Jacob Suter <jsuter@intrastar.net> wrote:
> I just seriously dislike the SCSI
> controller in these m30's
   
   How are you going to run them then? Do everything over NFS? I can
imagine your performance... It would be really easy for people to tell that
it's not a Pentium or a SPARC, and you'll have to put up with people
calling you a hobbyist retrocomputist and your OS a hobbyist toy absolutely
unfit for serious use. The latter requires taking a very powerful VAX,
equipping it with a laundromat of disks (~10 GB and ~300 kg total), hanging
about 10 "satellites" off of it, each equipped with a small local disk, and
having it all run faster, better, and cooler than the Pentiums that INS is
wasting the University's money on.
   
> Most people here are into hobbyist retrocomputing, but whats the real
> difference between it and professional retrocomputing.
   
   Have you read the description of this difference in my posting? If not,
go back and reread it, I have archived it for your convenience at
<http://sclwww.scl.cwru.edu/~mxs46/retro1.txt>. Basically, professional
retrocomputing means refusing to use "modern" technology and using the
technology of a venerable age to solve present problems, achieving the same
performance one would achieve with "modern" technology. In plain English,
this means using a farm of VAXen to match one Pentium, or a 300-kg
laundromat of Winchesters to match one 3.5" "hard drive".
   
> Do you think JKH
> or Linus had any plan that their software would EVER be used
> professionally?
   
   I'm not talking about Linux, FreeBSD, or any other Pentiumish OSes here
at all. This discussion is about RETROcomputing.
   
   Regarding your machines and the compilation time for Lynx, I'll get back
to this when I have time to try it on my hardware, which consists of one
80386 and a bunch of VAXen. BTW, you haven't said explicitly how much RAM
do you have on your 80386. I remember you saying that it's half of what
your have on your VAX, so I'm assuming 8 MB. Is this correct?
   
> >    I disagree. NetBSD/vax is very unstable (especially on BabyVAXen),
> > and therefore probably easy to crash, even unintentionally. You do
> > something wrong, and here it goes. Up in flames.
>
> Well of course.
   
   If you agree that NetBSD/vax is unfit for uses that require bulletproof
reliability and security, why are you defending it then?
   
> NetBSD/VAX has not been terribly stable (though I haven't tried
> 1.3-release yet) on my vs'es, but its getting there.
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   
   I hope that I make my first release with flawless and rock-solid BabyVAX
support before NetBSD "gets there".
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 440-449-0299
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: sokolov@alpha.ces.cwru.edu