Is this a reasonable platform for SCO Unix?

[Charles Blair]

I've just installed SCO Unix on a 16 MHz AST Bravo 386/SX, Paradise
VGA Plus card, Princeton Max 15 monitor. The installation went well,
and Open Desktop looks like it might be something I could put in front
of our users (the configuration above is standard for them), but
performance is very slow.

Admittedly, the machine has only 4 MB memory (we'll install more, but
the dealer said 4 MB was sufficient if we didn't push it). However, I
wonder whether upgrading to 6 or 8 MB will alter performance
sufficiently to make a real difference. Right now the unit might keep
up with an old 4.77MHz PC running MS-DOS, but no more, in terms of how
it looks to the user (obviously, it's doing a lot more).

Is the 386/SX architecture just sub-optimal for Unix? (The doc said
the SX is the slowest 386 around, and that some chips can barely keep
up under some circumstances; as I recall, this was in re: drives and
interleaving; our drives are pretty fast.) Is the video card too slow?
What's a reasonable platform, to make SCO Unix an attractive
alternative to something line MS-Windows?

Any responses with people's experiences, etc., will be much
appreciated.

Thanks.

--
Internet: chas at uchicago.edu