really fun stuff! And it can only cope with 1.44M discs. These are generic Merge problems, not really Dell's but Locus's fault. There are some dropped stitches in the supplied USENET tools. The nntp server has been compiled for a dbm history file while c-news has been compiled for dbz. With nntpd this only shows on the ARTICLE command which either returns that the article with that id can't be found or crashes the server. Also, they forgot to include the nntpd manual page or nntpxfer. Dell's device driver autoconfiguration doesn't properly set up the mouse port on the ATI Graphics Ultra card. You need to either remove all other mouse drivers or use the DOS install program to manually force the mouse IRQ to 5. (This appears to be a generic problem with the ATI Ultra, not a Dell bug.) Dell's drivers don't recognize a Western Digital Elite series ethernet boards hard or soft configured to use IRQ10. Other IRQs work OK. Out of the box, Dell's mail system is configured to use sendmail. The changes necessary to re-enable the SVr4 mailer are not obvious; in particular, /bin/rmail apparently needs to be linked back to /bin/mail, rather than /usr/ucb/binrmail. Also, /etc/mail/mailsurr needs to link back to /etc/mail/mailsurr.smtpd rather than /var/sendmail/mailsurr, and links /etc/rc2.d/S88smptd and /etc/rc0.d/K88smptd need to be created to /etc/init.d/smptd. Dial-up SLIP does not lock the serial port correctly. When slipdialup starts up, it sets a lock in /var/spool/locks containing its process id. Once the connection has been successfully made, slipdialout then terminates. Any process with access to the port, such as ttymon, will then examine the lock file, see that the process no longer exists and remove the lock file. The slip connection will then fail to work, with slip and ttymon fighting over incoming characters. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: Dell doesn't maintain a list of non-Dell motherboards and systems known to work. And they're not willing to talk about the list they don't maintain, because it would amount to endorsing someone else's hardware. Dell promises that you can bring its UNIX up on any Dell desktop or tower featuring a 386SX or up (it's hard to get the product on to the notebooks). Notebooks can't drive a QIC tape and there aren't drivers for the pocket Ethernet or token-ring adapter. Andrew Michael says "If you're buying Dell UNIX for non-Dell hardware, first try booting the Dell floppy on it. From experience, some BIOS ROMs cause Dell SVR4 to lock up at the point where it tries to talk to the hard disk. If it gets to the point where it asks you whether you want to install or not you can be pretty sure that all is well. An AMI or Phoenix BIOS is OK; be careful of anything else." See the appendix for more. COMMENTS: Dell sells hardware, too :-). They are, in fact, one of the most successful clonemakers, and will cheerfully sell you a Dell computer with SVr4 pre- installed. Their systems are expensive by cloner standards (with as much as a $1000 premium over rock-bottom street prices) but they have a rep for quality and reliability their competition would probably kill for. You can get Dell product information by sending an email request to info@dell.com. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Most people who've seen or used it seem to think pretty highly of the Dell product, in spite of minor problems. However, recently there have been a few glaring exceptions, suggesting that Dell's support quality may be falling off. A user in England observes: "Dell is the only firm that I found supplying Unix at the real monetary exchange rate, not the usual computer pounds=dollars nonsense. In the UK the 2 user version costs 699 pounds, which is pretty close to the US price in dollars. For those of us who don't live on the left-hand side of the pond (there are a few of us!) that's a distinct advantage." He adds "Dell's UK support is pretty good. Not as good as Sun, but then you don't pay as much! From previous experience, SCO support in the UK is, well, pretty non-existent." Robert L. Holder writes "I found [the 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked] to be not true for the Dell product. I called them last month to place an order for Dell Unix. I did have some concerns so I asked about what money back guarantee they offered. I was told that they had a 30 day money back offer on Dell "hardware" but the Dell Unix product was not included. I used the 800 DELL number and spoke to a sales rep. In fact he left me on hold several times to confirm the story with the Dell Unix product." Perhaps there's been a policy change since Jeremy Chatfield's departure --- I'll have to check this out. And Christopher Perez was moved to write: "Dell's support sucks. Big time. In each and every time I called with a problem, I ended up solving the problem myself. Everyone I spoke with had the same story: `I've never heard of that one...'". He tells a horror story involving three months of network and UUCP configuration problems, with essentially no help from support. Dell would be wise to worry about this. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Dell was until recently the clear market leader in SVr4s. The combination of low price, highest added value in features, and reputation for quality made them very hard to beat. However, they say they have no plans to move their source base to 4.2. Thus, they're at some risk of losing their lead to IF and Univel, especially since they lost Jeremy Chatfield (their former UNIX program manager) to IF. Dell denies rumors they are bailing out of the 4.0 market. Rumor has it that they've cut their support staff and that Dell UNIX isn't going to be listed in Dell's Spring '93 catalog. Dell's UNIX program manager says that the omission of Dell Unix from the Fall catalog was a last-minute maneuver to make space for other software Dell marketing wanted to add, that it was a surprise to the UNIX group, and that Dell UNIX *will* be listed in the Spring catalog. She also claims first-line UNIX support staff has recently been *increased*. NAME: ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 VENDOR Esix Systems, Inc 1923 E. St. Andrew Place Santa Ana, CA 92705 (714)-259-3020 (tech support is (714)-259-3000) support@esix.com info@esix.com ADD-ONS: None. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: ESIX can be bought in the following pieces: Unlim 2-user ITEM CD-ROM Tape Floppy Base system (+networking+devsys) 995 1095 1195 GUI 495 595 Note that the base system without networking cannot be upgraded to the base system with networking; you'd have to replace at full cost. SUPPORT: Purchase buys you unlimited free phone support. However, be warned that there are only two engineers assigned to the job and they are swamped. Patches are available via anonymous ftp to esix.everex.com. FUTURE PLANS: They intend to do a USL System V Release 4.3 late this year or early next --- yes, 4.3! They're skipping 4.2. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. ESIX supports an unusually wide range of peripherals. They advertise support for the Textronix X terminal. No one has reported any incompatibility horror stories yet. KNOWN BUGS: According to Esix, this port uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it must have the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. James D. Cronin writes: When developing X applications under Esix, watch out for mmap(2) failure. This is caused by an incorrect version of mmap() defined in libX11.a and libX11.so. This bug existed in Esix 4.0.3, and continues in 4.0.4 and the recently shipped Xwindow bug fix it (which seems to have more bugs than the original version). One workaround is to remove the offending file, XSysV.o, from libX11.a and link with the Bstatic option. COMMENTS: Unlimited free support sounds wonderful, and might be ESIX's strongest selling point. However, ESIX users on the net have been heard to gripe that in practice, you get the support you've paid for from Esix --- that is, none. That isn't at all surprising given Esix's staffing level. If this guarantee is to be more than a hollow promise, their technical support has to get more depth. Evan Leibovich is a long-time netter who makes his living as a consultant and owns an Esix dealership (he now does Univel too). He says you can get ESIX at a substantial discount from him or other dealers, also that dealers are supposed to do first-line support for their customers (which he does, but admits other dealers often fail to). Evan is obviously devoted to the product and probably the right guy to email first if you think you'd be interested in it. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Ron Mackey writes "In general, we are pleased with ESIX. We still have problems driving the serial ports at speeds greater than 9600 baud. We also still see occasional PANICs. These appear to be related to problems with the virtual terminal manager." This may be the generic USL asy problem again. William W. Austin writes "The support from Esix seems to be usable if (a) you are a hacker, (b) you know unix (sVr4 internals help a lot), and (c) you get past the sales guy who answers the help line (Jeff [Ellis] is *very* helpful). If I were a computer-semi-literate, commercial user who only wanted his printer to work, etc., I might be up a creek for some problems (no drivers for some boards, no support for mouse tablets, etc., but that's what VARs are for). All in all, the support is at least a little better than what I expected for free -- in many cases it is *far* better than the support I got from $CO (is SCO really owned by Ebenezer Scrooge?)" [Note: Jeff Ellis has since left.] A longer appreciation from Ed Hall : "I had a problem with the ESIX X server. I got through to technical support immediately, and was promised a fix disk. The guy on the phone was actually able to chat with on of the developers to check to see if the disk would solve the problem. The disk came four days later." "On the other hand," he continues, "I get the feeling that ESIX has only made a mediocre effort to shake out the bugs before releasing their system-- or even their fixes. For example, they `repaired' their X server, but the new server only ran as root (it made some privileged calls to enable I/O ports)--they quickly had to release a second update to fix this new problem. They obviously fixed a lot of things in the new server, and performance is improved quite a bit as well, but the stupid error they made in the first "fixed" version should have been found with only the most minimal of testing." "They've done some work on the serial driver, but there are still some glitches (occasional dropped characters on a busy system at 38400bps, and a real doozy of a problem--a system panic--when doing simultaneous opens and ioctl's on a tty0xh and ttyM0xh device. This latter problem was due to my using the M0xh and 0xh devices improperly, but panics are inexcusable. No idea if this is a SYSVR4 problem or due to their fixes.)" "So my impressions of them are mixed. Perhaps I just lucked out in geting such rapid response on my support call, but I was impressed by it nonetheless. On the other hand, their QA needs work..." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Esix changed owners in early '93. Their parent company, Everex, went chapter 11. The Esix division was sold, intact, to James River (makers of the ICE UNIX-to-DOS bridge). James Hillegass, president/owner of James River, has told me that the new Esix is going to stress reliability and wide hardware support. Evan Leibovich writes: "What distinguishes Esix, at this time, is its reliance on VARs and resellers. Its newest brochures even say "for VARs only" (though these will be redone soon). Esix has benefitted by a decent VAR network which has not only given it a better route to end-users than the Dell or Consensys direct route. Also, these dealers and VARs have provided Esix with a handle on the marketplace that (I believe) many of the other vendors lack. Esix is no better, and no worse, than those in the field who sell, install and support it." NAME Information Foundation System V Release 4.2 VENDOR: Information Foundation One Tabor Center, 1200 17th Street, Suite 1900 Denver, CO 80202 Phone: 1-(800)-GET-UNIX (sales) sales@if.com (sales) support@if.com (tech support) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Here is the most recent IF module price list: FS-TAPE Enhanced UNIX Desktop TAPE & DOCS $299 FS-DISK DISKETTE & DOCS $399 FS-LICN LICENSE ONLY $249 MS-TAPE Extended Multi User TAPE $390 MS-DISK Module DISKETTE $365 MS-DOCS DOCUMENTATION $130 NS-TAPE Networking Module TAPE $250 NS-DISK DISKETTE $250 NS-DOCS DOCUMENTATION $25 CS-TAPE C Development Module TAPE $335 CS-DISK DISKETTE $300 CS-DOCS DOCUMENTATION $155 GS-TAPE GUI Development Module TAPE $995 GS-DISK DISKETTE $1,095 GS-DOCS DOCUMENTATION $200 C2-DISK C2 Security Module DISKETTE & DOC $149 SUPPORT: Bug reports are accepted from any customer, at any time. 90 days installation support; call (800)-284-UNIX. They will have patches available on an FTP server, a BBS, and via UUCP. Send in your registration card to get `passive support' (email notification of bugs & fixes, BBS, UUCP & FTP access to patches. There's also `active' (phone) support, priced per annum depending on your configuration or on a per-site basis. IF says it will happily work out custom support plans for large customers. FUTURE PLANS: They plan to have 20 support engineers by the end of '93. Sometime in '93, a tasty selection of PD software (probably rather resembling Dell's selections) will be appended to the distribution tape. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: They've promised to email me a list of hardware known to work, which will appear in a future posting. KNOWN BUGS: Incorrect font handling in some help system titles. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I haven't received any users yet. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: It's early days yet, but it looks to me like these guys are for real ans will give Univel some serious competition. They're behaving like they want to lead the SVr4.2 market; they're one of only two outfits with both source and USL Master Binary licences (the other is Univel). Hiring Jeremy Chatfield away from Dell was a smart move --- expect to see the successful elements of Dell UNIX's formula repeated here. NAME: Univel UnixWare Release 4.2 VENDOR: Univel 2180 Fortune Drive San Jose, CA 95131 (800)-4-UNIVEL SOFTWARE OPTIONS: The package comes in two versions; the Personal Edition is a limited-user workstation platform, with only Netware networking support bundled (TCP/IP is an option). Another add-on called Personal Utilities adds unlimited user capabilities, BSD compatability, and additional font support and demonstration applications. The Applications Server is an unlimited-user version which includes all of the above packages plus extra server facilities; TCP/IP and NFS is bundled. They offer a special bundle for developers for $695. Ask for details. ADD-ONS: The Development system is sold separately from the base system, and can work on either the Personal Edition or Application Server. Add-ons for the development system include the Motif API and a device driver development package. An encryption package provides kernel-level support for secure NFS and other DES encryption facilities. KNOWN BUGS: As yet, there are no known bugs specific to the Univel port. Some bugs generic to all SysVr4.2s are described in the companion usl-bugs posting. NAME MST UNIX VENDOR: Micro Station Technology, Inc. 1140 Kentwood Ave. Cupertino, CA. 95014 (408)-253-3898 sales@mst.com (product info & orders) cs@mst.com (support) ADD-ONS: None. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: C Development System Networking X11R4 and X11R3 Motif Open Look SUPPORT: 30 days of support free with purchase. 1 year of fax/email support is $299, 1 year of phone support is $599. FUTURE PLANS: They expect to upgrade to Motif 1.2 and X11R5 Summer '93XS. No plans for 4.0.4 yet. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: They decline to release information on hardware known *not* to work for fear of offending vendors. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. The DOS support is only 2.0-compatible (< 32-meg DOS partitions). COMMENTS: Another outfit offering stock USL real cheap. They were actually the first to try this (in Fall '91) and were the price leader until Consensys blew past them. These guys really want to sell you preinstalled UNIX on their clone hardware. Configurations range from $1349 to $5599 and look like pretty good value. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I have one experience report from Ray Hill, , who's been running MST on a 486 for a month or so. He says it works; elm, cnews, and trn are up, so standard UNIX sources compile up and work fine. His only criticism is the relative skimpiness of the printed docs. Harlan Stockman writes "MST has been very helpful at every step of the way; phone and e-mail support have been timely." Geoffrey Leach warns that some of the files (specifically, socket library headers) necessary to build X11R5 are bundled in the networking option --- this may meen you have to buy it even if you don't actually intend to network any machines. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Anyone who's been to a hobbyist computer expo in the last five years knows that the low-price clone-hardware market is full of small, hungry companies run by immigrants, often family businesses. Their English is sometimes a little shaky but (in my experience) they're honest and their product is good, and their prices are *real* aggressive. MST seems to be one of these outfits. Since Consensys ended their promo MST is now the low-price leader in this market. NAME: Microport System V Release 4.0 version 4 VENDOR: Microport, Inc. 108 Whispering Pines Drive Scotts Valley, CA 95066 (800)-367-8649 sales@mport.com (sales and product info) support@mport.com (support) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Networking (TCP/IP, NFS) Software Development User Graphics Module (X GUIs) Graphics Development Module (X toolkits + man pages). DOS Merge ADD-ONS: A few freeware utilities are included, notably kermit(1) and less(1). They include a single-user copy of a program called `JSB MultiView'. It's a character-oriented desktop program that front-ends conventional UNIX services for character terminals and also provides a calendar service and pop-up phone-book. It's something like a character-oriented X windows; each on-screen window looks like a terminal to the application. SUPPORT: The base price includes printed docs. This is effectively the same content as the Prentice-Hall SVr4 books; both are troffed off the SVr4 source tapes. They have been very lightly edited for the Microport environment. The base price includes 30 days or 1 year of phone support respectively depending on whether you bought the base or complete system. Support is said to be excellent for serious problems, not so good for minor ones (this is understandable if one assumes their support staff is very good but overworked, a hypothesis which is plausible on other evidence). They have a support BBS at (408)-438-7270 or 438-7521. However, the level of activity is low; one customer said (late February 1992) that they hadn't put anything useful on it in six months (Microport responds that they've been too busy hammering on r4 to spend lots of energy on it). FUTURE PLANS: DOS Merge will be folded into the system soon. Microport believes they have a lead in multiprocessing SVr4 UNIX and intend to push it. File-system support for CD-ROMs is coming. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. Math co-processors: Cyrix 20/25/33, Intel 80387 20/25/33, Weitek. No one has reported any incompatibility horror stories yet. Bernoulli boxes and Irwin tapes won't fly, but who cares. TECHNICAL NOTES: When I asked what differentiates Microport from the other SVr4 products, the answer I got is "performance". The Microport people feel they've put a lot of successful work into kernel tuning. And, indeed, benchmarks from independent sources show that Microport's fork(2) operation is quite fast. Other vendors show about 60 forks per second on the AIM Technologies SUITE II benchmarks; Microport cranks 80. This is the most dramatic performance difference the AIM tools reveal among any of these products. Microport's other benchmark statistics are closely comparable to those of its competitors. Microport also offers a multiprocessing SVr4 which will run on the Compaq SystemPro, the ALR PowerPro, the DEC 433MP, and the Chips & Technologies Mpax system. Microport has moved the socket headers and libraries necessary to build X out of the networking option package into the development system, so you don't have to buy an extra module to hack X. KNOWN BUGS: According to Microport, this port uses the stock USL 4.0.4 libraries. Thus it must have the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD-compatibility string functions. David Wexelblat reports that "Microport's enhanced asy driver does not work correctly (or at all) for hardware flow control - you can't open the ttyXXh devices under any circumstances. This was true in 3.1, and is still true in 4.1. The good news is that SAS (Streams-FAS) works fine for modems. But SAS won't work with the AT&T serial mouse driver. So I've got asy on my mouse port and SAS on the other one on my dumb-card. [...] Microport is still prone to silly errors. The Motif development system, which is described in the release notes as being included with the Motif runtime system in the 'complete' package, is in fact missing from the tape. They have it available seperately, but I had to call them to get it. The 'pixed' application for X.desktop 3.0 is compiled with shared libraries that are not included with the release. Hence it does not work. I had to call them about this, too." COMMENTS: These people sold a lot of shrink-wrapped UNIXes years ago before going chapter 11. They're back, leaner and meaner (with a total staff of just 15). Microport says it's primarily interested in the systems-integration market, where customers are typically going to be volume buyers qualifying for deep discounts. Thus, they're relatively undisturbed by the certainty that their high price point is losing them sales to individuals. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I've received one good comprehensive experience report, largely favorable, from David Wexelblat . REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Microport is a small, hungry outfit with a lot to prove; they've already gone bust once (I was a customer at the time :-() and they haven't yet demonstrated that they've got a better strategy this time out. They're perhaps a mite too expensive for the support quality they can offer with less than fifteen people, and kernel-tuning isn't going to win them a following on hardware that every year swamps those tweaks with huge increases in speed for constant dollars. And, like UHC, they have techies answering the phones and the techies have a clue. This certainly improves them as a bet for wizards and developers. If multiprocessing is important to you, and/or you're looking for a small outfit where you can develop personal working relationships with the tech people who matter, Microport might be a good way to go. NAME: UHC Version 3.6 VENDOR: UHC Corp. 3600 S. Gessner Suite 110 Houston, TX 77063 (713)-782-2700 support@uhc.com SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Networking package (TCP/IP). X + Motif X + Ot# 6Xref: nuchat comp.unix.sys5.r4:3463 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:3628 comp.unix.bsd:13344 news.answers:9232 From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Path: nuchat!lobster!moxie!wotan.compaq.com!