🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct9.210429.2395@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> eboltz@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu  
(Eric Scott Boltz) writes:
> With all this talk of how slow 3.0 is, I am getting very concerned
> about my planned purchase of a NSTC. I had an 030 cube running 1.0,
> and upgraded to an 040 running 2.1 so I am deathly scared of winding
> up with a SLOW interface again. Hell, everyone here wants me to get
> a Sun IPX and a slow interface would start an endless stream of 
> "wow, my IPX is much faster" comments.

But the IPX has a much *slower* interface thann a NSTC. Even the SS-10
takes several seconds to refresh the screen when there are some five or six
windows on it. This is quite usual for X servers, BTW.

[stuff deleted]

> I am also concerned about disk throughput. One poster suggested the NeXT
> would only support something like 400kB/sec on the SCSI. WHAT?!
> IS THIS TRUE? Good thing they put a SCSI-2 connector back there so
> I can hook up and 10MB/sec disk only to have it trickle data...

YES, IT IS (almost) TRUE! And don't worry about it. I used to have an SS-1
for my own, and the disk transfer rate was also in the 500KB/sec rate. The SS-2
is not much faster (as is the IPX). Only the SS-10 does much better than that.
BTW. I hooked up a Maxtor-PO-12 to my '040/25, and it delivers around 850K/sec.
Yes, it IS slower than a Piss-Cee, but a UNIX-like OS context-switches all the
time between user- and kernel-mode while reading from disk. One cannot compare
UNIX-OS disk transfer speeds with speeds of Piss-Cees running Mess-DOG.
A Pissy won't let you do anything else while reading/writing a disk, while
a UNIX-box will. It's the functionality that counts.

> I want NeXTstep back on my desk, but I cannot afford to sink many
> thousands of dollars into a slow system.

3.0 is slower than 2.2. I'm sure 3.1 will be back to lightning :-).
X.0 versions are usually critical in terms of bugs and speeed.

--
Volker Herminghaus-Shirai (vhs@rhein-main.de)

Computer industry: Industry in which the number of units sold of any
given product is inversely proportional to its technical excellence.
See also: MS-DOS, Windows, IBM-PC, X, QWERTY,
          80x86, TrueType, Survival of the shittest.