19 Jun
2008
19 Jun
'08
3:41 p.m.
I have one as well. I think mine has the 7300 stamp rather than the UnixPC
name. It's got the 8086 coprocessor board to run DOS apps.
I have the dev kit, a few OS revs, and a pile of documentation.
For it's time it was a pretty decent low-end workstation with a fairly good
(non-X11) windowing system. Biggest problem was how slow it was at floating
point, probably due to a crappy math library. I don't even think there was
an option for a 68881.
Since it was designed by convergent, the machine itself it a lot like the
Convergent Miniframe (possibly even software compatible). The unix itself
was pretty good with virtual memory and memory mapped files, but the max
per-process address space was a 2MB which was also the max-RAM supported,
IIRC.
Eric
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Mark Tapley <mtapley at swri.edu> wrote:
At 12:04 -0500 6/19/08, Michael Lee wrote:
Anyone collect and/or need parts to the AT&T
Unix PC? I've got a pile
of systems I dismantled over a decade ago, and don't really want or know
how to put back together.
All,
I have a working one, and a fair amount of documentation. I have not
spent enough time with it to be considered any kind of "expert" but I may be
able to answer some questions. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can pipe
up here. The systems seem pretty cool, although they are kind of rudimentary
as unix workstations.
Michael,
where are you? I.e. where would shipping be from?
--
- Mark 210-379-4635
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Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:
Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
19 Jun
19 Jun
3:50 p.m.
Eric wrote about the AT&T Unix PC (7300):
Biggest problem was how slow it was at floating
point, probably due to a crappy math library.
Was it significantly slower than other contemporary 68K machines
that used software floating point?
I don't even think there was an option for a
68881.
It would have been quite surprising if there had been one, since the
MC68881 wasn't announced until well after the 7300 was introduced.
Eric
5:37 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:
Eric wrote about the AT&T Unix PC (7300):
What I had to compare it to at the time was a Sun 100u and a Tandy 16. It
was comparable to the tandy 16 and significantly slower than the Sun 100u,
especially at transendentals. It was also significantly slower than a 7.16
MHz V30 (also with software floating point). Of couse the PC world was a
far more competitive place for C compilers with everyone saying theirs was
the fastest. I've often wondered if the AT&T and Tandy compilers used
floating point routines provided by Motorola rather than developing their
own.
Eric
Biggest problem was how slow it was at floating
point, probably due to a crappy math library.
Was it significantly slower than other contemporary 68K machines
that used software floating point?
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