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.kei.com!ub!dsinc!gvls1!snark!esr Newsgroups: comp.unix.sys5.r4,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.bsd news.answers Subject: PC-clone UNIX Software Buyer's Guide Message-ID: <1lkjDq#7s1vLN56dxLq04Bc9c0LJgpT=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> Date: 10 Jun 93 16:04:42 GMT Expires: 9 Aug 93 23:00:00 GMT Sender: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Followup-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit Distribution: world Summary: A buyer's guide to UNIX versions for PC-clone hardware Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Euct's strongest differentiating feature. FUTURE PLANS: X11R5 by mid-May or thereabouts. They have it running now but don't consider it stable enough to ship. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. The asy driver in version 2.0 won't talk to the NS16550AFN UART, which is supposed to be pin-compatible with the standard 16450. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. COMMENTS: They claim that according to USL they have the largest installed base of SVr4 customers, and to have been first to market with a shrink-wrapped SVr4 (in 1990). UHC also claims to have performed and maintained IBM's official UNIX port for the MicroChannel machines. A subsidiary of Anam, "a holding company with a diversified portfolio". UHC now also sells and supports Univel UnixWare. They say their policy will be to continue sales and support of both UHC UNIX and UnixWare, as they feel the products are apprpriate for different markets. WHAT THE USERS SAY: The only comment I've yet seen on the UHC OS was an extended description of a successful installation by a satisfied netter. He made it sound like a good solid product. I have one absolutely incandescently glowing report on UHC support from a developer named Steve Showalter . He says: "We've been running UHC's OS for about a year now...been EXTREMELY happy with it. The support we receive is without a doubt, the finest we have received from any vendor." Duke Smith (c/o somesh@watson.bm.com) writes: "Another absolutely incandescently glowing report on UHC support: I called the Programmer's Shop about UHC & wound up talking to UHC tech support to find out if the sucker would run on my machine. The guy took considerable time to explain all the different things that might be causing the problem, and emphasized that the same hardware problems which were probably causing Consensys not to run would also hose UHC. This led me to contact ALR tech support (also a glower) who took all of 1-1/2 days (not including shipping) to do the necessary upgrades, on warranty because apparently their ads that it will run Unix are covered by warranty. The glowing thing about UHC is, the guy helped me get a competitor's port working, and I told him he was gonna get in dutch with the marketroids and his response was that maybe I would remember them the next time I or someone I knew needed a system. He's right. I'll use Consensys until I can afford something better for my own system (it's still better than DOS...), but from now on my clients will get pointed toward UHC, not Consensys, whose absent-parent attitude is going to keep them from ever becoming anything but the destitute hacker's Unix vendor." On the other hand, William G. Bunton : "So, I give a thumbs up for the product. I give a thumbs down for the company, and it's enough that I'm taking my future business elsewhere." He tells a horror story about the 2.0 version involving a three-month runaround, a letter to their VP of marketing, and lots of broken promises. Apparently UHC does sometimes drop the ball. This is reinforced by Darryl V. McDaniel: "Based upon conversations with UHC and other people with UHC 4.0.3.6, UHC has a severe problem with revision control. Just because two customers have 4.0.3.6, doesn't mean that they all have the same version. It appears that UHC doesn't even know what they are shipping." The best evidence he gives is that he's never seen the mouse- middle-button problem which others (including your humble editor) have reported. He also says: "Man pages have wrong section numbers, confusion between compatibility package (SVR4, BSD, XENIX), etc. Man pages from DDDK overlay man pages of same root name. UHC acknowledges that this is their bug." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: I found both the people I talked to friendly, candid, technically knowledgeable, and willing to answer sticky questions. I came away with a very positive impression of the outfit's operating style. There are experienced UNIX developers who value dealing with a small, responsive outfit where they can develop good working relationships with individuals. UHC says it likes to sell to wizards and might be a good choice for these people. NAME: BSD/386 VENDOR: Berkeley Software Design, Inc. 3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 580 Falls Church, VA 22042 USA (800)-800-4BSD -- info & orders 703 204 8086 - Information/vox 703 204 8087 - Information/fax (719)-593-9445 - Rob Kolstad in Colorado Springs bsdi-info@bsdi.com SOFTWARE OPTIONS: None. You get an unlimited user license, binaries *and sources* for the entire system (this includes X11R5 and full BSD networking sources with both Internet and GOSIP OSI protocol stacks). What more could you want? Note that BSDI sells ``binary right to use licenses'' -- for additional binaries at your site for $200. Likewise, if you're a 3rd party software dude looking for a delivery platform, redistribution of binaries for turnkey systems starts at $200. Quantity discounts are available for both these schemes. SUPPORT: The purchase price include 60 days of phone support. A telephone-support contract is $595 per year; email-only support is $295/year; upgrade only is $195/year (+$50 each for QIC-tape installations, as opposed to CD-ROM). Alternatively, you can buy phone support at $20 per 12 minutes. There is a support email list. FUTURE PLANS: Capability to run SVr3.2 binaries (including SCO binaries) in 1993. Rob Kolstad sez: "We're pleased to be shipping V1.0 for BSD/386". Both AT&T's injunction request and its request for reconsider were both denied. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. New drivers are being added all the time. Most multiport serial boards aren't supported (they're working on it). BSD/386 supports the RISCOM/8 multiport serial card (SDL: 508-559-9005) and includes a driver for the MAXPEED serial cards. TECHNICAL NOTES: This version is *not* based even in part on USL code and has no AT&T license restrictions. Rather, it derives from Berkeley UNIX (the CSRG Networking 2 release, somewhere between 4.3 and 4.4). Many of the BSD/386 tools, including the compiler, are GNU code. This system's libraries, header files and utilities conform to X3J11, POSIX 1003.1 and POSIX 1003.2 standards. POSIX Certification is schedule for the first half of 1993. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Guy Dawson writes: "I've been using BSD/386 since July 92 and an *REALLY* happy with it. The system is complete - a full development environment. Getting the system is a great win. It's easy to install the components you want and to add/remove components later. Mount the cd and copy the files from the CD. The CD distribution is in ISO9660 format with Rock Ridge extensions. BSD/386 will mount both standard ISO9660 CDs and those with RR extensions. Installing the system from a CD-ROM is easy. I followed the BSDI guide line when configuring the system h/w and had no problems. It was as easy as DOS or Windows. My system is made up of a cheap motherboard and I/O cards - except for the SCSI controller and video card ( Adaptec and Orchid ). There are also other cards used by DOS/Windows in the machine that BSD/386 does not know about and does not get tripped up by them. They also supply a boot manager so that you can run multiple OSs. My system currently boots off an IDE drvice which has a 109Mb DOS partition and a 11MB BSD/386 /root filesystem. When BSD/386 boots it mounts the rest of the operation system from a SCSI disk. I've also connected the system into TCP/IP networks and interoperated with Suns and a VAX runinng TCP/IP on VMS. The system also serves as an NFS server to Unix boxes and PCs running PC-TCP." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: I expect this will become a hackers' favorite. All this, and sources too...I salivate. I am tempted. Not sure I'm ready to change OSs at the same time as I switch machines, though. SVr4's got better continuity with the 3.2 I'm running now. Ghu, what a dilemma! NAME: Yggdrasil Linux/GNU/X (LGX) VENDOR: (Linux is a freeware product, with sources and kernel and dizzying combinations of add-ons available via FTP on Internet. This entry is based on the low-cost commercial LGX distribution from Yggdrasil, which adds GNU and Xfree86.) Yggdrasil Computing, Inc. Post Office Box 8418 Berkeley, CA 94707-8418 (510)-526-7531 vox (510)-528-8508 fax yggdrasil@netcom.com USENETter Adam J. Richter formed Yggdrasil Computing Inc. to distribute a Linux-based USL-free UNIX clone on CD-ROM. He writes "The alpha release has been shipping since December 8th [1992]. The beta release is shipping and the first production release should ship in late March." For more info, check out the anonymous FTP area in netcom.com:~ftp/pub/yggdrasil. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: The Yggdrasil base product is a CD-ROM including: * The Linux 0.99.4 and 0.99.5 kernels. * An installation script. * TCP/IP and XFree86 X11R5 support. * MPEG full-motion video player for X. * Ghostscript (GNU freeware PostScript interpreter/previewer). * TeX, groff (GNU freeware nroff clone). * Tcl, Tk and Wish for rapid prototyping. * GNU C, C++, gdb, f2c, bison, flex, make, emacs, elvis (vi clone). * System V shared memory and IPC. * BSD-like file system with flexnames, symbolic links and FIFOs. * An ISO9660 CD-ROM filesystem with Rock Ridge extensions. * a XENIX-compatible file system. * a DOS filesystem and DOS emulator. * kermit and Z-modem telecommunications. * Talyor UUCP 1.3. The production CD-ROM is planned to be $60. ADD-ONS: Yggdrasil has a policy of filling the unused space on the CD-ROM with with a "Chef's Surprise" assortment of goodies. On the beta release CD-ROM, this consists of the X11R5 contrib director plus the Andrew 5.1 GUI source tree. On the production release, it will probably be a dump of a major Linux archive site. SUPPORT: If you need to ask, don't use this software. Linux is user-supported freeware; the only way to get support is to watch the net (especially the comp.os.linux newsgroup) and track the frequent new releases from Linus Torvalds and friends. If you want to get actively involved, join the linux-activists mailing list; to subscribe, mail to "linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi". Up-to-the minute info is also available by fingering torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi. Also, watch the Linux FAQ in news.answers. The command set is basically the GNU toolkit, so it's maintained by FSF. FUTURE PLANS: Linux is now in late beta. Linus Torvalds is concentrating on kernel development; many other people are working on tools. Future plans include improved TCP/IP (ftp, telnet), more tape drivers, a compressed file system, and the ability to run Xenix binaries. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the Appendix for details. Besides what's listed there, the Yggdrasil release includes support for: * Adlib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster Pro 2, Thunderboard, ATI Sterio F/X, and Media Vision ProAudioSpectrum 16 sound cards, and for playing audio CD tracks. Other Media-Vision cards are not supported yet. * Sony CDU-31A non-SCSI CD-ROM. TECHNICAL NOTES: Complete sources for everything are included! Linux claims to be "mostly" POSIX, System V and BSD-conformant (with the emphasis on POSIX). POSIX job control is supported. The buzz is that it's pretty easy to port stuff from other UNIXes; this is supported by the presence of the GNU toolset and lots of other freeware. Linux's X is Xfree86 (see below). You can actually boot and run LGX using a supplied floppy and the CD, without touching your hard drive. This is useful for evaluating the system. COMMENTS: Linux seems now to be the leading freeware UNIX, having overtaken 386BSD by virtue of a very large and active development community. It's changing fast enough that this entry is likely to be chronically behind the facts. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Tune into comp.os.linux. I don't have a concise user report on this system yet; anybody feel like writing one? REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: If the idea of a free UNIX collectively developed by the net turns you on, this is the system to get involved with. KNOWN BUGS: If you're using an Ultrastor 14F controller, you must hard-reset the machine when you reboot; otherwise it won't be detected. If you set your machine name to something longer than 14 characters, login will not work. This appears to be due to a C library bug. The S3 X server has problems reading the config files generated by the X configuration script. Some working S3 config files are included. V. UPCOMING PORTS, FREEWARE VERSIONS, AND CLONES. There's a free X distribution that's worth checking out in lieu of the vendor-maintained ports. It's called XFree86, and it's a souped-up version of the 1.2 X386 server supported for SVr4, 386BSD and Linux. It supports the following chipsets: ET4000 (Tseng) ET3000 (Tseng) PVGA1 (Paradise) WD90Cxx (Western Digital - Paradise PVGA1 Supersets) GVGA (Genoa) TVGA8900C (Trident) ATI18800,28800 (ATI SVGA - not 8514!) The Xfree maintainers recommend ET4000-based boards, except for recent Diamond models. There is no support for S3, ATI 8514 or TIGA chipsets. Source patches based on X11R5 PL17, from MIT, are available via anonymous FTP from export.lcs.mit.edu (under /contrib/XFree86) and at various other sites; binaries for various OSs are also widely available (consult the archie service on Internet, using the search string "xfree" to find a site near you). XFree86 is known to work under all the commercial ports covered above except Consensys's 4.2 (which will be supported in Release 1.2); also under Linux and 386BSD. The maintainers believe it will fly on any ISA/EISA clone box running SVr4. Send email to David Wexelblat or to xfree86@physics.su.oz.au for further information. There are three other commercial SVr4 UNIX ports on the market for which I do not yet have detailed information. I hope to cover them in future issues. Solaris 2.1: Sun's port for 386/486 machines, just released. I hope to add a full vendor report on this nextish. PromoX UNIX: This is said to be a bare-bones port by an outfit that mainly sells hardware. The price advertised is $649 for a complete 2-user + devtools system. PromoX Systems 1050 East Duane Avenue, Suite B Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Tel: (408) 733-2966 Email: promox@cup.portal.com SORIX: This is a SVR4 UNIX port enhanced for real-time work, offered by Siemens AG. Siemens AG AUT 189 Gleiwitzerstr. 555 8500 Nuremberg 1 Tel: 0911/895-2203 I don't yet know if this version is going to be sold in the US. In the info I have, prices are quoted in Deutschmarks. NeXTSTEP 486: NeXT has a 486 port of the NeXT environment scheduled for beta release in 4th quarter '92. There are some freeware alternative UNIXes available for the 386/486. None of these are yet complete and mature hacking environments, but they show promise (and require much less in minimum hardware to run). They are: 386BSD: Under development by Bill & Lynne Jolitz & friends (this is the same 386BSD project described in Dr. Dobbs' Journal some time back). This OS is based on the NET/2 tape from Berkeley, resembling the commercial BSD/386 release described above, and like it is distributed with full source. The aim is to produce a full POSIX-compliant freeware BSD UNIX. Version 0.1 is now out, including FP emulation, SCSI support, coexistence with DOS, and many more new features. Passwording has to be acquired separately due to US export regulations, but the system is otherwise fairly complete; I have seen it run. There's a lot of traffic in comp.os.386bsd about this project. Hurd: This is the long-awaited and semi-mythical GNU kernel. It's being worked on by the Free Software Foundation (the people who brought you emacs, gcc, gdb and the rest of the GNU tool suite) but it's not ready for prime time yet. It's said to be a set of processes layered over a Mach 3.0 kernel. The 386BSD and Linux developments both lean heavily on GNU tools. There is one other not-quite-freeware (cheapware?) product that deserves a mention: Minix: This is a roughly V7-compatible UNIX clone for Intel boxes, sold with source by Prentice-Hall for $169 (there's an associated book for a few bucks more). It's really designed to run in 16-bit mode on 8086 and 286 machines, though the UK's MINIX center offers a 32-bit kernel. UUCP and netnews clones are available as freeware but not supplied with the base system. A large international community is involved in improving Minix; see comp.os.minix on USENET for details. These freeware and "cheapware" products exert valuable pressure on the commercial vendors. Someday, they may even force AT&T to unlock source to stay competitive... Finally, there is a class of commercial UNIX clones that claim to emulate UNIX or improve on it without being derived from AT&T source. The major products of this kind for 80x86 machines seem to be Coherent, QNX and LynxOS. The following information about these has been supplied by various USENETters: COHERENT is a small-kernel UNIX-compatible multi-user, multi-tasking development O/S for $99.95 that uses less than 14Mb of disk space, runs on most 286-386-486 CPU systems, has a (pre-ANSI) C compiler and over 230 UNIX commands including text processing, program development, administrative and maintenance functions. The GNU tools are available as pre-compiled binaries and source from MWC. Coherent resides on a partition separate from DOS and can access the DOS file system with the DOS command. It has no network or Xwindows support, but netnews has been ported and it has its own newsgroup, comp.os.coherent. It is fully documented with both a comprehensive 1200 page manual and an on-line manual. Mark Williams Company provides excellent support including a UUCP access BBS and has just announced Release 4.0, the 386 version of COHERENT (which removed the 64K-address-space limit on the compiler). A big selling point of this system is its minimal HW requirements --- only 1MB of memory, a 10MB root partition, and monochrome (or better) monitor. As there's no FPU code yet, there's no point in buying a 486 for this puppy. QNX is a POSIX-compliant microkernel OS with real-time capability, targeted to mission critical, performance sensitive applications like factory automation, process control, financial transaction processing, and instrumentation. They claim an installed base of over 200K systems worldwide. The microkernel is only 7K and implements a message-passing model; other pieces can loaded in at runtime, supporting anything from a small real-time executive up to a full multi-user time-sharing system (including transparent DOS emulation supporting Windows 3.1 in protected mode). QNX networking supports standard protocol suites, but uses very fast, lightweight protocols for QNX-to-QNX node communications; QNX machines on a network can be treated for most purposes as a single large multiprocessor, and the OS itself can be distributed across multiple nodes. Here is contact information for the vendor: Quantum Software Systems Quantum Software Systems 175 Terrence Matthews Cr. Westendstr.19 6000 Frankfurt Kanata, Ontario K2M 1W8 am main 1 Canada Germany voice: (613) 591-0931 x111 (voice) voice: 49 69 97546156 fax: (613) 591-3579 (fax) fax: 49 69 97546110 usenet: stuartr@qnx.com QNX support is offered via voice and FAX hotline and a BBS. There is also a newsletter and an annual international users' conference. LynxOS is a 386 UNIX specialized for real-time work, available from Lynx Real-Time Systems Inc. of Los Gatos, California. It includes TCP/IP, NFS, X, etc. Most of the development tools are GNU. The kernel is pre-emptable and supports threads and dynamically-loaded device drivers. VI. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY TABLES These tables summarize vendor claims and user reports on which hardware will work with which port. To save space in the tables below, we use the following *one-letter* abbreviations for the OS ports: S SCO UNIX version 3.2v4 C Consensys System V Release 4.2 D Dell UNIX Issue 2.1 E ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 I Information Foundation System V Release 4.2 V Univel 4.2 M Micro Station Technology SVr4 UNIX P Microport System V/4 version 4 U UHC Version 3.6 B BSD/386 1.0 L Linux A `c' indicates that the hardware is claimed to work in vendor literature. A `y' indicates that this has been verified by a user report. A 'v' indicates that the board vendor supplies a driver or server. A `.' indicates that whether this combination works is unknown. An `n' indicates that the vendor advises that the combination won't work. A `*' points you at footnote info. A blank column indicates that I have received no vendor info on the hardware category in question. The following general caveats apply: * All ports support EGA, VGA, CGA and monochrome text displays. * All ports support generic ISA serial-port cards based on the 8250 or 16450 UART. According to the vendors, the asy drivers on Dell, Esix, Microport, BSD/386 support the extended FIFO on the NS16550AFN UART chip. Indeed, Dell tech support will tell you this feature was present in the base USL code. UHC says its 4.0.4 drivers will talk to the 16550s. SCO has supported the 16550 since 3.2.2. * I have not bothered listing ordinary ST-506/IDE/RLL drives, though lists of them are given in vendor literature. This is a very mature commodity technology; anything you buy should work with one of the supported controllers unless it's defective. * Vendors' supported hardware lists are not models of clarity. Some items may be listed under a couple of different names because I don't know that they're actually the same beast. I have been very careful not to make assumptions where I am ignorant; thus, some hardware may appear less widely supported than it actually is. * These tables are grossly incomplete. Also, be aware that there is a fundamental design problem in the ISA architecture that can cause 8-bit boards used in a system with 16-bit boards to flake out even if they're actually compatible. Jeremy Chatfield (formerly of Dell, now of Information Foundation) describes it this way: "We've seen (and fixed) this with several card combinations. If you have an 8 bit card and a 16 bit card in the same address range, then the address decoding on the ISA bus will find that the 128KB range includes a 16 bit card. It therefore programs itself for 16 bit I/O. If you then do I/O with the 8 bit card, every other data byte is garbage. You will also have a reboot problem, because the 16 bit card usually starts in 8 bit mode and has to be switched to 16 bit mode. If the switch back to 8 bit mode is not made, and the address range is the c0000-d0000 range, close to the VGA BIOS, the VGA BIOS accesses are screwed, because they are performed in 16 bit mode because of the above PC H/W architectural problem. We include a deinit sequence in all the 16 bit device drivers that causes a shutdown to reset the accesses to the safer 8 bit mode. Of course, after a panic, the machine still has boards set up in 16 bit mode, so you might observe the problem then. This affects *all* PC OS's. I have seen cases where DOS failed to reboot because of the same nonsense (network card in 16 bit mode in same address region as VGA BIOS). Clever programming can resolve in several ways." All the SVr4 systems inherit support for a fairly wide range of hardware from the base USL code (version 4.0.3 or 4.0.4); SCO UNIXes from 3.2.2 up, ODT and Linux also support all these devices: * All PC disk controllers (ESDI, IDE, ST-506 in MFM and RLL formats). * The Adaptec 1542B SCSI adapter. Note: