14 Jan
2017
14 Jan
'17
6:29 p.m.
On 01/14/2017 05:40 PM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Ahh, that may be part of the difference. I can't
remember how much
memory I had on it. I would not be surprised if it was as tiny as 128
KB, or maybe 256 KB. I'll check my schematics to see how many address
lines were implemented.
From: "Rick Bensene" <rickb at
bensene.com>
> - A Tektronix 4132 Unix workstation using a National 32016 CPU and a
> 4.2bsd port called UTek
>
Jon wrote:
Gee, how does it perform? I built a clone of a
Logical Microcomputer Co. 32016 Multibus system and got it working.
But, it was glacially slow! I did have some memory that was likely a little slower than
the stock memory, but it wasn't insanely slow. But, firing up certain things >like
editors was just maddening. And, I'm not talking about Emacs, just vi. I eventually
got a MicroVAX-II to replace it, and, yes, that DID have a cache to speed >up the
memory, but it was quite a difference.
Well...considering the era, it wasn't
too bad. By today's standards, yeah, it's pretty darned slow.
Vi starts up pretty quick, even with a couple of terminals running on it. It runs rogue
pretty nicely, quick enough for multiple people to play it at once.
The machine has 7MB of RAM, which really helps. Without additional RAM, there's
only 1MB on the main board, and running it with just 1MB makes it incredibly slow. There
isn't any external cache. It's fun to fire it up and just relive the days
when I was on cloud nine to have my own personal Unix workstation that I built myself from
parts.
If mine hadn't performed so poorly, I might have continued to use it,
and upgraded parts.
I got versions of Genix and Xenix with it. These were likely early
ports for the 32016, and may have had poor implementations for the MMU
for instance.
Jon