Nice value worthless??? / Renice?

[root at spdyne.UUCP]

I have a question about the nice values of processes:

	A few years ago, I was working on a VAX 11/730 running BSD 4.2.  When
you would nice a process by say 2, you could tell the difference right away.
It too considerably more or less time to complete.  A make niced to -20
would zip along (and everyone else would stop).

	Now I'm running a Compaq 386/20, with (sorta slow drives (40ms)),
and only 3 Meg of ram.  Microport UNIX with DOS-MERGE. (Sys V)

As far as I can tell, the nice value does absolutly nothing!
I have been running my makes +19 to allow other things to run and
I can't even page up/down in VI in under a few seconds.  
It takes the same amount of time even if I nice -20, so what good does it
do?

	One make kills the whole system. (or sending mail for that matter..
PS seems to bring things to a stop 80% of the time)

	Is it just the way that Sys V works or is it just that I don't have
squat for ram?  (Merge wants 2.6 Meg), Slow disks?  (I know that the
CPU waits on the transfer - right?)


	Also, Does anyone have a 'renice' for Sys V?  I have one for BSD, but
of course it is worthless under Sys V. 


	-Chert Pellett
	 root at spdyne