Increasing throughput on AT&T 6383E WGS AT&T Unix SysV r3.2

[Jonathan R. Herr]

Hello!  Gee, I hope someone out there can help me with this problem.
Things are really bad already and bound to get worse.  First, a little
background info ...

System:  AT&T 6386E WGS 20 MHz
	 8 Meg. RAM
	 AT&T IPC 802 Intelligent Ports Card (8 serial, 2 Parallel ports)
		4 terminals on serial ports
		2 Dot Matrix printers on parallel ports

OS:	 AT&T Unix SysV/386 r3.2

I just recently installed two of the four terminals and began experiencing
some very serious slowdown on the system.  I can attribute some of this to
users popping up DOS shells under VP/ix, but I wouldn't think that it would
hamper the system to the extent that it has.  The main software that the
DOSers are using is MultiMate Advantage II (which has recently been ported
to Unix but they want $1400 for a five-user version).  The other system hog
is me.  I run FoxBase+ inside 3 to 4 virtual terminals at any given time.
This, however, is the Unix version.

I meant to bring home the configuration of the /etc/conf/cf.d/mtune file
but forgot it.  Basically, though, it's been configured for 4 Meg of RAM.
The other 4 Meg was installed about a month ago and I really don't have
the experience to change the system's configuration.  I've tried but gotten
several PANIC messages and the system halts.

Anyway, here's the deal.  I've got $1300 (and not a penny more) to spend
to speed things up.  Seeing that I use FoxBase+ pretty heavily and on the
side of the box they "highly" recommend a math coprocessor, I've thought
about getting one.  The only thing it that is that AT&T hardware seems
to be very propietary and I imagine that getting one is going to cost me.
Also, I'm not so sure that it would improve anything, either.  It's not like
it's using any trig functions.  It's mainly indexing.

What am I looking for?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps a better configuration
in the mtune file would help.  I KNOW that a Unix word processor would
help, but I can't convince anyone that changing from MM would be good and
I know it would be difficult (we have K's of MM documents that would have
to be converted).  Also, we use the .PRN files from MM to run mass mailings
on DOS machines.  I think that a coprocessor would help, but I'm the only
one that would really put it to good use I think.

So, if you have any suggestions -- so long as they are within the $1300
budget -- I'd love to hear from you.

Many thanks in advance ------


--
Jonathan R. Herr            |  herrj at valnet.uucp         | I know to trip
herrj at silver.ucs.indiana.edu|  uunet!iuvax!valnet!herrj  | is just to fall.
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