you'll have to jumper your SCSI devices to fixed IDs during installation on most of these. For Linux you need to leave BIOS initialization on. * Western Digital's 8013EBT Ethernet card, and its equivalents the WD8003 and WD8013. SVr4v4 and Linux add the 3Com 3C503. * VGA adapters in 640x480 by 16 color mode. * "C" protocol serial mice like the Series 7 and Series 9 from Logitech and the PC-3 mouse from Mouse Systems (however, we've had one report of an ostensible PC-3 clone called the DFI200H not working). All SVr4 4.2 ports inherit support for these additional devices: * "M" and "M+" protocol mice like Microsoft's and the newer Logitechs. * SCSI WORM drives including the Toshiba and Maxtor RXT-800HS. * SCSI Optical Disks: Maxtor Tahiti-I and II, Sony SMOE501 * SCSI CD-ROM drives: Toshiba XM-3201B, NEC CDR-82, Pioneer DRM-600, Sony CDU-8012. * ET3000-based SVGA boards at up to 1024x768x16, WD90C10-based boards at up to 1024x768x16, WD90C11-based boards at up to 1024x768x256. * IBM-compatible Token Ring cards The SCO versions support all these mice and token ring cards. If you can fill in any of the gaps, or convert a `c' to `y', send me email. S C D E I V M P U B L Systems ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . c c . Acer (all 386/486 models) . . . . c ACCELL 486/33 ISA and 386/40 ISA . c . . . ADDA AD-428P-25, Portable 486/25, 486/33, AD-328D-25 . c c c . ALR Business VEISA 386/33-101 c . c . . ALR (all 386 and 486 models) y . . . . applicationDEC 316,316+,325,325C,333,425,433MP c . c . . Apricot LS, LS 386SX, XEN-S 386 c . . . y Arche 486, Master 486/33 . . c c . AST (models not specified) . c c c . AST Premium (models not specified) c . c . . AST Premium 386,386/33,486/25T*E*,486/33T*E* c . c c . AT&T 6386 machines . . c c . Compaq (models not specified) c c c c . Compaq DeskPro 386/33. y . c . . Compaq DeskPro 486s/20,486/25/486/33L,386/20,386/25 y . c . . Compaq Portable III 386, SystemPro c . c . y Compaq SLT 386s/20 . . c . y CompuAdd 320 c y y c y y y . CompuAdd Model 333 . . c . y CompuAdd 320 c . c . . DEC DS486, DECpc 433, DECpc 433T c . c . . DECstation 320,325,425 c y . c c . Dell 310,325,325P,333P,316SX,316LT,320SX,320LT. c y . c c . Dell 433P,425E,433E,425TE,433TE,4xx[DS]E,486[DP]xx. . . c . y DynaMicro 486/33 c . c . . EasyData 386 model 333 c . c . . Epson Equity 386/20PC,386/25,386SX; Epson PC AX3,AX3/25 . c c c . Everex (models not specified) y . c . . Everex 33,386/20,486,486/33 . c c c . Gateway 2000 (models not specified) . y . c c y Gateway 2000 (486/33 ISA) . . c . y . Gateway 2000 486/25 . n . . . Gatewat 486 VESA c . c . . Groupil Uniprocessor 25MHz Tower c . c . . GRiDCase 1530,1550SX . . c c c High Definition Systems 486/25 ISA and 386 SX/16 ISA . y c . . High Definition Systems 386/40 ISA c . c . . HP 486 Vectra series c . . . . IBM PS/2 and PS/Valuepoint c . c . . IBC 486 c . c . . ITT 486 y . c . . Micro Way Number Smasher 486/33 c . c . . Mitac 386, MC3100E-02, S500 c . c . . Mitsuba 386 c . c . . Mitsubishi PC-386 . . c . y MORSE PAT 386PX 386/40 . . c . y MORSE KP 386T 386/33 c . c . . NCR 316,316SX,3386 c . c . . NEC 386/20,486/25, BusinessMate and PowerMate y . c . . NEC 386/33 BusinessMate c . c . . Noble 386 c . c . . Nokia Alfaskop System 10 m52, m54/55 c . c . . Northgate 33 . c c c . Northgate 386/33 . y . c . . Northgate 486/33 c . c . . Olivetti 386/486 machines c . c . . Olivetti XP-9 y . c . . Packard-Bell 386x c . c . . PC Craft PCC 2400 386 c . c . . Phillips 386, P3464 486 . c c c . Primax (models not specified) c . c . . SNI 8800-50, 8810-50, PCD series c . c . . Schneider 386 25-340, 386SX System 70 c . c . . Siemens Data Systems Model WX200 c . c . . Starstation . . c . y Tandy 3000 c . c . . Tandy 4000 y . c . . Tatung Force 386x c . c . . Tatung Force TCS-8000 386, TCS-8600 386 . c c c . Tangent (models not specified) . y c . . Tangent 386/25C . c c y . Tangent 433E (486/33 EISA) . . c . y Technology Advancement Group EISA 483/33 . c c c . Televideo (models not specified) c . c . . Televideo 386/25 c . c . . Texas Instruments System 1300 . . c . y Texas Instruments System 80486/33Mhz c . c . . Toshiba T3100,T3200,T5100,T5200,T8500,T8600 . . c . y TPE 486/33 & 486/50 . c c c . Twinhead (models not specified) y . c . . Twinhead 800 (486/33) . c c c . Unisys (models not specified) c . c . . Unisys PW2 Series 800/16,800/20,800/25 c . c . . Victor 386 25, V486T c . c . . Wang MX200, PC 380 c . c . . Wyse 386 n . c . . Wyse Decision 486/33 (intermittent crashes) c . c . . Zenith 386 and 486 machines . . c . y Zeos 486DX-50 S C D E I V M P U B L Motherboards ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . AGI y y . . A.I.R. 486/33EL w 256K cache . c . ALR . c . AMAX c . c . AMI (model not specified) y c . AMI Enterprise II (33 & 50) y . . Amptron AMD386/40 . . y Amptron ISA 486DX/33 . c . ARC n . c . Cache Computer (model not specified) . . y Cache Computer 386-33 . c . Chips & Technologies chipset y . c . Chips & Technologies 33DX c c . Club AT . c . DataExport y . c . Dell . c n . DTK (model not specified) y . n . DTK 386/33 . . c EISA Tech 80386SX MHz y . . . Eteq 386 y n . . Eteq 486 . c . Free Technology (model not specified) . . . Free Technology 486/33 EISA board y . . . Free Technology 486/50DX y y . . Gigabyte GA-486US 33MHz 256K Cache c . . y Intel 302 (386/25 + 387) . . y Intel 403E (486/33 EISA) . c . Microlab c y c y c Micronics 386/25 c c y c Micronics 486/33 ISA y . . Micronics 486/33 EISA . c . Mitac . . . Modular Circuit Technology 386/SX 16Mhz y . . . Motherboard Factory 386/40, 486/33 (Northgate's OEM) . c . Mylex (model not specified) c c . Mylex MI-386/20 y y y y . Mylex MAE486/33 y y . . NICE 486DX/50 EISA y . c . OPTI 486 . c . Orchid . c . PC-craft y y . . TMC Research Corporation PAT38PC 25/386,33/386 y . . TMC Research Corporation PAT38PX 33/386,40/386 . . y Zida 486DX/50 ISA Notes: * These two tables probably way *understate* the compatibility of most ports. Most ISA or EISA motherboards will work with all of them. However, Jeff Coffler reports: "I couldn't get the Cache Computer CPU board to work at all with Dell UNIX, even though they claimed they work with SCO. Flaky, timing-related failures." * Quote from Kolstad, "The external caches on the most advanced boards are usually not tested well for UNIX-like applications. We see problems occasionally that disappear when the caches are disabled. Once reproducible, the vendors can usually repair the problem." * A source at UHC describes the DTK boards as "dogshit" --- he says they generate a lot of spurious interrupts that DOS is too cretinous to be bothered by but which completely tank UNIX. He says DTK seems uninterested in fixing the problem. Other correspondents confirm that this has been going on for several years. On the other hand, another correspondent says his company has 20 DTK machines running UNIX with no problems. We advise that you actually *see* any DTK board boot UNIX and run for a while before buying. * Dave Johnson reports that since upgrading from a 386 to an Eteq 486, they've had lots of UHC random panics due to page faults in kernel mode. UHC is looking into this. S C D E I V M P U B L Video Cards Max Res ChipSet ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- . c y . . * . . Appian Rendition GRX 1024x768x256 TIGA34010 c c y . . * . . Appian Rendition II, IIXE 1024x768x256 TIGA34010 c c . . . . . . Appian Rendition III 1280x1024x256 TIGA34020 . . . . c . . ARC V-16 (Paradise) ???? ???? c . . . . . . AST motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C31 c . . . . . . AST VGA Plus 800x600x16 WDC . . c c c c . AT&T VDC 600 (Paradise clone) SVGA ???? . . c . . . . AT&T VDC400 CGA ??? . . c c . . . AT&T VDC750 EGA ??? c y . . . c . c ATI Ultra 1024x768x256 Mach 8 c . . . . . . ATI UltraPlus & UltraPro 1024x768x256 Mach 32 c y . . . c . c ATI Vantage 1024x768x256 Mach 8 c . . . . . . ATI Wonder SVGA N Wonder c y c c c c n y ATI Wonder+ SVGA N Wonder c . c c . . . ATI Wonder XL 1024x768x256 ???? . . . . c c . ATI (type not specified) ???? ???? . y . . . . . . Boca SuperVGA 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . . Bull ProStation 25i 1024x768x16 ???? c . . . . . . Chips 451 800x600x16 N C&T451 c . . . . . . Chips 452 1024x768x16 N C&T452 c . . . . . . Cirrus Logic VGA 6410 800x600x16 ???? c . . . . . . Cirrus Logic GD542X 1024x768x256 N ???? c . . . . . . Compaq Advanced VGA 640x480x256 N ???? c . . . . . . Compaq AG1024 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . . . Compaq LCD VGA 640x480x16g N ???? c . . . . . . Compaq Plasma 640x400x2 N non-VGA c . . . . . . Compaq ProLinea 3 1024x768x16 N WD90C11 c . . . . . . Compaq ProLinea 4 1024x768x256 N ET4000 c . . . . . . Compaq ProSignia 1024x768x16 N WD90C11 c . . . . . . Compaq QVision 1024x768x256 N ???? c . . . . . . Compaq VGC 640x480x16 N ???? c . . . . . . Compaq VGC 132 800x600x16 N ???? . . . . . . c Compuadd Hi-Rez card w/1meg 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . . Cornerstone SinglePage 1008x768x2 ???? c . . . . . . Cornerstone PC1280 1280x960x2 ???? c . . . . . . Cornerstone DualPage 1600x1280x2 ???? c . . . . . . Cornerstone DualPage 150 2048x1538x2 ???? c . . . . . . DEC 433w 1280x1024x256 TMS34020 c . . . . . . DEC motherboard video 1024x768x256 N WD90C30 c y . . . . . . Dell motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C31 c . . . . . . Dell PoerLine 450 DX "Jaws" 1280x1024x256 ???? . y . c c . c . Dell VGA 1024x768 ???? c y c c c c y c Diamond SpeedStar 1024x768x256 ET4000 c . . . . . c Diamond Stealth 1280x1024x16 S3 c* . . c . . c Eizo MD-B07, MD-B10, Extra/EM 1024x768 ET3000 . . . c . . y ELSA WINNER 1280x1024 82C480 . c . . . . . Everex ViewPoint VRAM SVGA+ ???? . c . . . . . Everex ViewPoint True Color SVGA+ ???? . c . . . . . Everex UltraGraphics II EV-236 1664x1200 mono . . . . . . . Fastwrite VGA 800x600 ???? . . c . . . . Genoa SuperEGA HiRes 1024x768 ???? . . . c . . . Genoa 5200 1024x768 ???? c c c c c c c Genoa 5300/5400 superVGA SVGA N ???? c . . . c . c Genoa 6000, 6400 SVGA N ???? c . . . . . . Genoa 7000 SVGA N ???? c . . . . . . Grid 1530 laptop 640x400x2 CGA-like y c . . c . . Hercules monographics display 720x348 mono c . . . . . . HP UltraVGA 1280x1024x16 S3 c . . . . . . IBM 8514/A 1024x768x256 8514/A c y . . . . . . IBM VGA VGA VGA c . . . . . . IBM XGA 1024x768x256 XGA c . . . . . . IBM XGA-2 1024x768x256 XGA-2 c . . . . . . Imagraph ITX 1280x1024x256 TMS34020 c . . . . . . Intel motherboard video 1024x768x256 N WD90C3x c . . . . . . Matrox MWIN1280 1280x1024x256 N 8514 c . . . . . . Matrox PG-1281-CV 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . . . Matrox PG-1281 1280x1024x256 ???? c . . . . . . Matrox PG-1281/s 1280x1024x16g ???? . c . . . . . MaxLogic SVGA ???? c . c v . . . Microfield T8 1280x1024 TIGA34020 c . . v c . . Microfield V8 1280x1024 ???? c . . . . . . Microfield I8 1280x1024x256 TMS34020 . . . v . . . Microfield X-8 1280x1024 ???? c . . . . . . Micronics MVC 1280x1024x256 82C41 c . . . . . . Miro Magic 1280x1024x256 N 82C48 c . . . . . . Miro Magic Plus 1280x1024x256 N 82C481 c . . . . . . Miro Crystal 8.24 1280x1024x256 N 82C481 c . . . . . . Miro Crystal 4.16 1024x768x256 N 82C481 . . . . * . . Mylex GXE (EISA) 1280x1024 TIGA34020 c . . . . . . NCR 77C22 1024x768x16 77C22 c . . . . . . NCR 77C22E 1024x768x256 77C22E . . . . . . y Nth Engine/150 1280x1024 82C480 c . . . . . . Number Nine GXi 1280x1024x256 N 34020 . c . . . . . Oak Technology OTI-067 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . y . Oak Technologies Oak 077 1024x768x256 Oak 077 c . . . . . . Olivetti EVC-1 (EISA) 1024x768x256 82c452 c . . . . . . Olivetti LSX50X5 1024x768x256 N ET4000 c . . . . . . Olivetti m300-28 1024x768x16 N OTI-067 c . . . . . . Olivetti m300-30 1024x768x256 N WD90C31 c . . . . . . Olivetti m300-40/m388-25/m400-* 1024x768x16 N C&T452A c . . . . . . Olivetti m400-60 1024x768x256 N Mach 8 c . . . . . . Olivetti m480-xx 1024x768x16 N C&T453 c . . . . . . Olivetti OVC 640x480x16 N ???? . . . . . . c Optima Mega/1024 1024x768 ET4000 c . c . . . . Orchid Designer SVGA ET3000 c . . . . . c Orchid Fahrenheit 1280x1024x16 S3 c . . . . . . Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus/VA 1280x1024x16 S3 c y . . c c c Orchid ProDesigner 800x600 ET3000 c y y c c y . y Orchid ProDesigner II/1024 1024x768 N ET4000 c . . . . . . Orchid ProDesigner II/e 800x600x256 N ET4000 c * c c y . y Orchid ProDesigner IIs 1024x768 N ET4000 c . c c . . . Paradise VGA Plus VGA PVGA1A . c c . c c c Paradise VGA Professional VGA PVGA1A c c . c . c . c Paradise VGA 1024 SVGA WD90C00 c . . . . . . Paradise 8514/A SVGA+ 8514/A c . . v . . y PixelWorksWhirlWin 1280x1024 82C480 . . c . . . . PerfectView SVGA ???? c . . . . . . QuadRAM QuadVGA SVGA ???? . . . . c c . Qume Crystal 1024x768 T4000 c . . . . . . Renaissance Rendition II 1024x768 TMS34020 y y y . . c . c Sigma Legend 1024x768x356 N ET4000 . . c . c c . Sigma VGA/H 800x600 ???? c c c . c c . STB EM-16 VGA, EM-16+ VGA SVGA ET3000 c . c . . . . STB Extra-EM SVGA ET3000 . c c . c . c STB PowerGraph w/1meg 1024x768x256 ET4000 c . . . . . . STB Wind/X (BIOS 1.0) 1024x768x16 S3 c . . . . . . STB Wind/X (BIOS 1.1) 1280x1024x16 S3 . . . . . . c Swan SVGA with VCO chip 1024x768 ET4000 . . c . . . . Tecmar VGA VGA Et3000 c c c . . . . Tecmar VGA AD SVGA ET3000 c . . . . . . Toshiba Grid 758 & 1500 laptop 640x400x2 CGA-like . . . . . . c TRICOM Mega/1024 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . c . . Trident SuperVGA ???? T880 c . c c . . c Trident TVGA 8900 1024x768x256 T8900 c . . . . . . Trident Impact I & III 1024x768x256 T8900 c . . . . . . Tseng Labs ET3000 VGA 1024x768x16 T3000 c . . c c c . Tseng Labs ET4000 VGA 1024x768x256 T4000 . c . . . . . Vectrix VX1024 (TI-34010) 1024x768 ???? . . c . . . . Vega VGA 800x600 ???? c . . . . . . Verticom MX/AT 800x600 ???? c . . . . . . Video Dynamics SprintGXU 1280x1024x16 S3 c . . . . . . Western Digital WD90C11 1024x768x16 N WD90C11 c . . . . . . Western Digital WD90C30 1024x768x256 N WD90C30 c . . . . . . Western Digital WD90C31 1024x768x256 N WD90C31 c c . . c c . Video7 FastWrite VGA 800x600 x2, x16 ???? c . c . c c . Video7 VRAM VGA 1024x768 Video7 c . . . c c . Video7 VRAM II VGA SVGA Video7 c . . . c c . Video7 VEGA EGA 640x380 Video7 c . . . . . . Video7 VGA1024i SVGA Video7 c y . . . . . . Zenith/Bull motherboard video 1024x768x256 N WD90C3x c . . . . . . Zenith WAM 1024x768x256 N 8514/A In this table, an `SVGA' resolution code signifies the following resolutions: 1024x768 at 2 and 16 colors, 800x600 at 2, 16, 256 colors, and 640x480 at 2, 16, 256 colors. SVGA+ adds 1280x1024 at 2 or 16 colors. Some non-interlace boards are marked with N. Greyscale boards are marked with a `g' suffix'. Caveats in interpreting the above table: * All super-VGA cards will work at VGA resolutions and below (that is, resolu- tions up to 640x480 in 16 colors). * Because color is of secondary importance for most UNIX applications, I list only the highest dot-density resolution of a board that supports more than one. Some boards have lower resolutions with more colors. * This list is not exclusive. Many (perhaps even most) dotted combinations will work. UHC claims that any SVGA based on an ET3000, ET4000, Paradise or Genoa chip-set will fly; Dell echoes this with regard to ET3000, ET4000, WD90C0xx cards, and the same is probably true of all other vendors. * The Renaissance GRX-II is the same board as the Appian Rendition II; the company changed its name. The II/XE is compatible with the Rendition GRX and the Appian Rendition II, it differs in architecture in that it supports more DRAM and runs a little faster than the older cards. All Rendition II type cards run at a maximum resolution of 1024x768-256, the Renditon III runs at 1280x1024-256 with its full VRAM set. * An ESIX reseller says all the TIGA34010-based video cards are pretty much alike and ESIX will drive any of them (the prudent user should probably ask to see the card working before committing). ESIX also supports 720x348 resolution on cheap Hercules-compatible monochrome tubes, and the Everex UltraGraphics display at 1664x1200 resolution. * Beware the Trident and Oak chipsets. Many clone vendors bundle these with their systems because they're cheap, but they break the Roell server and some other X implementations. Also, they appear to argue with the WD8003EP net card, and no re-arrangement of the jumpers seems to fix it. Xfree86 supports the Trident, but the developers say it's slow, and should be avoided. The OAK is not supported. * Third party server technology from companies like MetroLink can support higher performance, higher resolution TIGA and proprietary technology. * Dell's 2.2 adds X11R5 servers for VGA 640x480, 800x600 and for the Tseng Labs ET4000 and WD90C11 in up to 1024x768 16 or 256 colour. Appian Rendition II (formerly Renaissance) for 1024x768 TIGA 34010. Highest performance from the ATI Ultra 1024x768 256 colour, and highest resolution from the 1280x1024 256 colour JAWS (Dell proprietary card developed in association with Lotus and MicroSoft) * The Orchid ProDesigner IIs (top speed 80 MHz, not the 75MHz version) works with both X386-1.2D and X386-1.2E (beta). It works ok with the ESIX 4.0.3 X11R4 stuff at any resolution under 1024x768. But the driver does *not* work with 1024x768 (timings are way off). The vanilla ProDesigner II does work correctly with both the X386 and the Esix X11's (R5 and R4, respectively). Note: this info may change in ESIX 4.0.4, which uses a different X. * The Qume Crystal is a private-label version of the Tseng Labs VGA card. * Linux uses XFree86. See the section on XFree86 for supported cards. * The Mach8 chip is often called the 28880; the Mach 32 chip is often called the 68880. * SCO supports the Eizo MD-B07 only up to 800x600x16. S C D E I V M P U B L Mice ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c y c c y y y (Logitech-compatible) 3-button serial mice (C protocol) c y c c c n (Logitech-compatible) 3-button bus mice (C protocol) . . c . . n ATI Wonder+ bus-mouse port y . . . . c ATI Graphics Ultra bus-mouse port c . . . . . HP C1413A Mouse y y . c . . IBM PS/2 keyboard mouse c y y c c c n Logitech MouseMan (M+ protocol) c y y . c c c c Logitech Trackman (serial, M+ protocol) c y c . c n Logitech Trackman (bus, M+ protocol) c . . . . . Logitech hi-res Keyboard Mouse c y c c c c Microsoft 2-button (serial, M protocol) c y c c c n Microsoft 2-button (bus, M protocol) c . . . . . Olivetti Bus Mouse c . . . . . Olivetti hi-res Keyboard Mouse . . . . . . SummaMouse c . . . . . Summagraphics Bitpad Notes: * See the discussion of mice at the beginning of this section for details. * BSD/386 says it supports all 1200-9600 baud serial mice, specifying Logitech as an example. This is probably true of all vendors. * X11R5 (X386 1.2) supports all of the known mice on SVR4 in a native mode, bypassing the mouse driver. This wasn't true with X11R4 (X386 1.1b). So if you're using X386 1.2 exclusively, you can use (say) a MouseMan regardless of which SVR4 you're using. * Dell 2.2 includes an auto-configuring mouse driver that's supposed to work with about anything. Non-factory-installed 2.2s may require a patch from support to handle the Logitech Mouseman. * Linux uses Xfree86 and thus supports most C and M-protocol mice in both serial and bus formats. S C D E I V M P U B L Multi-port serial cards ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . AMI lamb 4 and 8-port v y c c . Arnet (models not specified) c y . . . Arnet 2,4 and 8-port and TwinPort c . c c y c AST 4-port . . . . . Async Accent 4 (see note) v . . c . Central Data c . . c . Chase Research c c . c . Computone (models not specified) v y . . . Computone Intelliport c . . . . Computone ATvantage-X 8-port c . . . . Comtrol Hostess-4 c . c c . Comtrol Hostess-8 v . c y . Consensys PowerPorts c . . . . CTC Versanet 4AT and 8AT c y . . . Digiboard 4 and 8-port . y c c . Digiboard DigiChannel PC/8 v . . . y . Digiboard Digichannel PC/Xe-16 (see note below) v y . y . Equinox c . . . . Kimtron Quartet 4-port y . c c c . Maxpeed c . . . . Olivetti RS232C Multiport board c . . . . Quadram QuadPort 1 and 5-port . . . . c . SDL RISCOM/8 v y . c . Specialix v y . c . Stallion OnBoard . . . c . Stargate (models not specified) v . . . . Stargate OC4400 (4-port) and OC8000 (8-port) c . . . . Tandon Quad serial card . y . c . Technology Concepts c . . . . Unisys 4-port Notes: * Only SCO, Dell, Esix and Microport listed multiport cards at all. As some are `smart' cards which require special device drivers, you should *not* assume that a board is supported on a particular port unless the vendor explicitly says so. * SCO says it supports just about every dumb card out there which multiplexes multiple ports onto a single interrupt -- *except* the Bell Hub6; and we support *no* intelligent multiport cards -- but the intelligent card vendors all have drivers for SCO. * MtXinu says they have *no* multiport support right now. * The Chase, Computone, Intelliport and Specialix cards will run under SCO using a vendor-supplied driver. * The Maxpeed SS8-UX2 doesn't support RTS/CTS flow control, and requires its own config scripts rather than using inittab and gettydefs. The BSDI people think it works with their config stuff. * Peter Wemm writes: "In 2.1, Dell's drivers (direct from Stallion) are flakey. I have been annoying the living daylights out of the developers (Stallion) here in AUS, and their new drivers have an `interaction' problem with the reboot mechanism in dell's kernel. A reboot causes the VGA card to be disabled." Jeremy Chatfield of Dell replies: "We haven't seen the problem he reports. Most likely the problem he's seeing is an icky [generic] one for UNIX on a PC." He then proceeds to detail the 8-16 clash described at the beginning of this section. Peter Wemm adds that the 2.8s.6 drivers supplied with Dell 2.2 seem to be good, but that you should *not* install the 2.8s.7 drivers; they interfere with the reboot mechanism. * Digiboard makes an SVr4 UNIX streams driver available via download for the Digichannel PC/Xe-16. * The Async 4 probe routine terminally confuses the Ultrastor 14 disk controller. Also, this driver is not part of the default beta build. S C D E I V M P U B L Disk controllers ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c c c c . y Adaptec 2320/2322 (ESDI) c c . c . . Adaptec ACB 2730C (RLL) c y . c . . Adaptec ACB 2732C (RLL) c . . . . Compag 32-bit Intelligent Drive Array Controller c . . . . Compag 32-bit Intelligent Drive Array Controller-2 c . . . . Compag 32-bit Intelligent Drive Array Expansion . c . c . c CCAT100A (IDE) . . c . . Chicony 101B y y c c . . Data Tech Corp 6280 (ESDI) . . c . c DTG 6282-24 . c c c . . Everex EV-346 (ST506) . c c c . . Everex EV-348 (ESDI) . c c c . . Everex EV-8120 (IDE) y c . . . . Lark ESDI controller . c c c . . OMTI 8240 (ST506) . c . . c . PSI Caching controller (ESDI) c c . . . . SMS OMTI 8620 and 8627 (ESDI) . y . . c . Ultrastor 12C, 22F y y . c c c Ultrastor 12F c c . . n . Ultrastor 22C (caching EISA version of 12F) . y . c . . Ultrastor 22CA c y c c . . Western Digital 1003 (RLL) c . . . . Western Digital 1005 c y . . . Western Digital 1006V-MM2 (ST506) y y y c . c Western Digital 1007 A,SE2 (ESDI) c . c . . Western Digital 1009 SE1/SE2 Notes: * All these ports should support all standard PC hard-disk controllers (ESDI, IDE,ST-506 in MFM and RLL formats). S C D E I V M P U B L SCSI controllers ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . . . . Adaptec 1510 (1520 without boot ROM) c . . . . . . . Adaptec 152x (non-bus mastering ISA host adapter) y y c c c y y c * c Adaptec 1540, 1542 c n . . c . . . . Adaptec 1640 (MicroChannel version of 154x) c y c . c y c n c . Adaptec 1740,1742 (EISA) (1542 emulation mode) y y . c . * c c Adaptec 1740,1742 (EISA) (enhanced mode) v . . . c . . . Always IN2000 v c . c c . . c BusLogic BT-542B v c . v c . . . BusLogic BT-742A (EISA) (mPort specifies Revision F) v . . c . . . . Buslogic BT-545S v . . v . . . . Buslogic BT-747S, 640A, 646S/D c . . . . . . . Compaq SCSI Option Adapter and Compression Adapter y . . . . . . . Corollary SCSI-CPU . . . c c c . . DPT PM2102 caching controller (MFM emulation) c . . c c . . . DPT PM2102 caching SCSI controller in SCSI mode c . c c . . . . DPT 2011, 2012A, 2012B . . . c . . . . Eclipse 720E . c . . . . . . Everex EV8118/8110 c c . v . . . c Future Domain 1660, 1680, 885, 860 c . . c . . . . Future Domain 1790/1795, 600, 700 y . c c . . . . IBM HardFile (their SCSI host adapter for MicroChannel) v . . . c . . . Mylex DCE (EISA) y . . . . . . . Olivetti ESC-1 (EISA) . . . v . . . . Procomp Pro-Master . . . . . c . . PSI caching controller . . . . . . . c Seagate ST0x c . . . . . . . Storage Plus SCSI-AT "Sumo" . . . . c . . . Ultrastor 32k, 34f v . . v . . . c Ultrastor 14F, 34F v . . v . . . . Ultrastor 24F, 124F, 144F c y c . c c c . c Western Digital WD7000 c y . . . . . . . Western Digital WD7000-EX (EISA version of WD7000) . . . v . . . . Zynx ZX401, ZX402 Notes: * UHC started shipping a native-mode 1740/1742 driver in mid-April. It requires a full SCSI-2 tape drive. * BusLogic used to be known as BusTek. The BusLogic 542 is a clone of the Adaptec 1542. At least one respondent thinks it works better and faster with the Adaptec drivers than the Adaptecs do! The BusLogic 742 has more complicated antecedents; it's an EISA clone of the 1542, not necessarily compatible with the 1742. * There's a known bug in the Adaptec 1742 firmware that produces hangs when it's used with certain SCSI tape drives, including the popular Archive 2150S. * Bill Austin writes: "the 1740 patches on ESIX [4.0.3a] do work but only bring the speed up in enhanced mode by about 15% over standard (643Kb/s vs 535Kb/s) in writing, although the *read* speed has nearly tripled (2,833 Kb/s) (this is using "iozone 16"). This may give some idea of what improvement to expect from native-mode 1740 operation. * Wolfgang Denk reports that SCO ODT 2.0 running an Adaptec 1542 cannot work with the following Hewlett-Packard drives: HP 97536 SL HP 97536 S HP 97544 A source at SCO says "This problem is known to us. In some not-yet-clearly-understood fashion, these HP drives interact badly with our implementation of scatter/gather disk transfer ordering. There are two different workarounds: you can turn off scatter/gather in the SCSI disk driver, or you can get updated drive control board ROMs from HP." S C D E I V M P U B L Network cards ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . . . c . 