Running X windows on a 16MHz 386sx
Tin Le
tin at szebra.uucp
Thu Oct 18 15:46:48 AEST 1990
> In article <1990Oct16.201137.18397 at nstar.uucp> larry at nstar.uucp (Larry Snyder) writes:
>kaleb at thyme.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley ) writes:
>
>>real bottleneck tho' is the VGA display on the 8mhz AT bus. After a year of
>>living with the SX, I just upgraded to a 486 and, while all around faster,
>>the display is still the weak link (it is a 16bit VGA.) What intrigues me
>>the most is that the display performance for OS/2 is orders of magnitude
>>better; the X server writers need to get a lot smarter about handling the
>>VGA, especially bit blitting.
>
>I've also heard that X11R4 is faster writing than X11R3 with regular
>16 bit VGA boards as well..
Yes. X11R4 is faster in many aspects. The server has been optimized
in a number of areas. It is well worth upgrading to it if you are running
R3 now. On an SX, the minimum requirements are (in order): >=8MB RAM, high
speed graphics card (VGA 800x600 or better), X11R4.
I use a 386/20 and X11R4 performance is adequate for my need. I only need
to keep an eye on szebra (a Pub *NIX node with full news feed). Several
x clients, a TB+ line, news feed, a couple windows all works just fine. I
do have the system params tuned so that there is no paging/swapping. No,
I only have 8MB (nothing fancy). Folks, it is possible to have a usable
X system without spending a lot of money.
Yes, you are right. I wouldn't want to also develop software on it.
If I were to do that, then I'd get more memory (at least 16MB total) and
a faster hard disk. The key point here is not the speed of the processor,
but rather the I/O subsystem throughput. A 386sx is perfectly adequate to
run X11R4. The bottleneck that people are complaining about here is the
graphics (EGA/VGA isn't exactly a speed demon, even a 16bit card), paging
and swapping problems (more memory and faster hard disk/controller helps),
and probably also bad serial I/O throughput (the default 8250 or even
14450 UART is a piece of garbage folks, upgrade to 16550 immediately!).
With the proper system tuning and I/O subsystems, I can make a lowly
386 seems as fast as a SPARC (NOTE: I said "seems") in terms of responsive
user interface.
I am sure everyone would love to own a 486/33 with 16MB RAM or more.
Yeah, me too :).... But I sure as hell can't justify spending so much
money when it's not really needed.
In Summary: Here is my opinion, it's free so take it with a grain of salt.
A 386sx is fine to run *nix and X Windows
BUT, it must be at least of the following configuration:
- 8MB RAM (or more)
- 16bit VGA (get a fast one) must support at least
800x600 16 colors (SVGA of 1024x768 is great)
Or (if you can afford it)
- 8514/A with a graphic co-proc (TI 32XXX)
- 14" monitor (16" would be much better); color would
be nice but monochrome is fine
- high speed HD system (ESDI or SCSI) it's your personal
bias here (I prefer SCSI, but 15Mb ESDI is fine).
- fast HD (of course, fast ctrlr with slow HD is useless)
Cost:
386sx/16 Motherboard (0K) $300
8MB RAM (100ns or 120ns) $400-$450
16bit VGA (256KB VRAM or more) $180-$280
14" monochrome (NEC) $200+
Adaptec 1542B SCSI $300+
80MB SCSI (16ms) $400+
case/power/floppy/keybrd $300
--------
$2080-$2380
Unix S5 R3.2 Full package (ESIX?) $800+
Thomas Roelle X11R4 Xvga Free
Gnu gcc/g++/bash/files/etc Free
-- Tin Le
--
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|Tin Le | tin at smsc.sony.com or tin at szebra.uucp
|Station Zebra |....!{claris,zorch}!szebra!tin
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