Summary: X development on 386 UNIX and recommended hardware

[Oliver Sharp]

About a month ago, I posted a request for information about the various
386 Unix flavors.  I asked about recommended motherboard/disk combinations,
as well as whether a 386 Unix makes a good X development environment.  As
promised, here is the summary of responses that I got.  Rather than simply
include the text of the responses, I edited them to cut down on bandwidth.  
Many thanks to everyone who replied, and I hope this helps some people ...

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First question: what motherboard to choose

carroll at cs.uiuc.edu:

I don't have a motherboard preference - I've run UNIX on several
different motherboards, with (to me) no noticeable difference.

From: mra%srchtec.uucp at mathcs.emory.edu (Michael Almond)

AMI motherboards/BIOS cause the least problems and are worth the extra
$100 or so you may pay for an AMI board (not just one with the BIOS).

From: andy at xwkg.icom.com (Andrew H. Marrinson)

We have had good luck with a variety of motherboards, but our current
favorites seem to be AIR and Soyo.  (Then again, I could be out of
date here.  Every week it seems we get a new Mboard in with some
amazing new combination of fast processor/more cache/etc.)

Next question: recommended drive/controller combinations

carroll at cs.uiuc.edu:

I like my Adaptec SCSI / Maxtor Drive combo though. I recommend that
combination. It's reliable, and it delivers.

From: mra%srchtec.uucp at mathcs.emory.edu (Michael Almond)

SCSI drives work very well under Unix (Conner is my choice, Seagate is
cheap and loud).

From: andy at xwkg.icom.com (Andrew H. Marrinson)

On disk controllers/drives I do have some definite opinions.  We are
very much in the SCSI camp here.  You just can't beat it in my
opinion.  You will hear people say for a given drive ESDI is the
faster interface.  That may be, but some day you are going to want to
hook up a CDROM, or other relatively exotic device, and then SCSI
becomes a great idea!  besides, you can hook up a tape drive without
using another slot.  For more than one disk drive SCSI can often be as
fast or faster than ESDI too, since overlapped seeks fall out of the
SCSI spec.  (That's more of a win for multi-user boxes granted.)

Now to the drives.  A few years ago (here I go again), the answer was
easy: CDC/Imprimis.  Now Seagate has bought Imprimis.  Now that of
itself isn't the end of the world, although I was skeptical about
Seagate.  Lately, though, I've had a lot of Imprimis drives fail on me
in nasty and completely fatal ways.  This happened two or three times
in quick succession in about a month's time.  We've been steadily
replacing our Wren's ever since.  Now no drive lasts forever under
continuous use, and maybe it was just these drive's times.

Whatever, my alternatives to CDC are HP and Fujitsu.  Remember that we
are skewed somewhat towards the high-end here.  HP in particular, I
think, concentrates on large-capacity drives.  Both HP and Fujitsu
offer longer warranty periods than Imprimis (that should have been
Imprimis not CDC up there, sorry).  I now have a Fujitsu 600MB drive
here at home (yes I am spoiled) and it is the best drive I've ever
had.  Much faster than anything I've used before.  At least Fujitsu
probably makes smaller capacity drives.  I'd definitely look into
them.  I think they are worth any higher price.

anonymous:

Get an RLL or ESDI disk/controller combination.  Use the WD ESDI card
WITH A ROM.

Final question: which flavor of UNIX supports X development well

From: carroll at cs.uiuc.edu

I've only run ISC, but it's ok for X windows development. I did a lot
of Epoch development work on a '386 running ISC Unix with X. What
really cripples X on '386 is the VGA card, not the X implementation.
It's not vendor dependent - the VGA architecture is just wrong for
running X, and no X implementation is going to get around that.

From: mra%srchtec.uucp at mathcs.emory.edu (Michael Almond)

You'll need at least 4/6MB of memory, 8MB for X Windows.  Get a decent
monitor for X, 15 inches or greater.  You can get an OptiQuest 15"
monitor for about $750.

SCO sucks.
Dell very good. $995
Interactive has moved too far away from the standard.
UHC good support, great documentation. $1200

From: andy at xwkg.icom.com (Andrew H. Marrinson)

For X, the best is still Interactive.  That's unfortunate, because
their technical support is the pits.  They also have some problems
with their TCP/IP that can be annoying (see the closed sockets thread
in this newsgroup) if that is important.

If you want BSD compatibility I urge you to look into V.4.  We just
got this a week ago, and while it might be a bit premature I am very
impressed.  
                     .....
For what you want, I suspect you will be very frustrated with SCO's
C2.  It's just too different.  Their X is also one of the worst
around.  Interactive has the best X I know of for the 386, but I hate
to send any business their way because they really are mean bastards
when you try to tell them about bugs in their system.  Both SCO and
ISC, being V.3 based lack many of the BSDisms you probably want.

V.4, on the other hand, has all the BSDisms you want.  The problem
here is getting a decent X environment.  We have Dell, which supplies
a version of X that seems to be based on Thomas Roell's older server
(the one before he added 1024x768x256 support).  The biggest problem
we've had is that it reads the monitor ID pins to determine if it
should start in 800x600 mode.  Since most people use multi-sync
monitors rather than fixed frequency monitors like IBM sold, that ends
up meaning it is difficult to use the higher-res modes.  (A hacked
cable should solve the problem, but the id pins are not documented.
We are going to build a cable with switches and experiment to find the
right pins.)  Dell also tends to want you to buy their hardware.  They
have been more helpful than I expected despite the fact that we use
our own hardware, however.  On the plus side, Dell's server is 11R4,
and includes shared libraries including Motif and Xview (plus the
standards).  I haven't tried compiling any X programs yet.

There are other V.4 vendors out there.  Some of them are selling the
X11/NeWs server, others are sellling AT&T's XWIN, which is a rather
crummy implementation and I don't think it is X11R4 yet.  One in
particular, UHC, is selling the NeWs based server with both Motif and
Open Look (the latter I think including XView).  UHC is a bit pricey
though.  Less pricey is Microport.  I have no idea where they stand on
X.  I have a basic dislike for Microport, and it is worth noting that
they have reorganized under Chapter 11 once already.  Intel also sells
a V.4, but I wouldn't buy software from them on a bet.  Again, a
personal bias dating from the dark ages.  

From: staff at cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli)

Since you say you don't have any equipment yet, do not make the 
mistake of assuming that a 386-based solution is the most
cost-effective, or even necessarily the cheapest, one.  Sun sells
Sparcstation/SLC's for $5000, list; Data General sells one model
of Aviion for $4000, list; Acorn also has cheap RISC workstations
with sparkling pure BSD 4.3 on them.  These are all machines with
CPU's that are generally equal to, or better than, a 486 (depends
on your mix of integer/fp needs), with no or little discs but far
superior screens (large, hi-res, well architected) and buses, SCSI
for roll-your-own mass storage expansion, FULL OS licenses included
in the price... do look around.  Another interesting approach is
the used-workstation market; a friend just purchased a not-so-old
IBM RT risc ws for $2000 *complete*, and I hear Sun/3's are also
abundant and cheap; these will NOT give you as much CPU horsepower
as a good 386+387 solution, but they may be cheaper!

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That's it.  Thanks again for the replies!

Cheers,
- Oliver Sharp
oliver at karakorum.berkeley.edu