!!xenix!! from NCR?

NCR is selling an Intel 80386 machine that runs a version of the !!xenix!! operating system from the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO, Santa Cruz, CA).

"Big deal," you say, "so is everyone else!"

True, but the ’386 based NCR PC916 model 3386-1111 that I recently took a look at, seems to out-perform a comparably equipped NCR Tower 32/400 that sells for substantially more than twice the price! Besides, independent benchmarks from Neal Nelson and Associates confirm my findings, and the NCR PC916 does outperform an NCR Tower 32/400!

SOME BACKGROUND

NCR has been a very successful participant in the Unix market for several years-- I know, many of my clients use NCR Towers and I work closely with NCR in the Denver area whenever I can. However, when I initially discovered that NCR was selling an officially sanctioned version of !!xenix!! from SCO I was nothing less than a little surprised.

NCR was one of the first large computer manufacturers to participate in the Motorola based Unix market when they announced the MC68000 based NCR Tower 1632 in 1981. Since that time they have manufactured and sold a series of MC680x0 systems, culminating with the current series of MC68020 based Tower 32/400, 600, and 800 systems running Unix System V.2. (My sources also indicate that NCR will soon be announcing faster versions of these systems, which will probably be known as the Tower 32/450, 650, and 850 systems.) Unlike many other manufacturers that entered the Unix market in the early part of this decade, NCR has been extremely successfully selling these systems to both the government and private sectors. In fact, the Towers which are manufactured in NCR’s Columbia, South Carolina facility are also being resold by Unisys with a Unisys label on the box.

So therefore, what is NCR trying to do by selling an Intel based system that competes with another of their own very successful systems? Who knows, but with the incredible price performance that the PC916 offers (along with many other ’386 based systems) while running the !!xenix!! operating system, I thought that it was worth taking a detailed look at the system.

The NCR PC916

The NCR PC916 comes in its smallest configuration with a 5-1/4" 1.2MB floppy, a 30MB hard disk drive (the one I received was from Seagate Model ST-4038), 2MB of 32-bit 70ns interleaved memory, an integrated EGA display adapter, an adapter board to support one serial and one parallel device, and a !!pc-dos!! compatible version of !!ms-dos!! that NCR calls !!ncr-dos!!. All of this is available from NCR for a list price of $6,353.00. Additionally, other standard features that are pretty much becoming industry standards include: a keylock, a battery controlled clock and calendar, the ability stand the unit on end ("Tower" configuration), several options for the European market, and even a user adjustable volume control for the speaker. The NCR PC916 is expandable to include additional memory in increments of of 2MB, a 3-1/2" 1.44MB floppy, an integrated tape backup unit, and either 80287 or 80387 math coprocessors that can fit into the 5 free AT bus compatible expansion slots or the space for up to 5 half height devices.

Conspicuously missing from the list of options is support for additional serial (either intelligent or otherwise) devices. Accordingly, I must assume that additional terminal support is only available from third party sources.

NCR !!xenix!! from SCO

NCR has decided to do what most of the other major players in the 386 !!unix!! market have done--elect to use !!xenix!! from SCO. However, I found it quite interesting that the version of SCO !!xenix!! available as an optional operating system for the NCR PC916 is not nearly the latest version. It is the at least year old version of SCO System V/286 version 2.1.3. Yes, you read that right, SCO !!xenix!! System V/286, not SCO !!xenix!! System V/386!

Needless to say, I chose not to load the old 286 version on the NCR PC916, but rather loaded an up to date version of SCO !!xenix!! System V/386. The installation proceeded very smoothly, indicating once again the benefits of today’s standard hardware platforms.