3COM EtherLink I 3C501 and 3C502 (see note) c c y c c c . y c 3COM EtherLink II 3C503 c . . c . . . c . 3COM EtherLink 16 (3C507) v . . . . . . . . 3COM Etherlink 3C509 c . . c c . . . . 3Com 3C523 & 523B EtherLink/MC c . . . c . . . . 3Com 3C523 EtherLink/MC TP . . . . v . . . . Adax APC-MCX . . . . . . . . c Alta Combo . . . . . . . . c Artisoft Lantastic AE-2 v . . . v . . . . Buslogic 560A, 560T, 760A, 763E c . . . . . . . c Cabletron v . . . v . . . . Codenoll CodeNet 8340, 9540, 9543, 9740, 9440, 9443 c . . . . . . . . Compaq NwtFlex Ethernet/Token Ring Adapter c . . . . . . . . Compaq 32-bit DualSpeed Token Ring Adapter . . . . . . . . c D-link Ethernet II . . . . v . . . . DTK ELN-001B . . . . v . . . . Eclipse 720E . . c . . . . . . Everex EV-2015, EV-2016, EV-2026, EV-2027 c . . . . . . . c HP 27245A EtherTwist Adapter Card/8 ISA TP c . . . . . . . c HP 27247A EtherTwist Adapter Card/16 ISA TP c . . . . . . . c HP 27250A ThinLAN Adapter Card/8 ISA BNC c . . . . . . . . HP 27248A EtherTwist EISA Adapter Card/32 c . . c . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter c . . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter II (short and long card) c . . . c . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter 4/16 c . . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter/A c c . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network 16/4 Adapter/A . . . . v . . . . Kodiak EISA . . . . . . . y . Lan Research LR-2000 (NE2000 compat) c . . . . . . . . Microdyne (Excelan) EXOS 205, 205T, 205T/16 c . . . v . . . . Racal Datacomm NI6510 ISA and ES3210 EISA . y c c c c c . . Intel PC-586 aka iMX-LAN/586 . . . . c . . . . Intel Ether Express 16 TP . . . . . . . c c Novell NE1000 c . . . c . . c c Novell NE2000 c . . . . . . . . Novell 3200 . . . . v . . . . Proteon Pronet 4/16 Token Ring y y y c . c c c y c SMC & Western Digital 8003 and 8013 and variations . y . . . . . . . WD TokenRing card . . . . v . . . . Zynx EISA-Action 7X301 Notes: * Dick Dunn opines "Somewhere along here, somebody needs to note that the 3C501 is a miserable-misbegotten-son-of-a-lame-she- camel-and-a-desperate-jackal Ethernet card, at least in UNIXland. It has serious problems in any serious multi-user system because of various hardware idiosyncrasies which are on the order of can't-walk-down-the- street-and-chew-gum." Do tell, Dick! * Linux is claimed to support all 8390-based Ethernet cards. S C D E I V M P U B L Tape drives ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- c y c . c y . c Archive 2150S or Viper 150 21247 (SCSI, QIC-150) c c . c c . . Archive Viper VP150E c . c . c c . Archive Viper 60 21116 c . c . c c . Archive Viper 150 25099 c . c . . . . Archive FT60i (Scorpion 5945C) c . . . c c . Archive Viper 2525 25462. y . . . c . . Archive 60 - 525MB (QIC-02 and SCI) c . . . c . . Archive 4mm 4520 DAT c . . . c c . Archive Python models 25501-003, -005 and -008 (SCSI) c . . c . . . Archive Python DDS 4520NT and 4521NT DAT drives c * . . c c . Archive XL (5580 & friends) . . . . c c . Archive 3800 . . . . . c . AT&T KS22762 and KS23495 (SCSI) c . . . . . . Bell Technologies XTC-60 . c . . . . . Caliper CP150 c . . . . . . Cipher CP-60B, CP-125B . c . . . . . Cipher ST150S-II c . . . . c . Cipher ST150S2/90 (SCSI) n . . . c . . CMS Jumbo - 60MB QIC-40 . . . v . . . CMS Powertape . . . c . . . Control Data US-22762 n . . . . c . Emulex MT02/S1 +CCS INQ (SCSI) . c . . c . . Everex Excel Stream 60, 125, 150 . c . . c . . Everex5525ES (SCSI) . c . . c . y Everex EV-811, EV-831, EV-833 c . . c c c c Exabyte EXB-8200 (SCSI) c . . . . . c Exabyte EXB-8500 (SCSI) . . . v . . . GigaTrend UniDAT c . . . . . . HP 35450A (SCSI) . . . c . c . HP 88780 (SCSI) . . . . . c . HPCIPHER M990 (SCSI) . . . . . c . NCR H6210-STD1-01-46C632 (SCSI) c . . . . . . Mountain 8mm Cartridge y . . . . n . Mountain FileSafe 150MB (QIC-02) c . . . . . . Mountain FileSafe 60-300MB (QIC-02) y y . . . . . y Sankyo 525ES (SCSI) . . . . . c . Sony SDT-1000 (SCSI) . . . . c . . Tallgrass 150 - 525MB SCSI c . . c . . . Tandberg DQIC (SCSI) y . . . . . . Tandbrg TDC-3660 (SCSI) . . . . . . . TUV DAT . . c c . . . Wangtek 5099EN24 (60MB) c y . . . c . . Wangtek 150SE (SCSI) y c . c c y . Wangtek 5150ES (SCSI) c . . . c . . Wangtek 60 - 525MB (QIC 02 and SCSI) c . . . c . . Wangtek 6130 - HS 4mm DAT. c . . . y c . Wangtek 5125ES ES41, 5150ES ES41, 5150ES FA0 (SCSI) c . c . . . . Wangtek 5125EQ (125MB) c . c c . . . Wangtek 5150EQ (150MB) c . . c c c c Wangtek 5150ES SCSI-3 (SCSI) c . . . c . c WangTek 5150PK QIC-02 (QIC-150) c y . . . . . . Wangtek 5525 (SCSI) c . . . c c . Wangtek 6130-F (SCSI) c . . . c c . Wangtek KS23417, KS23465, KS24569 (SCSI) Notes: * All SVr4s inherit USL support for QIC-02, QIC-36 1/4", or SCSI tape interfaces, using QIC-24 (9-track, 60MB), QIC-120 (15-track, 125MB) or QIC-150 (18-track, 150MB) formats. * A user says of Dell: it appears that anything using Wangtek QIC02/QIC36 controllers works; this should include the Wangtek 525MB, Cipher ST150S2, and Archive 2150S drives. * UHC specifies the following tape controller/drive combinations: Wangtek PC-36 + Wangtek 5099-EN, Everex 811 + Wangtek 5150-EN, Bell Tech + Wangtek 5150-EN, Archive SC499-R + Archive External FT-60, Archive VP402 + Archive Viper 2150L, Everex 811 + Archive Viper 2150L, Bell Tech + Archive Viper 2150L, Archive VP402 + Archive Viper 2150L. * UHC claims that Any floppy tape supporting the QIC-107 physical and QIC-117 logical interface specs and QIC-80 or QIC-40 recording formats should work. This is probably true of other vendors as well. * BSDI says it supports almost any Wangtek 1/4" standard 3M streamer with a QIC-02 or QIC-36 interface. However, they admit that the Archive SC402 QIC-02 controller will not work. BSDI says it will support almost any SCSI tape unit, as well. A small patch was required to get the Sankyo E525ES to work. * Floppy tapes don't work on Dell; USL provides the support, but it collides with Dell's code for auto-detecting the density of a diskette. * SCO's tape compatibility table lists drive/controller pairs; not all drives listed have been included here. They allege that any QIC-02 drive should work. Unofficial sources inside SCO claim any SCSI drive ought to work. * A source at SCO says the CMS Jumbo is neither compatible with QIC40/QIC80 nor Irwin "standards", vendor supplies their own driver which SCO does not support. He also said "CMS is in general fairly UNIX-hostile; don't buy their stuff if you have a choice." Tom Haapanen adds simply "Ick. Stay away!" On the other hand, Jerry Rocteur praises their hardware and says he found them quite helpful and knowledgeable. Your editor has no experience on which to base an opinion. * The Emulex MT02 is a QIC02 bridge controller for the SCSI bus -- lets you take an old QIC02 drive and run it on a SCSI bus. It is said to use a very old version of the SCSI spec; caveat emptor. * John Plate writes: "According to a fax from the Archive manufacturer Maynard, [the XL 5580 drive only works with ESIX 4.0.3] if the tape drive is "drive" two! Which is the same as disabling the second floppy drive and then set a jumper on the tape drive." S C D E I V M P U B L Non-Winchester mass storage ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- . c . . . . . Bernoulli 90MB exchangeable SCSI c . . . . . Compaq Dual-Speed CD-ROM Drive c . . . . . DEC RRD42 c . . . . . Hitachi CDR 1750s c . . . . . Hitachi CDR 3750 . . . c . . Hitachi, Toshiba (models not specified) c . . . . . IBM External CD-ROM c . . . . . IBM Internal CD-ROM II Disk Drive 1104 . . c . c . Maxtor RXT-800HS . . c . . . Maxtor Tahiti-I, Tahiti-II (floptical disk) . . c . . . NEC CDR-82 (SCSI CD-ROM) c . . . . . NEC CDR-73 c . . . . . NEC CDR-73M c . . . . . NEC CDR-74 c . . . . . NEC CDR-75 c . . . . . NEC CDR-77 c . . . . . NEC CDR-83 c . . . . . NEC CDR-83M c . . . . . NEC CDR-84 c . . . . . Olivetti CDR-5541 v . c . . . Pioneer DRM-600 (SCSI CD-ROM) . . c . . . Sony CDU-8012 XM-3201B (SCSI CD-ROM) . . c . . . Sony SMO E501 (floptical disk) c . . . . . Sony CDU-541-01 c . . . . . Sony CDU-6110-01 . c . c . . Storage Dimensions XSE1-1000S1 optical disk . y . c . c SyQuest cartridge media . c . . . . . Tandata c . . . . . Texel DM-3024 c . . . . . Texel DM-5024 . c . c c . Toshiba TXM-3201A1 CD-ROM . . c . . . Toshiba XM-3201B (SCSI CD-ROM) . c . y c c . Toshiba TXM-3301B CD-ROM . . . c c . Toshiba WM-C050 . c c c c . Toshiba WM-D070 WORM drive c . . . . . Toshiba XM-3101B c . . . . . Toshiba XM-3201B c . . . . . Toshiba XM-3301B c . . . . . Toshiba XM-3401B E1 VII. FREEWARE ACCESS FOR SVR4 SYSTEMS. US4BINR is an archive dedicated to binaries (executable compiled program) for UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4) on 386/486 PC computer. Our goal is to provide easy access to precompiled programs. Those programs are (hopefully): Up to date. Documented. Useful or fun. Uploads annoucement are made in comp.unix.sysv386 and comp.unix.sys5.r4. US4BINR carries PD, Freeware, shareware, games, etc... US4BINR is a non profit organisation. US4BINR is available using anonymous ftp or email server. Anonymous ftp: Connect to wuarchive.wustl.edu and go to the /systems/svr4-pc directory. Mail server: To get help about the mail server, send the following message to request@us4binr.login.qc.ca reply Put_your_email_address_here help quit There is an archive of "custom" installable SCO UNIX binaries at: ftp.wimsey.com:pub/wimseypd It includes things like cnews, trn, elm, nntp, perl, gcc, etc. These are also sent out periodically on the biz.sco.binaries news group. VIII. FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS: As a potential customer for one of the SVr4 ports, it's to my advantage to have everybody in this market competing against one another as hard as possible. Accordingly, some free advice to vendors, which I'm broadcasting to all of them and the public so as to put just that much more pressure on each vendor. :-) SCO: You have a serious image problem with many hackers which you've exacerbated recently by falling behind the SVr4 leading edge and then engaging in what certainly appears to be an attempt to sucker careless buyers with deceptive product naming. But the reaction to this wouldn't be nearly so vehement if it didn't come on top of years of discontent with more technical choices. There's too much stuff in the SCO kernel and admin tools that's different from USL and *not better*; too much stuff that raises weird little compatibility problems that shouldn't be there. Verbum sap. This different-but-not-better problem is perfectly reflected by the one thing about the otherwise-excellent SCO documentation that sucks moldy moose droppings; the rearrangement and renaming of the reference manual sections. Your technical writers entertain a fond delusion that this helps nontechnical users, but all it really does is confuse and frustrate techies with experience on other UNIXes. Lose it. Everybody but SCO: SCO's documentation set is to die for (except in the one respect noted above), and they add a lot of value over the base UNIX with things like ODT DOS and CodeView. Only Dell comes even close to matching SCO in the nifty add-ons department, and even they have a lot of room for improvement. If you want to outcompete SCO, you have to be *better*; this means (at minimum) supporting a windowing debugger and ISAM libraries and DOS support that goes beyond 2.0. Consensys: Get a real support address. Bang-path accessibility doesn't impress anyone any more --- in fact, it looks faintly quaint. You guys ought to be support@consensys.com to follow the simple and logical convention SCO and Dell and ESIX and Microport and UHC have established. I think you have a serious attitude problem. So far, you're the only outfit out of nine to refuse to divulge information for the comparison tables. While you have a perfect right to do so, it smells bad --- as though you think you have weaknesses to hide. I tried to discuss this with your VP of sales (Gary Anderson) and got back very little but evasions, suit-speak, defensiveness, and attempts to divert me from the issues (and I don't mind admitting that the conversation made me pretty angry and didn't end very pleasantly). This man's behavior is all too consistent with reports of Consensys's dismissive behavior towards customers and continued refusal to acknowledge technical problems. In this corner of the industry we have a tradition of collegiality, mutual trust, informality, and candor. If you plan to be here for the long haul, you need to learn how to work with that rather than fighting it. Behaving like IBM will only get you hammered. 1993 PS: there are some signs of improvement, especially the staffing-up in support and a slightly friendlier attitude from your reps. And Gary Anderson is gone. But you've still got a ways to go in making up for past mistakes. Everybody but Yggdrasil: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparshin! A complete, working UNIX plus GNU tools plus X is now available for $60 --- *with sources*. Your prices have to drop by an order of magnitude, or your service has to get a whole hell of a lot better, if you're going to try and compete with that. Adapt or die. Dell: You had an enviable reputation. Lately that's been suffering; there have been a couple of support horror stories aired on the net, and your failure to announce of commit to any upgrade past 4.0.4 makes your commitment to this market look shaky. You can repair this, but you'll have to work on it. Support quality has to come back up, and the customers need to know where you're going with SVr4 vs. Solaris and Univel. Don't blow it. Everybody but Dell: Despite recent troubles, Dell is still the outfit you have to beat if you want to lead this market. And forget "positioning" ---- that means doing everything they do *better* than they do; providing a more stable, more feature-rich, better-polished system at a lower price. That's not going to be easy, but don't con yourselves that you have a choice. Meet the ante, or fold. For starters, offer all the free software Dell does --- and *more*. All it will cost you is the media, right? Even if you have to plaster CONTRIBUTED SOFTWARE, NOT SUPPORTED on it, include perl, elm, bison, gcc, emacs, gdb, mush, patch, compress, etc on your distribution tapes. Heck, include some *games* (SCO includes games with UNIX but not the full ODT product; and makes some games available for download on their BBS). Nethack, empire, zork, stuff like that. Your engineers use and play with all this in-house anyhow, yes? And you're selling to guys just like your engineers. They'll love you for it. Trust me. Set up a `sales' address to take product queries if you don't already have one. Everybody but Dell and SCO: A Dell person warns that the kinds of tweaks to the source made by porting houses can break X/Open (XPG3) conformance. Dell and SCO test every build with VSX (the X/Open-approved XPG3 test suite) and Dell reports that it often finds places where seemingly innocuous bug fixes cause XPG3 violations. Other UNIX vendors would be well advised to do likewise. Set up an 800 number for tech support. Support customers hate spending time on hold, and they hate it like poison when they have to *pay* for the hold time. The more overloaded your support staff is, the more important this gets. Verbum sap. Esix: You went belly-up and got acquired. You've got to prove yourselves now, and it's going to be tough against the new low prices on Univel and other products. Tried-and-true isn't going to cut it; you need to come up with something brilliant. Good luck. Esix, MST, UHC: Get 800 numbers for product info, too. MST: Set up a support@mst.com alias to your cs address, see above. What would that take, a whole five minutes? :-) On present trends, your software prices are cheap enough; you'd probably get more sales mileage out of pulling down the hardware prices for your pre-configured systems. Everybody but MST and Microport: Set up a `sales' alias to your info and orders email address. A universal convention for this means just one less detail prospective customers need to remember. Microport: Your complete system is way overpriced relative to what other vendors in the top tier are selling. If I were a corporate customer, there is no *way* I could justify spending the $1K or $2K premium over Dell's price --- not when Dell has the rep it does for quality and features. You aren't offering anything but a crippled copy of JSB Multiview to justify that premium and that ain't enough. There's some evidence that you've got a technical lead on the competition. Push it; push it *hard*. You're first off the blocks with 4.0.4; keep that up, be first out with a stable 4.3. Market yourselves as the leading-edge outfit, court the hard-core wizards as their natural ally, detail somebody who's fluent in English as well as C to listen and speak for you on USENET, and keep the promises you make there. UHC: You've decided to push support; that's good, but follow through by getting that 800 number. Don't lose those small-company virtues of candor and flexibility, trade on them. Your policy of having all techs clear up to the product manager take turns on the support lines is a damned good idea, stick with it. And I'm sufficiently impressed with what I've heard from your guys that I think you might be able to fight Microport for the friend-to-wizards mantle, too. Maybe you should try. Everybody except BSDI: BSD/386 includes *sources*. For *everything*. Be afraid; be very afraid. In effect, this recruits hundreds of eager hackers as uncompensated development and support engineers for BSDI. Don't fool yourselves that the results are necessarily going to be unfocused, amateur-quality and safe to ignore --- it sure didn't work that way for gcc or Emacs. The rest of you will have to work that much harder and smarter to stay ahead of their game. BSDI: Don't you get complacent either. The 386BSD and Linux distributions are breathing down *your* neck... The most effective things you can do to to seriously compete with SVr4 vendors are: a) emphasize standards conformance --- POSIX, FIPS, XPG3, etc., and b) follow through on your support promises. Just another flaky BSDoid system isn't really very interesting except to hobbyists, even with sources --- but if it were proven a reliable cross-development platform it could capture a lot of hearts and minds among commercial software designers. Everybody: Do something about your product names! Even the cases that don't appear to be deliberate deception are very confusing to the customer. If you're releasing an enhanced 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 that's what you ought to *call* it. I recommend: Consensys UNIX Version 1.2 --> Consensys UNIX 4.0.3 revision 1.2 Dell UNIX Issue 2.1 --> Dell UNIX 4.0.3 revision 2.1 ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 --> Esix UNIX 4.0.4 revision 4 MST SVr4 UNIX --> MST UNIX 4.0.3 Microport System V/4 version 4 --> Microport UNIX 4.0.4 UHC Version 3.6 --> UHC UNIX 4.0.3 revision 6 The fact is, all these idiosyncratic version-numbering systems do you no good and considerable harm. At worst, they make it look like you're trying to pull a scam by deceiving people about the level of the base technology. At best, they parade your internal revision number (which conveys no useful information unless one is an existing customer considering an upgrade already) and obscure the really important information. Do your product differentiation elsewhere, in substance rather than nomenclature; it's not useful here. You're *all* badly understaffed in support engineering, and it shows. Boy does it show --- in poor followup, long hold times, and user gripes. The first outfit to invest enough to offer really first-class quick-response support is going to eat everyone else's lunch. Wouldn't you like to be it? IX. INTO THE FUTURE. It's always tough to get vendors, especially vendors as big as USL, to be candid about current development and future directions. Here are some things I've gleaned from usually reliable sources: There's not going to be a SVR4.0.5. As far as USL is concerned there was SVR4.0 Version 3 (internally known as v7.4) and SVR4.0 Version 4 (internally known as w3.4). There won't be a SVR4.0 Version 5 because USL did SVR4.2 (originally SVR4.1dt) next, and is currently working on SVR4/ESMP. Maybe there'll be a set of patches for SVR4.0 Version 4, but that's probably it. So if anybody tells you they are going to have `SVR4.0.5', be skeptical. There are significant kernel bug fixes going form SVR4.0.3 to SVR4.0.4, but no real functional changes. Watch out for the memory manager in SVR4.0.3. What some people call SVR4.3 isn't officially named that. At USL, it's called SVR4/ESMP (Enhanced Security, Multi Processor). There is an MP version of SVR4.0 that was done by the Intel Consortium (primarily NCR and Intel). It is often called SVR4.0/MP or sometimes SVR4.1. Vendors with MP versions of SVR4.0 are probably offering this, rather than a homegrown version. IX. