Dell SVR4 on non-Dell hardware?

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <14656 at uudell.dell.com> sblair at upurbmw.dell.com (Steve Blair) writes:

  The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing here, Steve.
Let me make some comments based on both personal experience and what the
*Dell manual says*. ("Working with Dell UNIX") What you say seems at
variance to some of that information.

| **IF YOU INTEND TO RUN DELL's SYS V.4, on *non-DELL* h/w:
| ---------------------------------------------------------
| 
| 1) Disk Controllers: ESDI -- Ultrastor
| 	 	SCSI -- Adaptec 1542B
| *are currently the "supported" controllers*

  The manual says "Supported types are integrated drive electronics
(IDE) enhanced small device interface (ESDI), and small systems computer
interface (SCSI). Experience says the WD100X series works, and I'm
running one system with a DTE.

| 2) Ethernet cards: WD8003, WD8003e WD8003-10BaseT
| *are the currently supported controllers*(3Com, in future)

  The manual lists the 8013 and admits it doesn't auto configure.

| 3) Tape Controllers/Tape Drives: Adaptec *QIC150/250* drive
| 			Adaptec Tape Controller
| *are the *ONLY* supported controller & drive*

  My beta stuff said Wangtek PC-36 and EV-811, and experience says they
both work, with the 5099 or 5125 drives.
| 
| 4) Video Controllers: VGA -- DELL/Paradise VGA(640x480)
| 			GPX -- DELL GPX card(1024x768)

  Most VGas work well, although the ET4000 chipset may have a funniness
with the sysadmin menu stuff (haven't gone back to the old VGA to test).

| 5) Memory:  A good recommendation is a *MINIMUM* of 4Mb's
| 	*for non X Windows based users*
| 	*FOR X WINDOWS USERS -- 8Mb's or *more*(!!!)*

  The manual says 4 to run and 8 to install. And at least on an SX you
will find X disgustingly slow until you add the 387. Don't own a 386DX
without FPU, so I can't say how that would work. I have no handle on
finding out what memory is doing on V.4, because the free memory seems
to become disk buffers. When I went from 8 to 12 MB I checked with both
sar and perfmon and saw free memory reported go from 400k to 1200k. I
conclude there's no easy way to tell if you have enough memory, although
you can look at page faults. 12MB doesn't seem much better than 8, so
either "8 is enough" or even 12 is grossly inadequate.
-- 
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