Another system running

Another system running

[Kevin]

FS using IDE?  do tell

ksh

Another system running

[jim]

	>>Times change.

	not that much; i'd still go scsi.
absolutely. i'm not suggesting IDE as a reasonable alternative, just
that had large drives been available when the port was done i might
have made (a little) effort to make them useable.
even today, the best you could do is 8 drives at < 2Mb each, not to
mention the configuration nightmare of 4 controllers and the performance
problems if they're not busmastering. admittedly the plan9 ide driver
makes no effort to optimise performance, again showing that it may look
like a pc but it's really just a terminal.

Another system running

[forsyth]

>>Times change.

not that much; i'd still go scsi.

Another system running

[jim]

Just for the record, the reason there is no support for IDE
drives as the main filesystem is that, at the time the port
was done, there were no large IDE drives or multiple IDE
controllers available and I didn't think it was worth it.

Times change.

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From:	"Kevin S. Ho" <ugcs.caltech.edu!ksh>
To:	cse.psu.edu!9fans
In-reply-to: forsyth@plan9.CS.york.ac.UK's message of Mon, 4 Mar 1996 15:57:55
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Subject: Re: Another system running
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FS using IDE?  do tell

ksh

Another system running

[forsyth]

the 386 has got the 32 bit instructions (unlike the 286).
the 386sx uses a 16-bit bus, but that doesn't
change the set of 32 bit operations available (it just makes the system
slower).

i used a 4mbyte 386sx16 as a Plan 9 terminal for several years
on the old release.  in that configuration you want a bigger machine
somewhere to act as a CPU server for compilations (and floating-point
work), and to run
acme, or the heavy-duty part of sam.

i've even used an 8mbyte 386sx16 as a file server, to test a version
of the file server kernel that used IDE instead of SCSI.
a 386sx16 is a bit slow for production use, but it works.

it might still be attractive to use small, cheap 386sx configurations
as highly specialised cpu servers controlling small devices on a network.

Another system running

[Steve]

> FYI, the file server has a Micronics M54Hi PCI/ISA motherboard with a
> pentium100, a 1.2 Gb ide drive (thanks to forsyth) and a 3c509; the
> authentification server is a 386sx16. The terminals are sun3s (more
> thanks to forsyth), sun4s and various brands of PC (most notably:
> 3c590 pci cards work fine).

I thot that plan9 only ran on 32bit intels..  The mention of a 
386sx16, while interesting (considering the low cost of such
hardware), is confusing to me.  

Can some or all of plan9 really run on a 386SX?

--steve

Another system running

[Tim]

> From: forsyth@plan9.cs.york.ac.uk
> Date: 	Tue, 27 Feb 1996 06:58:30 -0500
> Subject: Re: Another system running

> >>authentification server is a 386sx16. The terminals are sun3s (more
> >>thanks to forsyth) ...

> i should point out that dhog did the work for that sun3 version.
Is this version public? What would I have to do to get it ? (I've got an old
3/50 that would make a nice terminal)

Thanks,
Tim.

Another system running

[forsyth]

>>authentification server is a 386sx16. The terminals are sun3s (more
>>thanks to forsyth) ...

i should point out that dhog did the work for that sun3 version.

Another system running

[Jean]

There is here another plan9 network up and going.

FYI, the file server has a Micronics M54Hi PCI/ISA motherboard with a
pentium100, a 1.2 Gb ide drive (thanks to forsyth) and a 3c509; the
authentification server is a 386sx16. The terminals are sun3s (more
thanks to forsyth), sun4s and various brands of PC (most notably:
3c590 pci cards work fine).

It was nice to compile 8½ in 10 seconds. The constrat with the time
to compile X11 reminded me unix v6 vs. rsx11-m kernel compilations.

I feel pretty silly with a 386sx16 as cpu server, but I preferred use
the other pentium as terminal and compute on it.