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND ENVOI Many netters have sent me email contributing technical information, feedback, and comment. Thanks to all. It's in combinations of individual mission and collective cooperation like this one that the net really shines, and I'm grateful to everybody who's worked with me to improve the signal/noise ratio. The level of cooperation I've experienced from vendors' program managers, techies and marketing people since the first issue has generally been outstanding. Particular high marks go to Jeremy Chatfield (formerly of Dell, now of Information Foundation), Bela Lubkin at SCO, Kristen Axline at Microport, John Prothro and Sam Nataros at UHC and Bela Lubkin at SCO, with very honorable mentions to Rob Kolstad at BSDI. By cooperating intelligently with this FAQ, they've done a great job of serving the market and representing their corporate interests. -- Send your feedback to: Eric Raymond = esr@snark.thyrsus.com Archive-name: pc-unix/hardware Last-update: Thu Jun 10 11:55:22 1993 Version: 15.0 Many FAQs, including this one, are available via FTP on the archive site rtfm.mit.edu (alias rtfm.mit.edu or 18.172.1.27) in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. The name under which this FAQ is archived appears in the Archive-name line above. This FAQ is updated monthly; if you want the latest version, please query the archive rather than emailing the overworked maintainer. What's new in this issue: * Some new product gotchas. * More about fans and quelling fan noise. Gentle Reader: if you end up buying something based on information from this Guide, please do yourself and the net a favor; make a point of telling the vendor "Eric's FAQ sent me" or some equivalent. The idea isn't to hype me personally, I've already got all the notoriety I need from doing things like _The_New_Hacker's_Dictionary_ --- but if we can show vendors that the Guide influences a lot of purchasing decisions, I can be a more powerful advocate for the net's interests, and for you. 0. Contents I. Introduction II. Overview of the Market III. Buying the basics A. Getting Down to Cases B. Power Supplies and Fans C. The Heart Of The Machine D. Motherboards and BIOSes E. Memory F. Peripherals G. Monitors and Video Cards H. Keyboards I. Power Protection J. Radio Frequency Interference IV. Performance tuning A. How To Pick Your Processor B. Of Memory In... C. Cache Flow D. Bus Wars E. IDE vs. SCSI F. Other Disk Decisions G. Souping Up X Performance V. Tape Drive Follies VI. Of Mice and Machines VII. Special considerations when buying laptops VIII. When, Where and How to Buy IX. Questions You Should Always Ask Your Vendor A. Minimum Warranty Provisions B. Documentation C. A System Quality Checklist X. Things to Check when Buying Mail-Order A. Tricks and Traps in Mail-Order Warranties B. Special Questions to Ask Mail-Order Vendors Before Buying C. Payment Method XI. Which Clone Vendors to Talk To I. Introduction The purpose of this posting is to give you the background information you need to be a savvy buyer of 386/486 hardware for running UNIX. It is aimed especially at hackers and others with the technical skills and confidence to go to the mail-order channel, but contains plenty of useful advice for people buying store-front retail. It was formerly part of 386-buyers-faq issues 1.0 through 4.0, and is still best read in conjunction with the pc-unix/software FAQ descended from that posting. This document is maintained and periodically updated as a service to the net by Eric S. Raymond , who began it for the very best self-interested reason that he was in the market and didn't believe in plonking down several grand without doing his homework first (no, I don't get paid for this, though I have had a bunch of free software and hardware dumped on me as a result of it!). Corrections, updates, and all pertinent information are welcomed at that address. The editorial `we' reflects the generous contributions of many savvy USENETters. This posting is periodically broadcast to the USENET group comp.unix.sysv386 and to a list of vendor addresses. If you are a vendor representative, please check to make sure any information pertaining your company is current and correct. If it is not, please email me a correction ASAP. If you are a hardware-knowledgeable user, please send me any distillation of your experience that you think might improve this posting. II. Overview of the Market The central fact about 386/486 clone hardware that conditions every aspect of buying it is this: more than anywhere else in the industry, de-facto hardware standards have created a commodity market with low entry barriers, lots of competitive pressure, and volume high enough to amortize a *lot* of development on the cheap. The result is that this hardware gives you lots of bang-per-buck, and it's getting both cheaper and better all the time. Furthermore, margins are thin enough that vendors have to be lean, hungry, and *very* responsive to the market to survive. You can take advantage of this, but it does mean that much of the info in the rest of this document will be stale in three months and completely obsolete in six. One good general piece of advice is that you should avoid both the highest-end new-technology systems (those not yet shipping in volume) and the very cheapest systems put out by vendors competing primarily on price. The problem with the high end is that it usually carries a hefty "prestige" price premium, and may be a bit less reliable on average because the technology hasn't been through a lot of test/improve cycles. The problem with the low end is that price-cutters sometimes settle for marginal components. UNIX is more sensitive to hardware flakiness than DOS, so cut-price systems that might deliver consistently for DOS lemmings can come around and bite you. Use a little care, and spend the $200-$300 to stay out of the basement. It's worth it. The last point deserves a little amplification. In the PC world, there's a lot of "if it doesn't fail, it's OK". It is common to ignore normal engineering tolerances --- the allowances for variations in components, temperature, voltage margins, and the like --- and to assume that anything which doesn't fail outright must work. Watch out! For example, The ISA bus was originally designed for 6 MHz. IBM later updated that to 8 MHz, and that's as much of a standard as there is, yet there are motherboards that will let you (try to!) run it at 12 MHz --- 50% over spec. Some cards are actually designed to work at that speed with proper tolerances. Others might work...or they might flake out when they get warm. Any systems vendor above the fly-by-night level is going to shoot for a little more reliability than this, burning in systems and (often) doing at least a token system test with some kind of UNIX (usually XENIX). Pay the few extra bucks it costs to deal with a more careful vendor. III. Buying the basics In this section, we cover things to look out for that are more or less independent of price-performance tradeoffs, part of your minimum system for running UNIX. A. Getting Down to Cases Cases are just bent metal. It doesn't much matter who makes those, as long as they're above an easy minimum quality (on some *really* cheap ones, cards fail to line up nicely with the slots, drive bays don't align with the access cutouts, or the motherboard is ill-supported and can ground out against the chassis). If you're fussy about RFI (Radio-Frequency Interference), it's worth finding out whether the plastic parts of the case have conductive coating on the inside; that will cut down emissions significantly, but a few cheap cases omit it. Should you buy a desktop or tower case? Our advice is go with tower unless you're building a no-expansions personal system and expect to be using the floppies a lot. Many vendors charge nothing extra for a tower case and the absolute *maximum* premium I've seen is $100. What you get for that is less desktop clutter, more and bigger bays for expansion, and often (perhaps most importantly) a beefed-up power-supply and fan. Putting the box and its fan under a table is good for maybe 5db off the effective noise level, too. Airflow is also an issue; if the peripheral bays are less cramped, you get better cooling. Be prepared to buy extension cables for your keyboard and monitor, though; vendors almost never include enough flex. The airflow thing is a good argument for a full tower rather than the `baby tower' cases some vendors offer. However, baby towers are getting more attractive as boards and devices shrink and more functions migrate onto the motherboard. A state of the art system, with all 3" disks, 200W power supply, half-size motherboard, on-board IDE and 64meg of RAM sockets, and half-sized expansion cards, will fit into a baby tower with ample room for expansion; and the whole thing will fit *under* a desk and make less noise than a classic tower. For users with really heavy expansibility requirements, rackmount PC cases do exist (ask prospective vendors). Typically a rackmount case will have pretty much the same functionality as an ordinary PC case. But, you can then buy drive racks (complete with power supply), etc. to expand into. Also, you can buy passive backplanes with up to 20 or so slots. You can either put a CPU card in one of the slots, or connect it to an ordinary motherboard through one of the slots. B. Power Supplies and Fans Power supplies can matter but quality is cheap; give preference to those with a Underwriter's Laboratories rating. There's some controversy over optimum wattage level; on the one hand, you want enough wattage for expansion. On the other, big supplies are noisier, and if you draw *too little* current for the rating the delivered voltage can become unstable. And the expected wattage load from peripherals is dropping steadily. The big old 300-watt supplies that were designed for running several full-height 5.25" floppies and hard disks are overkill in these days of portable-ready lightweight 3.5" drives. 200 watts is good enough these days, and the new breed of compact 200W supplies is quieter to boot. About that annoying fan noise, ask if the power-supply fan on a target system has a variable speed motor with thermostatic control --- this will cut down on noise tremendously. If not: I have seen a rave about, but haven't used, a thermostatic fan controller called "The Silencer". This tiny device mounts inside your power supply and connects to the fan's power leads. It automatically varies the fan motor speed to hold a 79 to 82F temperature. The basic model is: $49.95 + $4.95 (S&H). For details, write: Quiet Technology Inc. 500 Executive Center - Suite 3C P.O. Box 18216 West Palm Beach, FL 33416 407-683-6200 1-800-SILENCE Warning: installing this may void your warranty! Also, be aware that a thermostatic sensor basically measures the temperature *at the sensor* (typically within the power supply box) and makes sure there is enough airflow to keep the power supply from overheating. However, the sensor does not know a thing about the temperature in certain hot spots likely to develop in a PC case (CPU, between SIMMs, between drives mounted in vertically adjacent bays). This can be a problem, because in garden variety tower cases there often isn't enough airflow to cool all components effectively even if a single is going at full speed. This is especially true if your computer has lots of add-on cards or hard disks (not much airflow between cards or between drives). Note that the fan in the power supply was basically designed to cool the power supply, not the components in the case. Not providing additional fans is a case of cheap engineering. On PCs with "expensive" engineering (e.g. HP Vectra, Compaq) one will find one to two extra fans besides the one in the power supply. So the bottom line is, use thermostatic controls if you can to cut noise. But if you want high reliability, use two or more fans. The noise produced by a fan is not just a function of the speed with which it turns. It also depends on the nature of the airflow produced by the fan blades and the bearings of the rotor. If the blades causes lots of turbulent airflow, the fan produces lots of noise. One brand of fans that, I'm told, has a reputation for being much more silent than others even if going at full throttle is the German manufacturer Pabst. Their fans offered in US computer magazines. C. The Heart Of The Machine Yet another basic decision, of course, is processor speed and type. Until recently, the hot sellers in this market were the 386/33DX and AMD 386/40DX, which I'd say are reasonable minimum-speed engines for UNIX with X. However, recent pricing moves by Intel have moved the price of a 486SX25 below the roughly equivalent 386DX33 chip. The 386 is therefore effectively dead for new hardware, and the 486SX/25 defined as the new low end (at least for the next 90 days or so). At the system level, the current premium for 486 over 386 is about $150 as many vendors move to phase out their 386 designs. Unless you're buying a portable, we definitely recommend going 486. A 486DX/33 has enough power make a good personal UNIX box. For UNIX, this is your floor; how far above them you want to buy depends on your budget and job mix. We'll have much more to say about this in the section on performance tuning. D. Motherboards and BIOSes Provided you exercise a little prudence and stay out of the price basement, motherboards and BIOS chips don't vary much in quality either. There are only six or so major brands of motherboard inside all those cases and they're pretty much interchangeable; brand premiums are low to nonexistent and cost is strictly tied to maximum speed and bus type. Unless you're buying from a "name" outfit like Compaq, Dell, or AST that rolls its own motherboards and BIOSes, there are only four major brands of BIOS chip (AMI, Phoenix, Mylex, Award) and not much to choose between 'em but the look of the self-test screens. One advantage UNIX buyers have is that UNIXes are built not to rely on the BIOS code (because it can't be used in protected mode without more pain than than it's worth). If your BIOS will boot properly, you're usually going to be OK. If the above sounds too rosy, there is a catch; it describes *current* hardware, not some of the historical botches. And it's hard to know how old what you're buying is. You might actually be buying a motherboard that's been sitting on the dealer's back shelf for a year, with a BIOS chip in it that was in the drawer for another year before he ever stuck it in the board. And some of those older BIOSes and board designs are to be desperately avoided. There have been quite a few bogus cache designs that either don't work at all (instant panic under UNIX) or that severely degrade performance. A lot of earlier designs have bus timing problems that show up in bad interactions with host adapters and fancy graphics boards. Bad memory designs were also not uncommon. A good, tricky way to keep the vendor from shipping you these fossils is to specify a motherboard that can take 4 or 16MB SIMMs (as opposed to just the older 1MB kind). You want to do this anyhow for functional reasons. There are a few other potential gotchas to beware of, especially in the cheaper off-brand boards. One is "shadow RAM", a trick some boards use for speeding up DOS by copying the ROM contents into RAM at startup. It should be possible to disable this. Also, on a cacheing motherboard, you need to be able to disable cacheing in the memory areas used by expansion cards. Some cheap motherboards fail to pass bus-mastering tests and so are useless for use with a good SCSI interface; on others, the bus gets flaky when its turbo (high-speed) mode is on. Fortunately, these problems aren't common. You can avoid both dangerously fossilized hardware and these little gotchas by sticking with a system or motherboard design that's been tested with UNIX (some help with that below). Some other good features to look for in a motherboard include: * Gold-plated contacts in the expansion slots and RAM sockets. Base-metal contacts tend to grow an oxidation layer which can cause intermittent connection faults that look like bad RAM chips or boards. (This is why, if your hardware starts flaking out, one of the first things to do is jiggle or remove the boards and reseat them, and press down on the RAM chips to reseat them as well -- this may break up the oxidation layer. If this doesn't work, rubbing what contacts you can reach with a soft eraser is a good fast way to remove the oxidation film. Beware, some hard erasers, including many pencil erasers, can strip off the plating, too!) * Ability to go to 64MB on the motherboard (that is, without plug-in daughterboards). Most EISA boards seem to have this (the popular Mylex MAE486 board is an exception). Note: many newer EISA boards have only 8-sockets, but these handle 16MB SIMMs. * The board should be speed-rated as high as your processor, of course. It's good if it's rated higher, so upgrade to a faster processor is just a matter of dropping in the chip and a new crystal. Finally, beware the infamous FP exception bug! Some motherboards fail to handle floating point exceptions correctly; instead of generating a SIGFPE they lock up. The following fragment of C code will reproduce the problem: double d; d = 0.0; d = 1.0 / d; /* floating divide by zero should yield SIGFPE */ John R. Levine explains: "The difficulty stems from the fact that there are two ways to handle floating exceptions on a 486, the right way and the PC way. What the 486 wants to do is to generate an interrupt 16 when there is a floating point error, all entirely internal to the CPU. This has been the native way to handle floating point interrupts since the 286/287. The 286/287 and 386/387 each have a dedicated ERROR pin that the FPU uses to tell the CPU that it's time for an error interrupt. Unfortunately, the 8086/8087 handled interrupts differently. The error pin on the 8087 was wired to the 8259A interrupt controller, the same interrupt controller that handled keyboard, disk, clock, etc. interrupts. The PC/AT enshrined IRQ 13 as the one for floating interrupts. (The details of this are a little hazy to me, since the XT didn't have IRQ 13 tied to an 8259A, so the AT must have at least changed the interrupt number.) PC designs have generally wired the 287 or 387 ERROR pin to the 8259A, not to the ERROR pin on the CPU, or at best had some poorly documented way to switch between the two interrupt methods. In the interest of backward compatibility, the 486 has a mode bit that says not to handle FP exceptions automatically, but rather to freeze the FPU and send a signal on the FERR pin, which is usually tied to an 8259A which then feeds the interrupt back as IRQ 13. There is some extra complication involved here because the FPU has to stay frozen until the interrupt is accepted so the CPU can go back and look at the FPU's state. Early 386/25 chips had a bug that would sometimes freeze up on a floating point interrupt and you had to get a kludge socket with a PAL that fixed the timing glitch that provoked the bug. So as likely as not, the motherboard hardware that runs FERR out and back isn't working correctly. It's not surprising, few DOS users take floating point seriously enough to notice whether the interrupts are working right." When you specify a system, make clear to your vendor that the motherboard must handle float exceptions properly. Test your motherboard's handling of divide-by-zero; if it doesn't work, press your vendor to replace it *and send me email*! Only by publishing a list of boards known bad can we protect ourselves and pressure vendors to fix this problem. Norbert Juffa adds: Actually, the IBM PC,PC/XT and most compatible use the NMI (non-maskable interrupt) to report coprocessor errors. They don't go through the interrupt controller. Only a few not quite compatible machines did use the 8259 PIC and one needed special startup code for Microsoft-C for example to ensure correct handling of coprocessor interrupts in programs. The PC/AT and compatibles do use the 8259, and the coprocessor interrupt comes in as INT 75h (IRQs from second [slave] 8259 are mapped to INT 70h-77h) to the CPU. On the PC/XT it comes in as INT 2 (NMI). The problem with using the NMI was that NMI is also used for other purposes (e.g. parity error reporting) and that the service routine has to figure out what really caused the interrupt. The reason not to use the 8259 on the PC might have been that not enough IRQs were available. The AT has two cascaded 8259 chips and therefore has more IRQs available. The 386 UNIX Buyer's Guide posting (pc-unix/software) includes tables of motherboards and systems known to run with various UNIX ports. David E. Wexelblat reports that, as of early 1993, Mylex EISA motherboards have some serious compatibility problems (including with some of Mylex's own peripheral cards) and should be avoided. E. Memory As of January 1993, standard DRAM parts are quite reliable at 60ns cycle speed. With a decent cache, this is fast enough for any processor speed below 50MHz. You can skip the rest of this section unless you've got your heart set on a full 50MHz machine --- but be sure to read the `Cache Flow' section later on. However, memory sufficiently fast and reliable for 486/50DX systems running UNIX seems to be a particular problem. The following war story by one comp.unix sysv386 regular is typical: "Dell 2.2 ran perfectly on 3 different AMI 486/50 EISA boards. That is, after I replaced faulty memory chips which caused repeated panics. My conclusion, after consulting with our hardware suppliers, was that current quality control on top-end memory chips (NEC, Toshiba) is not good enough for 486/50s running serious Unix. The memory will pass every DOS-based test. One has to plug and play to get a set of simms that work reliably. Part of the hazerds of leading edge technology." F. Peripherals Peripherals are another matter, especially hard disks. A good rule of thumb for balanced configurations is that the hard disk should comprise about half (or maybe a bit more) of the total system hardware price (exception: if you're buying a really good monitor, like 16" or over, it's going to be expensive enough to bust this rule). Unless you're the exception who has to invoke warranty due to a system arriving dead, most of what you buy from a dealer or mail-order house is their ability to surf the Winchester market, make volume buys, and burn in your disks before shipping. We'll look at disk choices in more detail later on. You'll need a monitor, of course. The next section goes into monitor options in detail. You should have a tape drive for backup. Unfortunately, the tape drive market is rather confusing. Rather than try to give a capsule summary, we give it its own section below. We'll have much more to say about price/performance tradeoffs in peripherals in the next major section, on performance tuning. G. Monitors and Video Cards. A quick review of monitor standars for ISA machines: Horizontal Vertical Name Resolution Colors Frequency Frequency Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MDA 720x350 18.43 KHz 50 Hz CGA 640x200 2 15.85 KHz 60 Hz Obsolete 320x200 4 EGA 640x350 16 21.80 KHz 60 Hz Obsolete VGA 640x480 16 31.50 KHz 60 Hz 320x200 256 VESA VGA 640x480 16 38.86 KHz 72 Hz 320x200 256 VESA SVGA 800x600 16 48.01 KHz 72 Hz 640x480 256 8514/A 1024x768 16 35.20 KHz 43.5 Hz Interlaced XGA 1024x768 256 ?? ?? IBM proprietary VESA 1024x768 1024x768 256 56.48 KHz 70 Hz The Horizontal and Vertical Frequency columns refer to the monitor scan frequencies. The vertical frequency is the monitor's flicker rate; 60Hz is minimal for ergonomic comfort, 72Hz is VESA-recommended, and 80Hz is cutting-edge. XGA is included for completeness, but is vanishingly rare in the clone market. SVGA or `Super VGA' strictly refers only to 800x600 resolution, but is widely used for 1024x768 and even 1280x1024 resolutions. Standards above 1024x768 are weak and somewhat confused, largely because VESA's efforts have been going into the forthcoming VDID standard for auto-configuring intelligent monitors. These days, most vendors bundle a 14" monitor and super-VGA card with 1024x768 resolution in with their systems. Details to watch are whether the card comes loaded with 512K or 1MB of RAM (which will affect how much of that maximum resolution and how many colors you actually get), whether the memory is dual-ported VRAM (slightly more expensive but much faster), and whether the monitor is interlaced or non-interlaced. The latter is better and should no longer cost extra; look for the abbreviation NI in the ad or quote and be suspicious if you don't see it. You should check ahead of time which Super VGA chipset the vendor normally ships. Though DOS/Windows doesn't really care, the UNIX software that uses it (most notably X servers) will definitely notice the difference. Most implementations of X servers for Intel UNIX (especially those supplied by the UNIX vendors) don't know how to use the SVGA modes of the cheapie Oak and Trident SVGA chipsets, which are the ones most often bundled with systems. The ATI VGAWonder chipset, while better supported, isn't usually bundled. Cards based on the Tseng 4000 chipsets are often bundled or available as as an extra-cost opstion (usually less than $50 above Oak or Trident), perform better, and are supported by the most implementations of Intel UNIX-based X servers. The Tseng chipset is also the one best supported by XFree86. Other things to check for: * Dot pitch of 0.28 or smaller on a 12" or 13" monitor; 0.30 is acceptable on larger ones, especially 19" to 21" screens. Dot pitch is the physical resolution of the screen's phosphor mask. Larger dot pitches mean that small fonts and graphic detais will be fuzzy. * 72Hz or better vertical scan frequency, to cut flicker. * Non-interlaced display. Interlacing cuts the required scan frequency for a given resolution in half, but makes flicker twice as bad. As a result, interlaced monitors are rapidly disappearing; don't get stuck with one. * Does it have a tilt-and-swivel base? Adequate controls, including both horizontal and vertical size and horizontal and vertical centering? A linearity control, a trapezoidal control, and a color-temperature control are all pluses; the last is particularly important if you compose graphics on screen for hardcopy from a printer. * Is it *color*? Yes, if you don't see it in the ad, ask; some lowball outfits will try to palm off so-called "black & white VGA" monitors on you. For X use, a 14", .28mm dot pit, non-interlaced 72Mhz monitor at 640x480 resolution is the bare minimum for comfortable use, and that resulution leaves you rather s\queezed for screen real estate. 