While I did not use the NCR distribution of !!xenix!!, I must say that I really approve of NCR’s unique packaging of the SCO !!xenix!! manuals. As a very pleasant diversion they are not the run of the mill, standard looseleaf bound, 5-1/2" X 8-1/2" manuals in boxes that are the standard way everyone seems to be distributing software these days. They are soft covered, spiral wound units with an extra deep cover that completely surrounds the pages yielding a flat section, opposite the binding, that allows the volume title to be displayed on a bookshelf. This is the same binding method that Open Systems () currently uses with their accounting software applications. I’m sure that this may be a lower cost method of distribution, but I really like this approach for several reasons: first, the manuals do not need to be assembled after removing several layers of shrink wrap; second, the binding method does not waste air space and takes up substantially less space on my bookshelves; and third, they take up substantially less space when opened on a work surface.

This method of binding reduces the shelf space required for the SCO !!xenix!! runtime manuals to less than 3-1/2 inches compared to the normal 9 inches. When shelf space is at a premium, as it is in my office, such conservation is much appreciated. However, as you might suspect, there is a trade-off: the insertion of update and replacement pages. Approximately 3/8ths of an inch of manual updates were included with the NCR distribution of SCO !!xenix!!. These pages needed to be inserted into the spiral wound manuals. Unfortunately this was less than as simple as inserting pages in a looseleaf notebook. Oh well, maybe someday someone will develop the perfect software binding technique. Until then we’ll just have to make do.

INSIDE AND AROUND THE NCR PC916

The very first thing that I did when I received the PC916 was to open the system to see what it looked like inside. It looks almost like any other PC, except that it doesn’t have a traditional mother board. What it does have what NCR has termed "split -card" architecture where the 80386 processor circuitry and primary memory have been separated on two expansion sized cards that insert into two of the system’s eight PC-style, 32 bit, slots. According to NCR, this direct 32 bit access between the processor and it’s interleaved memory greatly improves overall performance, and Neal Nelson’s benchmarks below seem to confirm this claim.

While the NCR Towers are domestically manufactured at NCR’s manufacturing facility in Columbia, South Carolina, the NCR PC916 is manufactured at their facility in West Germany. Accordingly, I found that the overall quality of the layout and assembly was exactly what one would expect from German engineers, but not much help for our balance of payments problems.

While opened, I wanted to see how the system would handle standard PC accessories, so I installed a four user Arnet intelligent user board, and an Archive FASTAPE FT-60 60 MB streaming tape drive.

I had absolutely no problem with the hardware installation, nor did I have any difficulty with the installation or operation of the appropriate software drivers. I still find it amazing that there is so much interchangibility in today’s market place. With such industry standard expansion devices working so well, and the 5 free expansion slots, the NCR PC916 can be expanded into a 8MB memory system (taking three additional slots) with support for 18 users (with two 8 user serial boards plus the console and the standard serial port, taking 2 slots) an externally mounted tape unit, and two internally 115MB full height hard drives.

While the NCR PC916 has fewer expansion slots than other clones (5 to be exact - three after I installed my Arnet multiuser board and Archive FASTAPE), and one fewer position for disk and tape drives than the Compaq Deskpro, the installation of additional drives is greatly simplified because NCR has taken the time (and extra cost) to include a plastic tray with all the additional hardware to install up to 5 half height (or 2 full height and 1 half height) devices. The hardware also includes a set of plastic slide rails that after being screwed to each device, allow those devices to slide into place and be secured with simple (well relatively anyway) front fastening retainers.

There were a few things about the hardware that I didn’t like. First, the NCR PC916 comes with a hinged front cover that encloses the plate where an internally mounted streaming tape unit will fit. The cover also hides the key locking mechanism and the speaker volume control while providing a hole to access the primary power switch. While this arrangement is somewhat attractive, the inexpensive plastic hinge mechanism arrived broken, resulting is a less than fully functional design. Additionally, a smoked gray plastic cover that can fit over the two plates where the two floppy drive would be mounted is included. I didn’t understand the usefulness of this front cover, unless it is simply a dust protector. The back of the system also includes a "feature" of dubious value: there is a separate plastic plate that fastens over the back plate of the enclosure (held in place with Velcro type fasteners) that provides nothing more than a prettier image for the back of the NCR PC916.

