Altos 5000

[Tom Yager]

In article <1990Aug22.171700.23382 at ico.isc.com>, rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> ti at altos86.Altos.COM (Ti Kan) responds to a flame-ette from Foulk about the
> Altos 5000...
> 
> > Our Altos 5000 supports 200 users.  What serial port card out there
> > with a "standard" SCO driver can support such a requirement?...
> 
> This is nonsense...you don't have the CPU power to support 200 people 
> actually *using* the system.

Using it for what? Software development? X Window applications? Certainly,
200 users at that level would overwork any 486/25's resources (actually, I
can't think of a system for less than about $200,000 that could give 200
CPU-demanding users the performance they WANT, multiprocessing boxes
excluded).

It's a matter of degrees, however. There are still mid-size and large companies
out there serving armies of users from a VAX 780. Data entry, accounting,
customer service...most business applications are 90% user interaction. If you
can get the data to and from the terminal quickly, then the average user is
happy.

I have one customer that's still using a 32 user, Z80-based system I installed
in '83 or thereabouts. They could afford to move up, heaven knows they've been
approached enough times, but they're happy with what they have.

> ...you're going to run out of CPU power long before you run out of disk, 
> if your users are doing anything serious.

I guess we have different ideas of the word "serious." I get calls and
mail all the time from people who are using 386 UNIX systems to
serve ridiculous numbers of users (100 or more). I don't even want to talk 
about what some people are doing with 286 Xenix.

> Disk striping is truly useful, but disk mirroring is mostly a pawn in the
> feature game.  It takes substantially more I/O bandwidth to do the double
> output, and it doubles the cost of disk storage.  Why not spend only a few
> bucks extra and buy reliable disks?

Even "reliable" disks eventually die.

You're running a service business, say, a distribution house. Your order entry,
warehouse control, customer service--everything--is on the computer. You've
got everything backed up like a good doobie. One of your drives gets smoked.
Now, if you're mirrored, your system squawks at you but keeps running. No data
lost. If you're not mirrored, your system gets fussed about the sudden
inability to communicate with the drive. The data on it, possibly hundreds of
transactions since your last backup, is lost forever. Terminals lock, system
hangs, customers wait, you lose business.

If your data is indispensible, and instant access to it is crucial, then
mirroring is worth considering. What's the cost of an extra drive compared to
the business and data that can be lost to a system crash?

There are a lot of copies of Netware SFT in the hands of businesspeople who
agree with me, and a large part of the fuss over the Systempro is for its
mirroring and data guarding features.

> > You see, when we built the System 5000 we aimed very high.  This
> > system is so capable that we position it as a mini-computer, among
> > the ranks of Pyramids and Sequents...

That's pretty lofty. I'd say that, if anything puts the 5000 in that class,
it is the support for UNIX that the company provides. They offer virtually
everything you need to set up a serious multi-user, networked system.
Ethernet is standard. Multi-port, multi-drop and Ethernet terminal-server
connections are all offered by Altos, with specific support added to the OS
by them.

Dick, you and I know who to call to get these things separately, and neither
of us is put off by the prospect of rooting around in /etc/conf to get things
running. Executives have better things to do; they just want stuff that works.
Hell, even as a VAR, I'd like to have one number I could call to get
everything for my customer. And I would feel better knowing that the company
had enough expertise on staff to write some pretty hairy device drivers. The
value Altos adds to the OS is significant--it goes farther than just disk
drivers.

Altos isn't just selling a generic PC with a shrink-wrapped version of UNIX.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when your needs are defined in
dozens of users and gigabytes of disk space, you're definitely better off
dealing with a company that has thought these things through in advance. The
5000 is built, hardware and software, for serious (there's that word),
commercial use, exclusively for UNIX.

> >...Yet we priced it reasonably,
> > that it is in the same league as the "PCs", such as Compaq Systempro
> > and the HP Vectra.

I would place the 5000 in the same class as the Systempro hardware-wise, but
Altos' commitment to and support for UNIX is superior.

> What I see, overall, is that you've got a fairly capable, quite expandable
> 486 EISA machine.  I don't see anything qualitatively different about it.

I worked with one for over a month. I found a lot about the system, the OS,
and the company that I felt were "qualitatively different."

> > See the review of the System 5000 in the July issue of _UNIX WORLD_...
> _UNIX_World_??  Oh, yeah...isn't that the magazine that just carried an
> article about UNIX-based BBSes without a single word about either USENET or
> ARPANET?  I think you need a stronger source of review than that.

Thank you for the insult. I can handle criticism as well as any writer, but I
am not keen on those who badmouth my work without even having read it.

Dick, you and I agree about a lot of things, but on this subject we're
obviously at opposite poles. Forgive me, but since I've worked with the system,
dealt with Altos, and performed similar research on countless other Intel-
based (and other) UNIX systems, I'll humbly consider myself a better
authority on the matter than you. In any case, I'm objective: The original
posting complained about the 5000's inability to run a certain OS product with
which you have a mild involvement.

Regardless, I think your swipe at UNIX World, and my review, was out of line.
I am generally more diplomatic about disagreements than this, but at 3:15am,
I won't spend the time to filter my comments.

> -- 
> Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
>    ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.


-- 
+--Tom Yager, Technical Editor, BYTE----Reviewer, UNIX World---------------+
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| "I just bought...the Macintosh portable. And I took it back. Pain in the |
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