1024x768 is much better. If your budget will stand it at all, a 17" or 20" monitor is a good investment. A 17" monitor is minimum if you're going to go with 1280x1024 resolution. H. Keyboards It's important to get a high quality keyboard with good key feel. See the typing-injury FAQ from sci.med.occupational to see what happens if you don't. Carpal tunnel syndrome is no fun for anyone, but it hits hackers particularly hard. Don't be a victim! Hal Snyder of Mark Williams, Co. sent us the following caveat: "We find that about 10% of cheap no-name keyboards do not work in scan code set 3. We are interested in scan code set 3 because only there can you reprogram the keyboard on a per-key basis as to whether keys are make-only, make-break, or autorepeat. It is a big win for international support and for X." He continues: "Keytronic, Cherry, and Honeywell keyboards, as well as a large number of imports, work fine. My advice is to either by a respected brand of keyboard, or deal with a vendor who will allow you to return an incompatible keyboard without charge." I. Power Protection Finally, I strongly recommend that you buy a power conditioner to protect your hardware. MOV-filtered power bars make nice fuses (they're cheap to replace), but they're not enough. I've been delighted with my TrippLite 1200, which you can get for $139 or so by mail order. A fringe benefit of this little beauty is that if you accidentally pull your plug out of the wall you may find you actually have time to re-connect it before the machine notices! The technical info in the remainder of this section is edited from material supplied by David E. Wexelblat . There are several levels of power protection available to the home computer user. I break this down into 4 levels; others may have different ways of classifying things. The levels are: 1. Surge Suppressor 2. Line Conditioners 3. Standby Power Supplies 4. Uninterruptible Power Supplies and here's what they mean: 1. Surge suppressors These are basically a fancy fuse between the source and your hardware; they clamp down spikes, but can't fill in a low voltage level or dropout. This is a bare minimum level of protection that any piece of expensive electronics should have. Note that this applies to more than just AC power; surge suppressors are available for (and should be used on) phone lines, and RS-232 and parallel connections (for use on long lines; generally not needed if the devices is colocated with the computer and all devices are protected from outside sources). Note also that *all* devices connected to your computer need to be protected; if you put a surge suppressor on your computer but not your printer, then a zap on the printer may take out the computer, too. An important fact about surge suppressors is that *they need to be replaced if they absorb a large surge*. Besides fuses, most suppressors rely on on components called Metal-Oxide Varistors (or MOVs) for spike suppression, which degrade when they take a voltage hit. The problem with cheap suppressors is that they don't tell you when the MOV is cooked, so you can end up with no spike protection and a false sense of security --- better ones have an indicator. You can buy surge suppressors at any Radio Shack; for better prices, go mail-order through Computer Shopper or some similar magazine. All of these are low-cost devices ($10-50). 2. Line Conditioners These devices filter noise out of AC lines. Noise can degrade your power supply and cause it to fail prematurely. They also protect against short voltage dropouts and include surge suppression. My Tripp-Lite 1200 is typical of the better class of line conditioners --- a box with a good big soft-iron transformer and a couple of moby capacitors in it and *no* conductive path between the in and out sides. With one of these, you can laugh at brownouts and electrical storms. Price vary widely, from $40-400, depending on the power rating and capabilities of the device. Mail-order from a reputable supply house is your best bet. Line conditioners typically *don't* need to be replaced after a surge; check to see if yours includes MOVs. 3. Standby power supplies (SPSs) These devices are battery-based emergency power supplies that provide power for your system via an inverter if the power fails. An SPS will generally have all the capabilities of a line conditioner as well. Note: these devices do not come on line until after the power fails, and have a certain amount of delay of some of milliseconds before they come on line. If the capacitors in your power supply are not large enough, the SPS may not cut in in time to prevent your computer from seeing the power failure. Note also that many SPSs are marketed as Uninterruptable Power Supplies (see below). This is incorrect. Any device with a non-zero cutover time cannot be a true UPS. If the ad mentions a cutover time, it's an SPS, and not a UPS. The price range for these devices (depending largely on size and cutover time) is $200-2000. An SPS will *not* need to be replaced after absorbing a large surge. 4. Uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs) These devices provide full-time isolation from the incoming AC line through a transformer of some sort. These devices are on-line at all times, and if the AC line fails, the batteries will cut in. Your devices will see no interruption of their incoming AC. UPSs cost more, and provide more features. They are the ultimate in power protection. Many UPSs have an intelligent interface that will notify a connected device of a power failure, allowing it to shut down cleanly. UPSs also provide the capabilities of a line conditioner. The price range (for devices in the size range for a home computer) are $400-$2500. An UPS will *not* need to be replaced after absorbing a large surge. Now, given this information, how does one decide what to get? For a system that runs unattended, like most Unix systems, it is best to have a device that provides both power holdover and a power failure signal. Hence, for a Unix system, a UPS or SPS with UNIX monitoring software id the best choice. At least one vendor sells ordered-shutdown software for Unix, and it's fairly simple to write your own daemon to monitor a serial port, and send init a SIGPWR signal when it sees a certain signal. Tripp Lite and APC (the two vendors with the lion's share of the market) have good UNIX monitoring software. The APC "Powerchute" software, for examples, allows you to monitor the SPS's internal temperature, or perform a UPS self-test, from any UNIX terminal! Many UPS/SPS signal ports work by asserting a pin, so that one could use a modem-control serial port on the PC and wire this pin to "Carrier Detect" in order to monitor it. Some, like the APC "SmartUPS" series, actually conduct a "dialog" with the host through a serial line in order to accomplish the monitor functions. Our recommendation for a home Unix environment is a configuration like the following: a) An on-line UPS or SPS for the computer system. An intelligent interface is mandatory, along with appropriate software for ordered shutdown. b) Surge suppression on all phone lines, and also on serial/parallel lines that leave the room. c) Line conditioners on any devices not connected to the UPS. If you do take a power hit, it's cheaper to replace a $50 line conditioner than a $1500 laser printer. An important question is "How do I know how big a UPS/SPS to get?" The watt rating of the UPS/SPS should be at least the sum of the peak ratings off all equipment connected to it (don't forget the console monitor). Power-supply marketroids tend to quote you capacities and formulas like "sum of VA ratings + 20%" which (surprise!) push you towards costler hardware. Ignore them. If a watt rating is not given, watts = 0.75*VAmax. One other consideration is that you typically shouldn't put a laser printer on a UPS --- toner heaters draw enough current to overload a UPS and cause a shutdown within seconds. The other thing is that you can't even put the laser printer on the same circuit with a UPS --- the heater kicks on every 20-30 seconds, and most UPSs will see the current draw as a brownout. So buy a separate line conditioner for the laser printer. Finally, read the UPS's installation manual carefully if you're going to use it with other power-protection devices. Some UPSs don't like having surge suppressors between them and the equipment. David personally recommends surge suppressors and line conditioners from Tripp-Lite (available both mail-order and retail), and UPSs from Best Power Technologies (Necedah, WI - 1-(800)-356-5737). I can enthusiastically second the TrippLite recommendation, but haven't dealt with Best Power at all. Evan Leibovich says "Add American Power Conversion to the list. They have paid good attention to the UNIX market, and have (by far) the best UNIX UPS monitoring scheme on the market. They're also widely available." There are many other vendors for all of these devices. Tripp-Lite has a whole range of products, from a $10 phone-line surge-suppressor, to line conditioners and SPSs with prces in the hundreds of dollars. They have a line of $50-80 line conditioners that are good for most peripherals (including your home stereo :->). Best Power Technologies sells two lines of UPSs in the range for home systems. The older and more expensive FERRUPS line (which is what David has) has a smart interface, and very good filtering and surge-suppression capabilities. He says "I have a 1.15kVA FERRUPS for my home system, which is overkill with my current hardware (although it rode out a 45 minute power failure with nary a whisper - no reboot). In 1990, I paid ~$1600 for this device, and that has since gone up. They also sell a newer line of Fortress UPSs. These are better suited in price for home systems. I don't know much about them, as they were not available when I bought my UPS. I expect that this is what most people will want to consider, though. In addition, Best sells Check-UPS, a software package (in source form) for monitoring the UPS and shutting it down. I have found Best to be a good company to deal with, with competent, knowledgeable sales people (who will be able to help you pick the right device), and helpful, courteous, and responsive technical support." Other things to know: A UPS should be wired directly to (or plugged directly into) the AC supply (i.e. a surge suppressor is neither required nor suggested between the wall and the UPS). In addition, a surge suppressor between the UPS and the equipment connected to it is redundant and also unnecessary. J. Radio Frequency Interference (Thanks to Robert Corbett for contributing much of this section) Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a growing problem with PC-class machines. Today's processor speeds (20-50MHz) are souch that the electromagnetic noise generated by a PC's circuitry in normal operation can degrade or jam radio and TV reception in the neighborhood. Such noise is called Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). Computers, as transmitting devices, are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). FCC regulations recognize two classes of computer: If a PC is to be used in a home or apartment, it must be certified to be FCC class B. If it is not, neighbors have a legal right to prevent its use. FCC class A equipment is allowed in industrial environments. Many systems are not FCC class B. Some manufacturers build boxes that are class B and then ship them with class A monitors or external disk drives. Even the cables can be a source of RFI. It pays to be cautious. For example, the Mag MX17F is FCC class B. There are less expensive versions of the MX17 that are not. The Mag MX17 is a great monitor (I wish I had one). It would be painful to own one and not be allowed to use it. An upgradeable system poses special problems. A system that is FCC class B with a 33 MHz CPU might not be when the CPU is upgraded to a 50 or 66 MHz CPU. Some upgrades require knockouts in the case to be removed. If a knockout is larger than whatever replaces it, RFI can leak out through the gap. Grounded metal shims can eliminate the leaks. IV. Performance tuning Here are the places where you can trade off spending against the performance level you want to buy and your expected job mix. A. How to Pick your Processor The following information appeared in article <13a29iINN21e@iraul1.ira.uka.de> by S_JUFFA@iravcl.ira.uka.de (|S| Norbert Juffa). It gives a good indication of the relative speeds in Intel's processor line: UNIX performance of Intel processors as given in Intel's literature Processor SPECmark SPECint SPECfp Whetstone Dhrystone Linpack Ref Rm double p. 2.1 dp MFLOPS 1) Intel 386/387-33 4.3 6.4 3.3 3290 15888 N/A 1 *+ 2) Intel 386/387-33 4.1 6.0 N/A 3200 18900 0.4 2 # 3) RapidCAD-33 6.6 7.3 6.1 5300 18275 N/A 1 *+ 4) 486DX-25 8.7 13.3 6.6 5640 32000 1.0 2 5) 486DX-33 11.1 17.5 8.2 7200 43000 1.5 3 6) 486DX-33 12.1 18.3 9.2 N/A N/A N/A 4 7) 486DX-33 14.5 19.0 12.2 12300 43500 1.6 5 & 8) 486DX-50 18.2 27.9 13.6 10710 64400 2.5 3 9) 486DX2-50 19.2 25.4 15.9 18500 63966 2.3 5 & 10)486DX-50 21.9 28.5 18.3 18500 65400 2.4 5 & 11)486DX2-66 25.6 34.0 21.2 24700 85470 3.1 5 & Remarks: * Whetstone/Dhrystone are 32-bit DOS results + SPEC ratios recomputed from SPEC timings (computed wrong in report) & note huge increase in SPEC floating point performance over previous results due to new experimental FORTRAN compiler # machine with AMD 386-40/Cyrix 83D87-40/128 kB cache is estimated by me at: 7.7 SPECint, 5.0 SPECfp, 6.1 SPECmark, 5600 double prec. Whetstones, 23000 Dhrystones, 0.6 Linpack double prec. MFlops These estimates based on my own measurements and data from: FasMath 83D87 Benchmark Report, Cyrix 1990 World's Fastest 386 40 MHz Am386(tm)DX Microprocessor Performance Summary, AMD 1991 References: 1) Intel RapidCAD(tm) Engineering CoProcessor Performance Brief. 1992 2) i486(tm) Microprocessor Performance Report. 1990. Order No. 240734-001 3) 50MHz Intel486(tm) DX Microprocessor Performance Brief. 1991. Order No. 241120-001 4) i486(tm) Microprocessor Business Performance Brief. 1990. Order No. 281352-002 5) Intel486(tm) DX2 Microprocessor Performance Brief. 1992 Order No. 241254-001 Configurations: 1) COMPAQ SystemPro 386/33 MHz, 8 MB memory, AT&T UNIX System V/386 Release 4.0 Version 2.0 2) 64 kB write back cache, AT&T UNIX System V Release 3.2CC, MetaWare High C R2.2c, SVS FORTRAN V2.8 3) COMPAQ SystemPro 386/33 MHz, 8 MB memory, AT&T UNIX System V/386 Release 4.0 Version 2.0 4) 128 kB write-back cache, 12 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V Release 3.2CC, MetaWare High C R2.2c, SVS FORTRAN V2.8 5) No 2nd level cache, 16 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V/386 R3.2, MetaWare High C R2.3p SVS FORTRAN V2.8 6) ALR PowerCache 33/4e, 128 kB cache, 16 MB RAM SCO UNIX System V R3.2.2, MetaWare High C R2.2c/R2.3k, SVS FORTRAN V 2.8 7) Intel Modular Platform, 256 kB write-back cache, 32 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V R4.0.4, Metaware High C R2.4b, Intel Scheduling FORTRAN 77 Compiler V0.2 8) 256 kB write-back cache (82495DX/82490DX), 16 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V/386 R3.2, MetaWare High C R2.3p SVS FORTRAN V2.8 9) Intel Modular Platform, 256 kB write-back cache, 32 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V R4.0.4, Metaware High C R2.4b, Intel Scheduling FORTRAN 77 Compiler V0.2 10)Intel Modular Platform, 256 kB write-back cache, 32 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V R4.0.4, Metaware High C R2.4b, Intel Scheduling FORTRAN 77 Compiler V0.2 11)Intel Modular Platform, 256 kB write-back cache, 32 MB RAM, AT&T UNIX System V R4.0.4, Metaware High C R2.4b, Intel Scheduling FORTRAN 77 Compiler V0.2 One of Intel's most recent wrinkles is the "clock-doubler" chips. The 50DX2 runs at 25MHz externally but computes at 50MHz. A 66DX2 (bus speed 33MHz) is also shipping, and there are persistent rumors of a clock-doubled 50 in the works that would compute at a blistering 100MHz! Intel likes to claim a 70% speedup for the doublers over their undoubled brethren. I've expressed skepticism about this in previous issues, but the SPECmarks above suggest that just this once the marketroids may not be lying -- much. Under UNIX, a 50DX2 is in fact nearly as fast as a true 50DX. Still, beware of anyone whose literature passes off the DX2 qualification in the fine print; they may be scamming about other things, too. Right now you'll still pay a premium for a 486/50, as that's relatively new technology and demands extra-fast memory to run full-out. Also, these processors run really hot (one correspondent described the 50 as a "toaster on a chip"). If you go this route, be sure your configuration has an extra-heavy-duty cooling fan. Or two. And, for preference, a hefty heat sink. On current trends, a 66DX2 is probably the better way to go. B. Of Memory In... Buy lots of RAM, it's the cheapest way to improve real performance on any virtual-memory system. At $30-$50 maximum per megabyte it's just plain silly to stick with the 2-4mb now standard on most clone configurations. Go to 8, you won't regret it; 16 if you're going to use X. William Davidsen writes: "There are two places where memory addition will show an improvement [under sar(1)], in %wio and in avwait (sar -d) on individual devices. Note that you may have to tune kernel params, some systems have a limit of 600k on i/o buffers. Also, you can hurt performance on V.3 systems with way too many buffers (like 4+MB) if you have a slow CPU." Add memory until avwait stops dropping like a rock. Above 16 is iffy on ISA boxes because the stock USL 4.0.3 kernel may try to do DMA from a location the bus can't deal with. Most UNIX vendors have fixed this by adding code that forces DMAs to take place from low memory; make absolutely sure that includes yours before you load up beyond 16MB. The pc-unix/software FAQ posting includes information on which vendors are known to have fixed this problem. Some motherboards have 16 sockets for SIMM memory modules. Some only 8. Some take only 1MB mdules, some handle 4MB. These constraints interact in funny ways. You should make sure if you are buying an entry level 2 or 6 MB system with a 16-socket motherboard that you will not have to ditch the SIMMs that are already installed in order to go to your maximum (if 16 MB is your maximum). Some systems only allow you to mix 1M and 4M SIMMs in certain combinations. Try not to get any 1M SIMMs in your initial configuration, because you'll probably end up turfing them later. That is, buy a 4MB, 8MB, 12 MB or 16MB system to start. Newer ISA designs have a 32 MB upper limit with only 8 sockets, since they can take 4Mx9s...however, this means different interleaving (only 2 banks), which limits the possible configurations. You don't want to start off with an 8 MB configuration, because that's 8 ea 1Mx9's, filling up all the sockets...the next upgrade requires replacing 1Mx9 with 4Mx9. You can't even set up 12 MB!...the first reasonable config (that won't require tossing hardware) is 16 MB, since that's one bank full of 4Mx9. Most new EISA motherboards have 64MB capacity, either as 16 4MB-capable sockets or as 8 16MB-capable sockets. C. Cache Flow The most obscure of the important factors in the performance of a UNIX 486 system is the motherboard's memory cache size and design. The two questions performance-minded buyers have to deal with are: (1) does the cache design of a given motherboard work with UNIX, and (2) how much cache SRAM should my system have? Before normal clock speeds hit two digits in MHz, cache design wasn't a big issue. But DRAM's memory-cycle times just aren't fast enough to keep up with today's processors. Thus, your machine's memory controller caches memory references in faster static RAM (SRAM), reading from main memory in chunks that the board designer hopes will be large enough to keep the CPU continuously fed under a typical job load. If the cache system fails to work, the processor will be slowed down to less than the memory's real access speed --- which, given January 1993's typical 70ns DRAM parts, is about 7MHz. The 486 includes an 8K cache right on the processor chip. If memory accesses were reliably sequential and well-localized, this would be fine. Unfortunately, one side-effect of what's today considered "good programming practice", with high-level languages using a lot of subroutine calls, is that the program counter of a typical process hops around like crazy; locality is really poor. This gives the cacheing system a workout. (UNIX makes the problem worse, because clock interrupts and other effects of multitasking design degrade locality still further). Thus, the 486's 8K internal primary cache is typically supplemented with an external caching system using SRAM to reduce the cost of an internal cache miss; in January 1993, 20ns SRAM is typical. The size and design of your motherboard cache is one of the most critical factors in your system's real performance. Unfortunately, cache design is a complicated black art, and cache performance isn't easy to predict or measure, especially under the rapidly variable system loads characteristic of UNIX. Thus, the best advice your humble editor can give is a collection of rules of thumb. Your mileage may vary... Rule 1: Buy only motherboards that have been tested with UNIX One of DOS's many sins is that it licenses poor hardware design; it's too brain-dead to stretch the cache system much. Thus, bad cache designs that will run DOS can completely hose UNIX, slowing the machine to a crawl or even (in extreme cases) causing frequent random panics. Make sure your motherboard or system has been tested with some UNIX variant. Rule 2: Be sure you get enough cache. If your motherboard offers multiple cache sizes, make sure you how much is required to service the DRAM you plan to install. Bela Lubkin writes: "Excess RAM [over what your cache can support] is a very bad idea: most designs prevent memory outside the external cache's cachable range from being cached by the 486 internal cache either. Code running from this memory runs up to 11 times slower than code running out of fully cached