DECstation 3100

[Alex Crain]

In article <4716 at decvax.dec.com>, rsp at decvax.dec.com (Ricky Palmer - (603)881-0370 - ZK3-3/T74) writes:

> You might want to take a look at what is causing your problems:
> 
> 	If your machine is swapping to the ethernet frequently it is very
> probably because it just plain doesn't have enough memory for all that you
> want to run.

	No kidding? Like I said, my machine has (only?) 8Mb. It swaps over the
ether to another 3100 with an RZ23, 32 meg allocated allocated for swap.

	In a word, performance is abysmal with this configuration. As best I 
can figure, this machine should have a minimum of 16 Mb, and a local swap disk,
probably an RZ55. Add those things, and you've got a dynomite single-user
workstation. It probably wouldn't crash so much, either.

	But thats not what DEC is selling. I get the impression from the
announcements and demos that this thing is supposed to work out of the box,
and it doesn't. You probably should have 24Mb to run this thing diskless and
use it as anything other then a glorified terminal.

> I am surprised that you can "crash" the machine just by swapping.  I would
> like to see this in person since it should not happen.

	I'm not sure that this is crashing *because* of swapping, but it
does crash under stress, and I can make it crash If I beat on it hard enough.
I believe that this should not happen, but I don't care enough to go digging
through the kernal to fix a supported product. I reported it and was informed
that it didn't happen, so I must have dreamed it.

> Also, if you are porting code AND running DECwindows you definitely should
> have more memory. DECwindows is a memory PIG. 

	I'm not running DEC windows.

	Here's a scenerio. I'm running a normal system (kernal, syslog, 
portmap, ypbind, biod, sendmail, xdm, Xmfb, update, cron, inetd, rwhod, lpd, 
elcsdm) and some user processes (uwm, xclock, xbiff, xload, xterm, xterm).

	Now for the heavy stuff. If I try to link KCL (a 2.4 Mb binary) while
running emacs, I will probably run out of swap space. If I try to make
something else (repeatedly exec cc), The machine will probably crash.

	I'm not impressed.

					:alex
Alex Crain
Systems Programmer			alex at umbc3.umbc.edu
Univ Md Baltimore County		umbc3.umbc.edu!nerwin!alex