AT&T 3B2 system

[Bill Stewart]

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This is a reply to Mike Zaleski's (pegasus!mzal) article posted Nov. 2.
Mike commented that the 2 was a bit slow, although his definition of
slow was "doesn't respond instantly".  There is a good (i.e.  fixable)
reason for this - the system comes configured with only 30 buffers,
which means it *will* run, even if you have minimum hardware
configuration on it (i.e. you ordered the 1/2 meg memory and
removed one of the two boards.)  However, even with the 1/2 meg
configuration you should increase this (I don't know exactly how
much; for a VAX you should use 25% of your memory.)  To do this,
you need the System Reconfiguration Package.

The other reason people have called the 3B-2 slow is that a major
UNIX(tm) reviewing magazine didn't read the manual before they ran
their benchmarks.  The AT&T 3B computers use 100 clock ticks per
second instead of 60.  Therefore, their benchmark, which used
clock ticks for timing, reported a 66% too long time.  (They were
comparing supermicros, including the 3B2 and a bunch of 68000-based
systems.  Using the corrected numbers, the 3B2 was among the to 2
or 3 machines, instead of the bottom 2 or 3, for integer-CPU and
disk-related benchmarks.  It didn't have floating-point hardware,
so the floating-point performance was not very exciting, nut that
should be available soon.

			Speaking unofficially and *NOT FOR AT&T*,
				Bill Stewart
-- 
			Bill Stewart
			AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705
			...!ihnp4!ho95b!wcs