The keyboard that I received with the NCR PC916 was not just enhanced, but what NCR calls their "advanced" keyboard. In my opinion, its a keyboard that can’t make up its mind whether it a standard or enhanced one. It has a total of 30 functions keys, with 116 total keys. The first ten functions keys are on the left side of the keyboard (as a standard PC style keyboard) but the remaining 20 are laid out on the top of the keyboard (similar to an enhanced keyboard). Rather than the two **<Alt>** and **<Cntl>** keys that are usually found on an enhanced keyboard, the NCR PC916 "advanced" keyboard includes only one of each it the letter section of the keyboard that is identical to a standard keyboard. The numeric keypad portion resembles neither a standard nor an enhanced keyboard, but rather tries to take features from both.

While I recognize that keyboard feel is a very personal thing, in addition to not liking the layout, I also did not like the feel of the keyboard. In fact, I chose to connect a regular enhanced keyboard to the system which worked just fine.

THE NEAL NELSON BENCHMARK COMPARISONS

Neal Nelson & Associates (Chicago, IL) is rapidly gaining recognition as one of the leading benchmark companies serving the needs of the !!unix!! community. His approach for benchmarking utilizes 18 separate and different tests that simulate between one and twenty users on each system doing the same thing. If you’re interested in Neal’s approach, Neal discussed his methods for benchmarking !!unix!! systems in Volume II, issue number 3 of !!unix!! World magazine.

Rather than try to present the voluminous details of the benchmark comparisons between the NCR PC916 and the NCR Tower 32/400 let me summarize. First of all, the NCR PC916 was configured with an Intel 80386 running at 16mhz, 2MB RAM, a 30MB / 40ms hard disk and no math coprocessor. The NCR Tower 32/400 had a Motorola 68020 running at 16.7mhz, 2MB RAM, an 85MB / 41ms hard disk and a floating point math coprocessor. The NCR PC916 lists for $6,353.00 without a monitor or the !!xenix!! operating system runtime, while the NCR Tower 32/400 lists for $18,245.00 ($16,995 + $1,250 for the math coprocessor) with a !!unix!! System V.2 runtime license but without any terminals.

The only test of the eighteen in which the NCR Tower 32/400 consistently outperformed the NCR PC916 was test #7, the floating point math comparison, in which the NCR Tower 32/400 consistently ran approximately 130% faster than the NCR PC916. In the other 17 tests, three were relatively comparable, but the NCR PC916 outperformed the NCR Tower 32/400 in the remaining fourteen. In all fairness to both systems, the test that is most important to me and my clients (test #3, Disk Intensive Task Like Database or Accounting Applications) leaned only slightly in the direction in favor of the NCR PC916.

Because of the wide variety of tests performed to analyze the competitive differences of these two machines, before making any purchasing decisions based upon my summary, you should review the details of the comparison yourself. All the details, significance and interpretation of the results are available directly from Neal Nelson & Associates.

HOW WILL NCR POSITION THIS SYSTEM?

I don’t know, and I’m not sure that NCR yet does either.

Perhaps the newer Tower 32/x50 products announced at UniForum in February will be part of the strategy. The PC916 product manager even suggested to me that with their own staff of !!unix!! porting experts NCR may do their own Tower compatible port of !!unix!! for the PC916. With all the added value that SCO !!xenix!! offers, that may not be the wisest. After all, companies like Tandy and Compaq have already discovered that it’s more economical to let the Intel experts at SCO do what they do best.

But more significantly, according to some information that I received from Neal Nelson & Associates and other sources, NCR Tower customers that value NCR’s superior commitment to service and support have already learned of the NCR PC916 !!xenix!! alternative to the Tower 32 family of systems. Exactly how successful the NCR PC916 will ultimately become in the !!xenix!! market, only time will tell. But you can take it from me, that when compared to the price performance of the NCR Tower 32/400, the NCR PC916 is one helluva value!