home unix on the cheap

[John Kimball]

I've started to think about acquiring a home Unix machine, to replace my
CP/M machine.

The main purposes would be
    o email and news
    o ability to run most of the freely-redistributable software we use
      at work (mainly GNU stuff)

Obviously I'd want a lot of disk (80+ meg?). I think I'd prefer to have a
machine with a 32-bit nonsegmented address space.  I'm not sure how much
horsepower is advisable.  I don't feel any strong desire for bitmapped
graphics.

I'm more comfortable with BSD-derivatives, but I'm not afraid of System V.

Anybody done this recently? Does anybody have any immediate suggestions as
to a reasonable configuration, and a place(s) to purchase it?  What are
some ballpark figures for the components?  How cheaply can this be done?

Thanks in advance . . .

                                             John Kimball

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