akimmet wrote on 2024-08-09, 21:14:

the3dfxdude wrote on 2024-08-09, 19:58:

I don't believe there is any likely user of 486es back in the day that had 1GB or more memory. I think that would come during the pentium era. And more than 4GB, with the pentium pro. (obviously)

I agree. If anyone needed and could afford more that much RAM, they would have been buying something other than x86.

If memory serves data center class equipment existed in the 1980’s already and was for massive databases or financial data storage of millions of accounts. Gigabytes of online information was possible but as alluded very likely disk and tape, not all physical ram and not x86

Intel attempted to touch this market all of one time in that era with an early system with dozens of CPUs, it was a failure.

akimmet wrote on 2024-08-10, 04:39:

It wasn't that uncommon to see some small businesses save a few bucks by running their database on a PC running SCO Unixware/Xenix or Solaris for x86.
Sun and DEC only made business sense once uptime requirements and service contracts are taken into account.

In fact I used 2 such boxes at different jobs back when. Took 1 home even when they upgraded. The databases weren't huge though.

SCO was a no nonsense pretty reliable system as I recall. Software developed for it was all text based (in the 80s/90s anyway). A shutdown was required everyday though.