memory." Rule 3: "Enough cache" is at least 64K per 16MB of DRAM Hardware caches are usually designed to achieve effective 0 wait state status, rather than perform any significant buffering of data. As a general rule, 64Kb cache handles up to 16Mb memory; more is redundant. Rule 4: If possible, max out the board's cache -- it wlll save hassles later Bela continues: "Get the largest cache size your motherboard supports, even if you're not fully populating it with RAM. The motherboard manufacturer buys cache chips in quantity, knows how to install them correctly, and you won't end up throwing out the small chips later when you upgrade your main RAM." A lot of fast chips are held back by poor cache systems and slow memory. The 50DX has a particular problem this way, because its cycle spead is as fast as that of a 20ns cache SRAM. To avoid trouble, cloners often insert wait states at the cache, slowing down the 50DX to the effective speed of a 50DX/2. Worse than this, a lot of cloners have taken the 50DX/2 and 66DX/2 as invitations to reuse old 25- and 33MHz board designs without change. The trouble is that these chips take a double hit for each wait state, because the wait states are timed by *external* cycles. And there can be lots of them; a look at the CMOS setup screen of most 33Mhz and 50MHz system will usually reveal many wait states. [The intro to cache design has been temporarily deleted while I straighten out technical errors with several correspondents.] D. Bus wars There are three bus standards in the clone market; ISA (the original 16-bit PC/AT bus), EISA (a 32-bit bus upward-compatible from ISA), and MicroChannel, a proprietary IBM bus used in IBM's PS/2 and its few clones. Your first intelligent decision, however, is to forget MicroChannel's existence. MicroChannel is technically sweet, but PS/2 clones are rare, expensive, and doomed to stay that way by IBM's licensing terms. The action is all in the commoditized ISA and EISA market. Should you buy ISA or EISA? You'll pay up to a $300 premium for the latter. What you get in return is the ability to use things like fast 32-bit SCSI controllers and a smoother upward-migration path. On the other hand, EISA cards are significantly more expensive. And so far, there isn't much support for EISA-specific hardware --- a couple of vendors will drive EISA SCSI and network controllers and that's about it. All ISA cards will still work. Actually, there doesn't *need* to be wide EISA support for EISA to be a win. Disk and network controllers are the big bandwidth-eaters in most systems; faster disk access, by itself, can easily be enough to justify the EISA premium. And this need not involve any software support for EISA's extensions at all; it has been widely reported, for example, that the Adaptec 1740 EISA disk controller is faster in 1542 emulation mode than a 1542 in an ISA box. Many EISA board makers supply their own drivers, so this may not be apparent when scanning vendors' compatibility guides. There is also some convenience gain from doing software-based configuration of cards rather than jumpers. Unfortunately, you have to boot DOS to do that! Of course, most of what you get from EISA is a performance boost. There are two different theories about why EISA is better; both have their adherents. Theory A: Bandwidth matters UNIX has always been an I/O-intensive operating system. According to this theory, increasing processor speed on clones can leave it spending all its time waiting on the limited I/O capacity of the poor old 5.3MB/sec ISA bus. The vendors all seem to think this starts at around 33MHz and that if you're buying 50MHz it definitely pays to go EISA. Theory B: Cache is what matters According to this theory, UNIX never comes even close to saturating the ISA-bus bandwidth. EISA boards are faster because the premium vendors can charge for them allows the motherboard designer more freedom and a richer parts budget. The most important performance effect of this is that EISA boards have larger and better-designed caches, increasing the effective memory-access speed. There's probably some truth to both analyses. If your machine is going to spend most of its processor time running X displays and doing other classically compute-bound tasks, cache size matters most. On the other hand, benchmarks show that the combination of TCP/IP and multi-user disk activity *can* saturate ISA, and one can sometimes *see* a fast-processor machine slow down during disk accesses... If you're contemplating any kind of heavy-duty networking, EISA network adapters will become rather important. A correspondent tells me he's seen benchmarks showing what percentage of bus bandwidth is consumed by various cards when flooding an ethernet (i.e. consuming the entire 10Mbit bandwidth of a quiet net, as you might be when doing an FTP transfer, for instance). 8-bit ISA cards consume 40-60% of bus bandwidth; 16-bit cards, 20-40%. 32-bit EISA cards consume only about 5-10%. This would be particularly important in a machine being used as a bridge, where you might be handling a large portion of the traffic on two or more separate nets. The advantage of EISA cards may be due to their shorter-cycle bus mastering DMA. At time of writing, only SCO supports these, but other UNIX vendors are known to have their own drivers in the pipeline. E. IDE vs. SCSI (vs. ESDI!) Another basic decision is IDE vs. SCSI. Either kind of disk costs about the same, but the premium for a SCSI card varies all over the lot, partly because of price differences between ISA and EISA SCSI cards and especially because many motherboard vendors bundle an IDE chip right on the system board. SCSI gives you better speed and throughput and loads the processor less, a win for larger disks and an especially significant consideration in a multi-user environment; also it's more expandable. Another important win for SCSI is that it handles multiple devices much more efficiently. If you have two IDE (or ST506 or ESDI) drives, only one can transfer between memory and disk at once. In fact, you have to program them at such a low level, one drive might actually be blocked from *seeking* while you're talking to the other drive. SCSI drives are mostly autonomous and can do everything at once; and current SCSI drives are not quite fast enough to flood more than 1/2 the SCSI bus bandwidth, so you can have at least two drives on a single bus pumping full speed without using it up. In reality, you don't keep drives running full speed all the time, so you should be able to have 3-4 drives on a bus before you really start feeling bandwidth crunch. All this having been said, don't write off IDE too quickly. Sure, it's compatible with the nasty old ST506 interface, but it's *much* faster. It remains the cost-effective choice for smaller drives (up to 500MB) on systems that won't be hitting the disk constantly. Unless you're running a heavily used network or database server, don't assume SCSI will make any noticeable difference. Also, of course, IDE is cheaper. Many motherboards have IDE right on board now; if not, you'll pay maybe $15 for an IDE adapter board, as opposed to $200+ for the leading SCSI controller. Also, there are reports that the cheap SCSI cabling most vendors ship can be flaky. It's alleged that you have to use expensive high-class cables for consistently good results. If anyone out there has hard data on this, don't be shy --- I'd like to be able to confirm or deny it in a future Guide! One savvy netter observes "Don't discount ESDI, which is making a comeback. At least with ESDI the system knows what the tracks and sectors are -- the OS should know this to do good seek optimization." He goes on to observe that some ESDI drives are actually faster than SCSI. ESDI hardware is cheaper, too. Our editorial opinion is that this is probably a good idea if you're sure you're *never* going to want a tape drive --- the SCSI/ESDI price difference will get eaten if you have to buy a separate tape controller. (If you can do your own installation, I hear that used 150/250MB SCSI drives are getting quite common and cheap on the net. All 150MB QIC type drives can do 250MB on extended-length tapes, though some manufacturers discourage you from doing this to avoid excessive heade wear. But back to disks...) The following, by Ashok Singhal of Sun Microsystems, is a valiant attempt to demystify SCSI terminology. The terms "SCSI" and "SCSI-2" refer to two different specifications. Each specification has a number of options. Many of these options are *independent* of each other. I like to think of the main options (there are others that I'll skip over because I don't know enough about them to talk about them on the net) by classifying them into five categories: 1. Logical This refers to the commands that the controllers understand. SCSI-2 defined a common command set that is pretty much a superset of the SCSI command set. 2. Data Width 8 bits (+ 1 parity) -> "normal" 16-bits (+ 2 parity) -> "wide" 32-bits (+ 4 parity) -> I don't know, "extra-wide??" All three options are available in SCSI-2 (yes, the draft spec I have even shows 32-bits!), although 8-bit wide is still by far the most common. Not sure, but I believe SCSI defined only 8-bit wide data path. 3. Electrical Interface single-ended (max cable length 6 meters) differential (max cable length 25 meters) Both options are available for SCSI-2 (I'm not sure about SCSI, but I think both options were available also) and this option is independent of options 2, 4, 5. Differential is less common but allows better noise immunity and longer cables. 4. Handshake Synchronous (requests and acks alternate) Asynchronous (multiple requests can be outstanding) Both options are available for SCSI-2 (Not sure about SCSI, but I think both were available also). This is negotiated between each target and initiator; asynchronous and synchronous transfers can occur on the same bus. This is independent of 2, 3 (Not sure about 1). 5. Synchronous Speed (does not apply for asynchronous option) "Normal" is up to 5 Mtransfers/sec ( = 5MB/s for 8-bit wide, more for wider) "Fast" is up to 10 Mtransfers/s ( = 10 MB/s for 8-bit wide, more for wider) The fast option is defined only in SCSI-2. This options basically defines shorter timing parameters such as the assertion period and hold time. The parameters of the synchronous transfer are negotiated between each target and initiator so different speed transfers can occur over the same bus. F. Other Disk Decisions Look at seek times and transfer rates for your disk; under UNIX disk speed and throughput are so important that a 1-millisecond difference in average seek time can be noticeable. Previous issues said "Disk cacheing is good, but there can be too much of a good thing. Excessively large caches will slow the system because the overhead for cache fills swamps the real accesses (this is especially a trap for databases and other applications that do non-sequential I/O). More than 100K of cache is probably a bad idea for a general-purpose UNIX box; watch out for manufacturers who inflate cache size because memory is cheap and they think customers will be impressed by big numbers." This may no longer be true on current hardware; in particular, most controllers will interrupt a cache-fill to fulfill a `real' read request. In any case, having a large cached hard drive (particularly in the IDEs) often does not translate to better performance. For example, Quantum makes a 210Mb IDE drive which comes with 256Kb cache. Conner and Maxtor also have 210Mb drives, but only with 64Kb caches. The transfer rate on the drives, however, show that the Quantum comes in at 890Kb/sec, while the Maxtor and Conner fly away at 1200Kb/sec. Clearly, the Conner and Maxtor make much better use of their smaller caches. Many retailers seem to enjoy advertising the "9ms" Quantum 52/80/120/200Mb drives. This speed, of course, is bogus. All the quantum drives are at least 16ms is average access. The 9ms already includes the cacheing speedup. However, it may be that *any* hardware disk cacheing is a lose for UNIX! Scott Bennett reports a discussion on comp.unix.wizards: "nobody found the hardware disk caches to be as effective in terms of performance as the file system buffer cache...In many cases, disabling the hardware cache improved system performance substantially. The interpretation of these results was that the cacheing algorithm in the kernel was superior to, or at least better tuned to UNIX accesses than, the hardware cacheing algorithms." On the other hand, Stuart Lynne writes: Ok. What I did was to use the iozone program. What this showed was that on my root disk in single user mode I could get about 500kb for writing and 1000kb for reading a 10MB file. With the disk cache disabled I was able to get the same for writing but only about 500kb for reading. I.e. it appears the cache is a win for reading, at least if you have nothing else happening. Next I used a script which started up iozone in parallel on all four disks, two to each of the big disks (three) and one on the smaller disk. A total of seven iozone's competing with each other. This showed several interesting results. First it was apparant that higher numbered drives *did* get priority on the SCSI bus. They consistantly got better throughput when competing against lower numbered drives. Specifically drive 1 got better results than drive 0 on controller 0. Drive 4 got better results than drive 3 on controller 1. All of the drives are high end Seagate and have similiar characteristics. In general with cache enabled the results where better for reading than writing. When the cache was disabled the write speed in some cases went up a bit and the read speed dropped. It would seem that the readahead in some cases can compete with the writes and slow them down. My conclusions are that we'll see better performance with the cache. First the tendency is to do more reading than writing in your average UNIX system so we probably want to optimize that. Second if we assume an adequate system cache slow writes shouldn't affect an individual process much. When we write we are filling the cache and we don't usually care how long it takes to get flushed. Of course we would notice it when writing very large files. Thus, I can only recommend experiment. Try disabling the cache. Your throughput may go up! G. Souping Up X Performance One good way to boost your X performance is to invest in a graphics card with a dedicated blitter and a high-speed local-bus connection, like the ATI 8514/A series or the S3-based Quantum, Wind/X and Orchid Fahrenheit 1280. A number of clone vendors offer these accelerator options relatively cheap and can make your X go like a banshee; however, stock X doesn't support them yet. These cards speed up X in two ways. First, they offload s[ 6Xref: nuchat comp.unix.sys5.r4:3464 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:3629 comp.sys.intel:7315 news.answers:9233 From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Path: nuchat!lobster!moxie!wotan.compaq.com!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.kei.com!ub!dsinc!gvls1!snark!esr Newsgroups: comp.unix.sys5.r4,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.sys.intel news.answers Subject: PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide Message-ID: <1lkjJL#188rWs4PZ2q41pM6OB9m30Hf=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> Date: 10 Jun 93 16:07:16 GMT Expires: 9 Aug 93 23:00:00 GMT Sender: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Followup-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit Distribution: world Summary: Tips on how and where to buy hardware for your UNIX. Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Ey and takes your choice. Benchmarks indicate that most non-CAD users are better served by the ATI approach. However, I am now using SGCS X on an S3 with a 17" monitor on a 486/50DX2 and can report that it is quite fast enough to make X pleasant to use, thank you. Opaque windows can be dragged like paper. This is *fun*! The X servers on SCO, Dell and Esix support the ATI Ultra and Fahrenheit 1280, and third-party servers for SVr4 are available from MetroLink (email sales@metrolink.com) or SGCS (info@sgcs.com). There is said to be a third vendor in this market, "Pittsburgh Powercomputing", but the name is all the info I have on them. Here is a current price list from MetroLink: Description Price --------------------------------------------- ------ Runtime (all servers, standard and contrib clients) 299.00 Development (full X11 and Motif 1.1.4 libraries) 299.00 Xv - Real-Time Video in an X window (true server 99.00 extension) Xie - X Imaging Extension 199.00 And here is the corresponding info from SGCS: Description Price --------------------------------------------- ------ Full X11R5 binaries licensed for a single CPU 295.00 ** Enhanced X11R5 source code 195.00 ** MIT source code of contributed clients 50.00 Motif binaries for a single CPU 245.00 ** X11R5 Documentation Set 150.00 ** PHIGS Documentation Set 75.00 ** DISCOUNTS: If your choose more than one selection from any of the (**) items above you will receive the following discounts: $50 off on 2 selections, $75 off on 3 selections, $100 off on 4 selections If you're feeling *really* flush, plump for a 15", 17" or even 20" monitor. The larger size can make a major difference in viewing comfort. Also you'll be set for VESA 1280x1024 when everybody gets to supporting that. In the mean time, the bigger screen will allow you to use fonts in smaller pixel sizes so that your text windows can be larger, giving you a substantial part of the benefit you'd get from higher pixel resolutions. If you can, buy your monitor from someplace that will let you see the same monitor (the very unit you will walk out the door with, not a different or `demo' unit of the same model) that will be on your system. There's a *lot* of quality variation even in "premium" monitor brands. The VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) standard for local bus video connectors is now out. When you buy local-bus motherboards, insist that they be VESA-conforming. Be very clear about this and get a commitment from your vendor; some unscrupulous operations may still be attempting to unload pre-VESA motherboards on unsuspecting customers. However, beware of an associated problem. The VESA standard only recommends local bus connector speeds up to 40 mb/sec (this allegedly has to do with either holding down RFI emissions or clock skew problems; depends on who you listen to). For unbuffered designs (which most vendors prefer for performance) VESA recommends at most two expansion slots on 33MHz machines, at most one on 40MHz, and none at all sbove that speed (that is, all devices should be directly on the motherbord). They recommend a limit of 2 VESA devices at all speeds. Thus, true 50DX or higher processors (but *not* 50DX2s) may actually have to be *slowed down* to work with VESA hardware on expansion boards. The long-term solution is either hard-disk & video controllers right on the motherboard, a revised "mezzanine" VESA that decouples the local-bus signals from the CPU, or something like Intel's proposed PCI standard. In the meantime, beware of vendors purporting to sell 50MHz "VESA" mptherboards. They're not. V. Tape Drive Follies You should have a tape drive for backup, and because most UNIX vendors like to distribute their OS on tape. Ideally, your tape backup should be able to image your entire disk. Unfortunately, this can get quite expensive for large disks, as we'll see below. There are two major technologies in today's desktop tape drive market; QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) at the low end and midrange, and DAT (Digital Audio Tape) at the high end. The dividing line is about 1GB capacity. DAT is a new technology; it's not far down its price curve yet, but clearly where the future is. DAT drive capacities are quoted in *gigabytes* (that is, thousands of megabytes). Most conventional QIC drives have capacities up to 525 megabytes (a little more than half a gig). A few high-end units have 1.35GB capacity. QIC is a mature technology, but one plagued by hardware incompatibilities and driver bugs. Part of the problem is that, until recently, hard disks were small enough relative to a floppy's capacity that demand for high-volume backup technology was low in the PC world; QIC vendors tended to be small, insular, technology-driven firms relatively uninterested in standardization. As a result, understanding tape drive specifications is far from trivial. Tape drive standards are developed by Quarter Inch Cartridge Drive Standards, Inc. (805-963-3853), a consortium of drive and media vendors. They develop standards for controllers, transports, heads, and media. Some of these become ANSI standards. We'll discuss the most important ones here. Common Tape Drive Interfaces: QIC-02 --- intelligent hardware tape interface QIC-36 --- simple hardware tape interface QIC-104/11 --- SCSI-1 tape interface QIC-121 --- SCSI-2 tape interface These standards describe the drive controller. QIC-02 is presently by far the most common, and QIC-36 nearly obsolete (it was designed at a time when on-board intelligence for controllers was much more expensive than now). The SCSI standards are only rarely cited by number; usually, QIC-104 and QIC-121 devices are referred to simply as "SCSI tapes". Common Recording Formats: QIC-24 --- 9-track 60-Mbyte tape format QIC-120 --- 15-track 125-Mbyte tape format QIC-150 --- 18-track 150-Mbyte tape format QIC-525 --- 26-track 525-Mbyte tape format These standards describe the drive itself. Now, in theory, these standards are upward compatible; that is, a QIC-120 drive can read a QIC-24 tape, a QIC-150 drive can read both QIC-120s and QIC-24s, and so on. There's a potential gotcha here, though, called "media incompatibility". Thus, we also need to consider: Common media: DC600A --- for QIC-24 and QIC-120 drives DC6150 --- for QIC-150 drives DC6525 --- for QIC-525 drives The Wangtek 5150ES (and possibly some other 525-megabyte drives) will, according to its documentation, decode QIC-24 --- but it won't read a DC600A medium formatted to QIC-150! This is also reported of the Tandberg 3640 (QIC-120) drive. So, make sure your tape drive can read the media your OS vendor is going to ship on. QIC-24 on DC600As and QIC-150 on DC6150s are very widely used as a software distribution format in the UNIX world, and you probably want to make sure your drive can read them. 60/120MB QIC drives are fairly cheap now but larger sizes (typically 150, 250, 525 QIC tapes and 1.3gig DAT) are not. DAT drives, in particular, cost more than a grand each (however, if you have large drives the up-front cost difference can quickly get eaten up by media costs). One interesting point is that if you've gone SCSI, a 150MB QIC (comparable to the drives now popular on Suns) may well be cheaper than older 60MB technology; the win is in the controller prices, which have plummeted since QIC-24 was the cutting edge. Tape drives are easy to find and pretty safe to buy through mail order. It's also possible to buy reconditioned but warrantied used drives substantially cheaper than new. One correspondent recommended Super Technologies of Chino, CA (800 322 3999); they'll sell you a rebuilt Wangtek 150 with a 7-month warranty and a controller card for $300 and change, or a DAT drive for $800. One warning: a lot of DOS-box vendors push Colorado Memory Systems "mini-QIC" drives with jumperless cards configured at runtime by the CMS backup software. Make sure you do *not* get one of these. They're cheap, and work for DOS, but UNIX doesn't know that it has to poke controller registers to make the tape transport accessible. Besides, they *look* cheap, like they're put together out of baling wire and spit --- I wouldn't trust their long-term reliability. Another warning: The Wangtek 5150ES is incompatible w/ the Adaptec 1742 or 1740 in the EISA "enhanced" or 32 bit mode. Running the Adaptec EISA card in "standard" mode (16 bit ISA mode) is the only solution if you get stuck with a 5150ES. Your humble