Need Recommendations On 386/486 UNIX systems

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <1990Dec18.002013.28881 at news.iastate.edu> i1neal at exnet.iastate.edu (Neal Rauhauser -- ELT Computer Applications Group) writes:
| 
|      I have $10k budgeted to build a system to handle 10 - 15 concurrent
| users. There will be 8 - 16 serial ports and a 1.5 MHz T1 line. Users
| will be running a news reader and downloading information, not much else
| will be occuring on the system. 

  I waited a few days for other replies on this and didn't see any. The
T1 is the kicker. If it is transformed by hardware into ethernet then
you have lots of choices. If you want to use some fancy interface you
must decide based on what o/s supports it.

  I would go with Xenix. It's not remotely state of the art, but it is
well tested and very reliable. I'm painfully aware that more modern
systems, and most versions of V.3.2, are not quite as reliable. It
supports multiport serial very well, it supports TCP if you don't need
NFS, and is generally a good solution to your particular problem.

|     1. processor speed, 386 or 486, cache sizes?

  With smart serial cards a 25MHz 386 will be fine.

|     2. system ram, 12 meg? 16 meg? more?

  Go with 16, memory is down around $42/MB, choose a system which put it
all on the motherboard. Regardless of ads, many versions of 386 unix
become strange after 16MB. You don't need that much, don't blaze a trail
for others.

|     3. disk controller? Adaptec 1740? 

  Garder variety ESDI. Use two drives to improve performance. I will
venture to recommend the CompuAdd caching controller and Seagate (Wren)
766MB (670MB formatted) controller and drives. These have worked well in
about a dozen systems at work, with varying loads, and I'm confortable
recommending them.

|     4. 16 port serial card?

  Two 8's. You might find performance a hair better one way or the
other, but redundancy says use two, and there's no drawback I can see.
*Smart* cards, please.

|     5. the best worm or MO disk with worm capabilities - necessary for
|        legal/archive purposes

  Spend the money on a good tape drive and do the backup faithfully.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me