Suggestions for 386SX/SVR4 platform

Bob Drzyzgula m1rcd00 at fed.FRB.GOV
Sat Jun 1 04:15:59 AEST 1991


We're a SPARC shop, but are looking to put together a
couple of inexpensive 386SX boxes to run SVR4 and do uucp
and SLIP communications. These are not going to be user
workstations, but we will be doing compiles and stuff there
to set things up and keep them running. The obvious choice
seems to be DELL, but so far we've been getting a
run-around there on pricing for low-end configurations.
What we have in mind is something like the following:

	16 or 20 MHz 386SX, roomy tower cabinet
	8 or 16 MB; SIMMS sockets pref., esp. for 4MB SIMMS
	SCSI controller
	300-600 MB SCSI Disk
	5.25" & 3.5" Floppies
	Super VGA graphics card
	Small (14" or so), high-resolution monochrome monitor
	101 Keyboard & Mouse
	Ethernet Controller
	8-port serial card
	SVR4 unlimited user license
	C compiler
	TCP/IP software w/SLIP
	X windows software

Any suggestions/comments, especially wrt hardware/software
combinations known to be relatively trouble-free and 
non-fascist (recent exchanges concerning various vendors'
customer-control tactics have been noted), are welcome.

I'd also like it if we could use hand-me-down Sun
peripherals on these systems. In particular, I'll probably
be able to allocate some 91 MB Wren SCSI drives we had been
using as "paging packs", and I might come across an old
SCSI QIC-24 tape drive. Even more extreme, I might be idiot
enough to consider using some old Micropolis 1558 327MB
ESDI drives out of an old Sun 3/160. How likely are these
things to work? Any words of advice?

One other thing: does anyone know if internal Telebit 
modems are commonly supported by SVR4 implementations?
It'd save some space on the table...

Thanks,
Bob Drzyzgula
Federal Reserve Board
Washington, DC
rcd at fed.frb.gov



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