dosread.c again

[Charles Marslett]

In article <1989Oct22.003554.24199 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <5182 at uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> webb at uhccux.UUCP (Thomas Webb) writes:
> >... The moral here is that while DOS is undeniably
> >feeble, it works very well in a low cost, low power environment.  
> 
> Actually, Unix used to work pretty well in equally low-power environments.
> (Similarly slow CPUs, slightly better disks, far less memory, poorer I/O.)

Come on, I used to work on such machines (PDP-11s, even the older VAXen) and
they were dogs under Unix.  Why do you think so many people used (use?) VMS?
It is still around, isn't it?

Unix on a fast 11 might support a compile and two edits.  And the total clock
time was comparable to that of a 10 MHz 286 with Xenix.  For that matter, I
think Turbo C would do the whole thing twice as fast with the same hardware.

AND YOU SEEM TO HAVE MISSED THE PHRASE: low cost.

> >PS
> >Henry, I teach 'common people' about unix as part of my job, and most
> >of them don't want to know anthing more then how to load SPSS or
> >whatever anyway.  Maybe DOS has all they need?
> 
> Until they want to know why their DOS programs can't use any more than
> 640K of memory even though their 386 box has 2MB, that is.  DOS's mistakes
> have very little impact on canned-program users directly, but it gets its
> licks in indirectly, by making life harder for the application programs.

Yes, and try to explain why AutoCAD takes 2 MB under DOS, 4 MB under OS/2
and 7 MB under Xenix to get the same performance.  Again, life can be easier
(as in the Mac world), but you pay for it.

> -- 
> A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
> megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu

Charles
chasm at attctc.dallas.tx.us