4.2BSD on uVaxII ??

[Sebastian Schmitz]

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References: <1736 at ukma.UUCP> <bu-cs.391>
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Reply-To: snoopy at ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz)
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Organization: European Computer-Industry Research Centre, Munchen, W. Germany
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Hello my avid ones,
this is a newsflash from ECRC's reporter on the new DEC
MicroVAX ][ machine:it had its world premiere in Munich.
In the beginning this looked quite nice.

The new MicroVAX ][ is the latest VAX: its a single chip VAX
(so they say) and its claimed to have 80% of the power of a
780. Its meant to support up to 48 users but typically it will
be less.

Price wise it seems competitive: an MV ][ with a dual floppy
amd integral streamer cassette tape (95 MB), 2MB Ram, 71 MB
winchester and Ethernet interface will cost less than DM 100k.
(For B-movie actor fans this means about US$ 30k)

The backplane will support two controllers for discs but the
floppy drive and tape drive are included so you can presently
have at most 3 * RD 53 (@ 71MB each = 121 MB) in there with everything
else. Why on earth will two controllers only support five
discs ? 2.5 discs/controller doesn't look right somehow. In
other words I don't know.

The actual architecture: its a full VAX but of course no PDP11
compatibility mode. Its a Q-Bus machine and the memory is on a
special 32bit bus. This is different to the MV I which had a
dual ported memory used by the CPU and the I/O stuff via the
Q-Bus. This was one of the reasons why the MV I was/is so
dreadfully slow. The MV ][ cures this with the special bus (but
I wonder what happens when those dreaded DMA devices come
along).

The $64,000 question: what about UNIX. Well needless to say not
4.2 (due to lack of Q-Bus device drivers) but rather ULTRIX 32m
(for MicroVAX). DEC claim that ULTRIX is already working
(without the problems the MV I had - ho, ho ho. :-) ) and
available. They also claim to have invested more than us$15
million into ULTRIX last year. This sounds amazing. The few
changes they made to 4.2 certainly don't seem like they cost 15
* 10^6 dollars - but then of course DEC may pay *very* good
salaries ( we bow our head in silence for those trampled in the
mad rush for DEC personnel office :-) )

The even more astounding claim was that they claim that VMS is
faster than 4.2. I nearly fainted. After the room has stopped
spinning, I managed to gasp that so far I have spoken to many
people and I know of at least two sites who
have thrown out VMS (on 780's) and taken in UNIX because of
speed. That is a *lot* of work and that must say something
about how much is to be gained in the process. They
also claim that the DEC Ada (what !?!) is the
fastest Ada around. Thats nice but who wants *d* anyway ? DEC
want to invest heavily into compiler construction. They want to
produce better FORTRAN and COBOL compilers. AAARGGGhhhhh...I
nearly lost the buffet lunch...

They also claim that the MV ][ is faster
than any 680X0 (x= set of 0,1,2) machine on the market or in
fact any other 32-bit single chip product. This may be true but
I've put it into the 'extortionate claims' list because it sure
sounds like one. It may also be true because there simply are
not a lot of 68020 systems on the market at this moment.
Actually I couldn't think of any offhand, HELP !!

The MV I will die by the end of the year. Its not surprising.
I won't miss it.

The above opinions are absolutely my own and please imagine
the usual footnotes here:

Now to answer the question: why would people want such machine ?
Well I used to work for a DEC distributor here in Germany and I
was told by someone from DEC that they have one customer in the
US who does seismic exploration and that he's always getting
annoyed because his software people slow down the 'big VAX'
(then a 780) which should only run the seismic analysis
software. So he went out and bought an MV I for everyone of his
developers. I presume he got massive discounts because he
certainly didn't get speed. Mind you it did take a load off the
big VAX. I feel the only reason to get such a machine is when
you want to write assembly language progs which are binary
portable within the VAX range. Ahh but then are they ? How
about system calls,etc.

Perhaps we should get something going in net.flame but then I
don't get that so you'll just have to bear this trite.

  Love,
  Sebastian (Snoopy)

"You haven't done it, till you've done it with pointers !"

( \!mcvax\!unido\!ecrcvax\!snoopy ) /* N.B. valid csh address */
-- 
  Love,
  Sebastian (Snoopy)

"You haven't done it, till you've done it with pointers !"

( \!mcvax\!unido\!ecrcvax\!snoopy ) /* N.B. valid csh address */