editor has a few battle scars from tape drive integration at this point (the rants about Wangtek and CMS drives are from personal experience). We recommend the Archive ST525, a fine fast drive that works nicely with the Adaptec 1542B, *can* read DC600A/QIC-24, and handles highest-capacity QIC-525 tapes. Note however that some versions of its documentation have a critical typo in the section on setting SCSI drive IDs; they give the ID jumpers as JP3/JP2/JP1 when they are actually JP8/JP7/JP6. If you are in any doubt about your drive or manual, call Archive tech support and check. Also, it does *not* seem to be able to read QIC-120 tapes as claimed; at least, 125MB backup tapes from my old AT&T 6386WGS are unreadable. VI. Of Mice and Machines Mice and trackballs used to be simple; now, thanks to Microsoft, they're complicated. In the beginning, there was only the Mouse Systems 3-button serial mouse; this reported status to a serial port 30 times a second using a 5-byte serial packet encoding now called "C" protocol. The Logitech Series 7 and 9 mice were Mouse Systems-compatible. All UNIXes that have any mouse support at all understand C-protocol serial mice. Then Microsoft got into the act. They designed a two-button serial mouse which reports only deltas in a three-byte packet; that is, it sends changes in button status and motion reports only when the mouse is actually moving. This is called `M' protocol. Microsoft sold a lot of mice, so Logitech switched from `C' to `M' --- but they added a third button, state changes for which show up in an optional fourth byte. Thus, `M+' protocol, upward-compatible with Microsoft's `M'. Most UNIX vendors add support for M+ mice, but it's wise to check. Bus mice are divided into 8255 and InPort types. These report info continuously at 30 or 60 Hz (though InPort mice have an option for reporting deltas only), and you get interrupts on events and then have to poll hardware ports for details. In addition to serial mice and bus mice, there are "keyboard mice". On PS/2s there are two identical-looking keyboard ports, labeled (with icons) "mouse" & "keyboard". Both are 8 or 9 pin mini-DIN's that look like the regular PC keyboard port only smaller. I don't know what logical protocol the keyboard mouse speaks. Physically, the connector is eventually connected to the keyboard processor (often an 8042). The same keyboard processor that decodes the keyboard decodes the mouse. PS/2s have this port, many newer ISA/EISA motherboards do as well. All things considered, UNIX users are probably best off going with a serial mouse (most current clone motherboards give you two serial ports, so you can dedicate one to this and still have one for the all-important modem). Not only are the compatibility issues less daunting, but a serial mouse loads the multitasking system less due to interrupt frequency. Beware that most clone vendors, being DOS oriented, bundle M-type mice for which UNIX support is presently spotty, and they may not work with your X. Ignore the adspeak about dpi and pick a mouse/trackball that feels good to your hand. VII. Special considerations when buying laptops Right now (March 1993) the laptop market is completely crazy. The technology is in a state of violent flux, with "standards" phasing in and out and prices dropping like rocks. We do not recommend buying a laptop until things have settled out a bit. However, if you have an immediate need for such a creature, there are a few basic things to know that will help. First: despite what you may believe, the most important aspect of any laptop is *not* the cpu, or the disk, or the memory, or the screen, or the battery capacity. It's the keyboard feel, since unlike in a PC, you cannot throw the keyboard away and replace it with another one unless you replace the whole computer. NEVER BUY ANY LAPTOP THAT YOU HAVE NOT TYPED ON FOR A COUPLE HOURS. Trying a keyboard for a few minutes is not enough. Keyboards have very subtle properties that can still affect whether they mess up your wrists. A standard desktop keyboard has keycaps 19mm across with 7.55mm between them. If you plot frequency of typing errors against keycap size, it turns out there's a sharp knee in the curve at 17.8 millimeters. Beware of "kneetop" and "palmtop" machines, which squeeze the keycaps a lot tighter and typically don't have enough oomph for UNIX anyway; you're best off with the "notebook" class machines that have full-sized keys. Second: be careful that your laptop meets the minimum core and disk requirements for the UNIX you want to run. This is generally not a problem with desktop machines, which can be upgraded cheaply and easily, but laptops often have more stringent constraints. Reject outright any machine that can't carry 8MB RAM and a 120MB fast disk. Third: with present flatscreens, 640x480 VGA color is the best you're going to do. If you want more than that (for X, for example) you have to either fall back to a desktop or make sure there's an external-monitor port on the laptop (and many laptops won't support higher resolution than the flatscreen's). Fourth: look for Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries, as opposed to the older (Nickel-Cadmium) NiCad type. NiMH batteries are great because they have considerably higher energy capacity per pound that NiCads. They need special circuitry to charge them fast, so don't try to throw out your NiCads and replace them with NiMH cells if you use a fast charger intended for NiCads. Both kinds of cells can be damaged by overcharging at rates faster than 10 hours. Fifth: Most laptop electronics are still 5-volt CMOS. The coming thing is 3.3-volt CMOS with power-management features on the processor. Buy this, if you can, to nearly double your use time between recharges. Sixth: about those vendor-supplied time-between-recharge figures; DON'T BELIEVE THEM. They collect those from a totally quiescent machine, sometimes with the screen or hard disk turned off. Under DOS, you'd be lucky to get half the endurance they quote; under UNIX, which hits the disk more often, it may be less yet. Figures from magazine reviews are more reliable. One final note. Initial load of your UNIX can be a serious hurdle with laptops, as they don't tend to have on-board QICtape drives :-). The best solution is to spring for an Ethernet card on the portable and use the network-load facility supported by Dell or ESIX. Otherwise you're going to be shuffling a *lot* of 3.5" floppies. VIII. When, Where and How to Buy If you're a serious UNIX hacker for either fun or profit, you're probably in the market for what the mail-order vendors think of as a high-end or even `server' configuration, and you're going to pay a bit more than the DOS lemmings. On the other hand, prices keep dropping, so there's a temptation to wait forever to buy. A tactic that makes a lot of sense in this market, if you have the leisure, is to fix in your mind a configuration and a trigger price that's just a little sweeter than the market now offers and buy when that's reached. Direct-mail buying makes a lot of sense today for anyone with more technical savvy than J. Random Luser in a suit. Even from no-name mail-order houses, parts and system quality tend to be high and consistent, so conventional dealerships don't really have much more to offer than a warm fuzzy feeling. Furthermore, competition has become so intense that even mail-order vendors today have to offer not just lower prices than ever before but warranty and support policies of a depth that would have seemed incredible a few years back. For example, many bundle a year of on-site hardware support with their medium- and high-end "business" configurations for a very low premium over the bare hardware. Note, however, that assembling a system yourself out of mail-order parts is *not* likely to save you money over dealing with the mail-order systems houses. You can't buy parts at the volume they do; the discounts they command are bigger than the premiums reflected in their prices. The lack of any system warranty or support can also be a problem even if you're expert enough to do the integration yourself --- because you also assume all the risk of defective parts and integration problems. Cruise through "Computer Shopper" and similar monthly ad compendia. Even if you decide to go with a conventional dealer, this will tell you what *their* premiums look like. You may want to subscribe to ClariNet Communications's "Street Price Report", a digest of lowest current quoted prices and sources (send inquiries to info@clarinet.com). It's $29.95 per year, so using it just once is likely to save you more money than the subscription. The Street Price Report is issued every other Thursday; you can have it emailed to you, or get it from an FTP site and decrypt it using an emailed key. It covers a wide variety of hardware and software. Quotes are collected from the ad sections of major magazines including "Computer Shopper" and "PC Magazine". Once you've cruised the magazines, you know what you want and are after the lowest price, you can nail it without fail with the Street Price Report. Another alternative to conventional dealerships (with their designer "looks", stone-ignorant sales staff, and high overheads that *you* pay for) is to go with one of the thousands of the hole-in-the-wall stores run by immigrants from the other side of the International Date Line. They're usually less ignorant and have much lower overheads; they do for you locally what a mail-order house would, that is assemble and test parts they get for you from another tier of suppliers. You won't get plush carpeting or a firm handshake from a white guy with too many teeth and an expensive watch, but then you didn't really want to pay for those anyway, right? A lot of vendors bundle DOS 5.0 and variable amounts of DOS apps with their hardware. You can tell them to lose all this cruft and they'll shave $50 or $100 off the system price. However, David Wexelblat observes "there are at least two situations in which the Unix user will need DOS available: 1) most, if not all, EISA configuration utilities run under DOS, and 2) SCSICNTL.EXE by Roy Neese is a godsend for dealing with SCSI devices on Adaptec boards." Don't forget that (most places) you can avoid sales tax by buying from an out-of-state mail-order outfit, and save yourself 6-8% depending on where you live. If you live near a state line, buying from a local outfit you can often win, quite legally, by having the stuff shipped to a friend or relative just over it. Best of all is a buddy with a state-registered dealer number; these aren't very hard to get and confer not just exemption from sales tax but (often) whopping discounts from the vendors. Hand him a dollar afterwards to make it legal. (Note: I have been advised that you shouldn't try the latter tactic in Florida -- they are notoriously tough on "resale license" holders). (Note II: The Supreme Court recently ruled that states may not tax out-of-state businesses under existing law, but left the way open for Congress to pass enabling legislation. Let's hope the mail-order industry has good lobbyists.) You can often get out of paying tax just by paying cash, especially at computer shows. You can always say you're going to ship the equipment out of the state. On the other hand, one good argument for buying locally is that you may have to pay return postage if you ship the system back. On a big, heavy system, this can make up the difference from the savings on sales tax. IX. Questions You Should Always Ask Your Vendor A. Minimum Warranty Provisions The weakest guarantee you should settle for in the mail-order market should include: * 72-hour burn-in to avoid that sudden infant death syndrome. (Also, try to find out if they do a power-cycling test and how many repeats they do; this stresses the hardware much more than steady burn-in.) * 30 day money-back guarantee. Watch out for fine print that weakens this with a restocking fee or limits it with exclusions. * 1 year parts and labor guarantee (some vendors give 2 years). * 1 year of 800 number tech support (many vendors give lifetime support). Additionally, many vendors offer a year of on-site service free. You should find out who they contract the service to. Also be sure the free service coverage area includes your site; some unscrupulous vendors weasel their way out with "some locations pay extra", which translates roughly to "through the nose if you're further away than our parking lot". If you're buying store-front, find out what they'll guarantee beyond the above. If the answer is "nothing", go somewhere else. B. Documentation Ask your potential suppliers what kind and volume of documentation they supply with your hardware. You should get, at minimum, operations manuals for the motherboard and each card or peripheral; also an IRQ list, and a bad-block listing if your Winchester is ESDI rather than IDE or SCSI (the latter two types of drive do their own bad-block mapping internally). Skimpiness in this area is a valuable clue that they may be using no-name parts from Upper Baluchistan, which is not necessarily a red flag in itself but should prompt you to ask more questions. C. A System Quality Checklist There are various cost-cutting tactics a vendor can use which bring down the system's overall quality. Here are some good questions to ask: * Is the memory zero-wait-state? One or more wait states allows the vendor to use slower and cheaper memory but will slow down your actual memory subsystem throughput. This is a particularly important question for the *cache* memory! * If you're buying a factory-configured system, does it have FCC certification? While it's not necessarily the case that a non-certified system is going to spew a lot of radio-frequency interference, certification is legally required --- and becoming more important as clock frequencies climb. Lack of that sticker may indicate a fly-by-night vendor, or at least one in danger of being raided and shut down! X. Things to Check when Buying Mail-Order A. Tricks and Traps in Mail-Order Warranties Reading mail-order warranties is an art in itself. A few tips: Beware the deadly modifier "manufacturer's" on a warranty; this means you have to go back to the equipment's original manufacturer in case of problems and can't get satisfaction from the mail-order house. Also, manufacturer's warranties run from the date *they* ship; by the time the mail-order house assembles and ships your system, it may have run out! Watch for the equally deadly "We do not guarantee compatibility". This gotcha on a component vendor's ad means you may not be able to return, say, a video card that fails to work with your motherboard. Another dangerous phrase is "We reserve the right to substitute equivalent items". This means that instead of getting the high-quality name-brand parts advertised in the configuration you just ordered, you may get those no-name parts from Upper Baluchistan --- theoretically equivalent according to the spec sheets, but perhaps more likely to die the day after the warranty expires. Substitution can be interpreted as "bait and switch", so most vendors are scared of getting called on this. Very few will hold their position if you press the matter. Another red flag: "Only warranted in supported environments". This may mean they won't honor a warranty on a non-DOS system at all, or it may mean they'll insist on installing the UNIX on disk themselves. One absolute show-stopper is the phrase "All sales are final". This means you have *no* options if a part doesn't work. Avoid any company with this policy. B. Special Questions to Ask Mail-Order Vendors Before Buying * Does the vendor have the part or system presently in stock? Mail order companies tend to run with very lean inventories; if they don't have your item in stock, delivery may take longer. Possibly *much* longer. * Does the vendor pay for shipping? What's the delivery wait? * If you need to return your system, is there a restocking fee? and will the vendor cover the return freight? Knowing the restocking fee can be particularly important, as they make keep you from getting real satisfaction on a bad major part. Avoid dealing with anyone who quotes more than a 15% restocking fee --- and it's a good idea, if possible, to avoid any dealer who charges a restocking fee at all. Warranties are tricky. There are companies whose warranties are invalidated by opening the case. Some of those companies sell upgradeable systems, but only authorized service centers can do upgrades without invalidating the warranty. Sometimes a system is purchased with the warranty already invalidated. There are vendors who buy minimal systems and upgrade them with cheap RAM and/or disk drives. If the vendor is not an authorized service center, the manufacturer's warranty is invalidated. The only recourse in case of a problem is the vendor's warranty. So beware! C. Payment Method It's a good idea to pay with AmEx or Visa or MasterCard; that way you can stop payment if you get a lemon, and may benefit from a buyer-protection plan using the credit card company's clout (not all cards offer buyer-protection plans, and some that do have restrictions which may be applicable). However, watch for phrases like "Credit card surcharges apply" or "All prices reflect 3% cash discount" which mean you're going to get socked extra if you pay by card. Note that many credit-card companies have clauses in their standard contracts forbidding such surcharges. You can (and should) report such practices to your credit-card issuer. If you already paid the surcharge, they will usually see to it that it is restituted to you. Credit-card companies will often stop dealing with businesses that repeat such behavior. XI. Which Clone Vendors to Talk To I went through the March 1992 issue of Computer Shopper calling vendor 800 numbers with the following question: "Does your company have any configurations aimed at the UNIX market; do you use UNIX in-house; do you know of any of the current 386 or 486 ports running successfully on your hardware? I didn't call vendors who didn't advertise an 800 number. This was only partly to avoid phone-bill hell; I figured that toll-free order & info numbers are so standard in this industry sector that any outfit unable or unwilling to spring for one probably couldn't meet the rest of the ante either. I also omitted parts houses with token systems offerings and anybody who wasn't selling desktops or towers with a 386/33DX or heavier processor inside. After plundering Computer Shopper, I called up a couple of "name" outfits that don't work direct-mail and got the same info from them. The answers I get revealed that for most clone vendors UNIX is barely a blip on the screen. Only a few have tested with an SVr4 port. Most seem barely aware that the market exists. Many seem to rely on their motherboard vendors to tell them what they're compatible, without actually testing whole systems. Since most compatibility problems have to do with peripheral cards, this is a problem. Here's a summary of the most positive responses I got: A --- Advertises UNIX compatibility. C --- Has known UNIX customers. I --- Uses UNIX in-house. T --- Have formally tested UNIX versions on their hardware. F --- Have 486/50 systems * --- Sounded to me like they might actually have a clue about the UNIX market. Vendor A C I T F * Ports known to work --------------- - - - - - - ----------------------------------------------- ARC . . X X . . SCO XENIX 2.3.2, SCO UNIX 3.2.1 AST . X X X X * SCO UNIX 3.2.4, ODT 2.0 Microport V/4 Allegro . . X X . . SCO XENIX 3.2.4 Altec . X . X . . XENIX (no version given). Ares . X X X X * AT&T 3.2, ISC (version unknown) Basic Time . X X X X * SCO XENIX 2.3.2, have in-house UNIX experts. Binary Tech . X . X X . Claims to work with all versions. CCSI X X . . X . They've used SCO XENIX, no version given. CIN . X . . . . SCO UNIX (version not specified) CSS . X . X . * SCO 3.2.2, ISC 3.0, SCO ODT. See Will Harper. Centrix X . . . . . No specifics on versions. Compudyne . X X X X . Couldn't get details on which versions. Comtrade . X . X X . Couldn't get details on which versions. Datom X X X X X . SCO XENIX 3.2. Dell X X X X X * See Dell SVr4 data. Desert Sands X X . X X . SCO UNIX 3.2.4 Digitech . X . X . . SCO UNIX 3.2.1, XENIX 2.3.1 EPS X X X X . * SCO XENIX 3.2.4, ISC & AT&T (versions not sp.) Everex X X X X X * Esix 4.0.3 Gateway 2000 X X X X X * SCO UNIX 3.2.0. XENIX 2.3.4 ISC 3.0, ESIX 4.0.3 HD Computer . X . X X . SCO UNIX 3.2, SCO XENIX 3.2.2 HiQ . X . X . . SCO UNIX (version not specified) Infiniti . X . X X . SCO UNIX (versions not specified) Insight . . X . X . SCO XENIX 3.2.4. No tech support for UNIX Keydata X . X X X * SCO version 4, ISC 3.2 Legatech . X . . X . SCO UNIX, ISC (versions not specified) MicroGeneration . . X . . . Uses XENIX. MicroLab X . . . . . SCO UNIX, SCO XENIX MicroSmart X X . X . . SCO XENIX (version not specified) Microlink X . . X X . SCO XENIX (version not specified) Myoda X X . X X . SCO XENIX 3.2.2, ISC 3.2 Naga . X . X X * SCO & XENIX 3.2. Northgate X X . X X * SCO UNIX 3.2 PC Brand . X X X . . SCO XENIX, ISC UNIX PC Professional . X . X . . ISC 3.2 PC-USA X X . X . . ISC 5.3.2 and SCO 3.2 Profex . X . X . . SCO XENIX 3.2. Royal Computer . X . . X . No details on versions. SAI X X . X X . SCO UNIX 3.2.2. Santronics . . X X X . SCO XENIX 3.2.4 Solidtech . X . . . . Dell (no version given), ISC 3.2. Strobe . . . X X . SCO, Microport, ISC (no version numbers given) Swan X X X X X * SCO 2.3.1, UNIX 3.2, ISC 3.2v2.0.2 TriStar . X X X X * SCO UNIX 3.2.2, XENIX 2.3.2, ISCr4 Zenon . X . X X * SCO UNIX (version not specified) Zeos . X X X X * SCO XENIX 3.2.4, AT&T 3.2 Special notes about a few vendors who appear to have a clue: Ares targets some of its systems for UNIX CAD use. They have a house wizard name Ken Cooper (everybody calls him "K.C."). EPS targets some 486 EISA configurations for UNIX. Swan doesn't know the UNIX market very well yet, but their project manager wants a bigger piece of it and is interested in doing some of the right things. They have a house wizard, one John Buckwalter. Dell, of course, supports an industry-leading SVr4 port. They're a bit on the pricy side, but high quality and very reliable. Lots of UNIX expertise there; some of it hangs out on the net. Zeos is on the net as zeos.com, with a uunet connection; they host a UNIX BBS. They have an in-house UNIX group reachable at support@zeos.com. There are biz.zeos.general and biz.zeos.announce groups on USENET. Special notes about a lot of vendors who appear to have *no* clue: Vendors where I couldn't get a real person on the line, either because no one answered the main number or because I couldn't raise anyone at tech support after being directed there: Sunnytech, Quantex, AMS, USA Flex, Lapine, Syntax Computer, MicroTough, PAC International, The Portable Warehouse. Vendors where the question met with blank incomprehension, puzzlement, consternation, or "We've never tested with UNIX": Allur, AmtA, Aplus, HiTech, Locus Digital Products, LodeStar, Ultra-Comp, UTI Computers, PC Turbo Corp, Evertek, Microcomputer Concepts, Jinco Computers, UWE, ToughCom, System Dynamics Group, Terribly Fast Bus Systems. Vendors who understood the questions but had no answer: Bulldog Computer Products, LT Plus, Standard Computer, JCC. Vendors who said "Yes, we're UNIX-compatible" but had no details of any tests: CompuCity. Vendors who said "Go ask our motherboard vendor": Ariel Design, Lucky Computer Co., V-com, Professional Computer, MicroLine, MileHi. Vendors who sent me to a toll number: Absec, Hokkins, New Technologies, Mirage. Vendors that believe they have UNIX customers, but can't be any definite than that: Austin Computer Systems, PC Professional, Treasure Chest Computer Systems, CompuAdd Express, FastMicro, MidWest Micro. Final note: If you order from these guys, be sure to tell them you're a UNIX customer and don't need the bundled DOS. This will shave some bucks off the system price, *and* it may encourage them to pay more attention to the UNIX market. -- Send your feedback to: Eric Raymond = esr@snark.thyrsus.com