BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP (08/05/83)
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>
We just took delivery of a Faraday Electronics IBM-PC compatible
motherboard. Single quantity price is $500. Quantity discounts can
bring the price down to $250, but Faraday's idea of quantity is 10K
boards per month.
The board is a superset of IBM-PC motherboard in that it contains two
asynchronous ports and a printer port. The board is about the same
size as the IBM board but gains a lot of space by using 16K EPROMS and
getting rid of the cassette port. It comes with 64K RAM installed but
is expandable to 256K. There are 5 expansion slots compatible with
the IBM-PC.
There is no BASIC in the ROM but the BIOS supports the Async port if
the switches are set to no display. There is also a provision for a
reset button, a feature sorely lacking in the PC.
For anyone out there who is into roll-your-own PCs this looks like a
pretty cheap way to get started.
Faraday Electronics operates on a cash in advance basis and took about
two weeks to deliver. The profit margins on this sort of product can't
be much.
Faraday Electronics
1029 Corporation Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(415) 961-0600
rice Unix MS-DOS Multi- Hard disk Applic
support user support Features
------- ------- ----- ---- ------- ------ --------- --------
Mark Williams Coherent $500 V7 None +$300 XT Ethernet
1430 W Wrightwood corvus support
Chicago IL 60616 Davong
312 472-6656 Tecmar
Whitesmiths Idris $1100 V6 File xfr yes XT Screen
97 Lowell Rd edit
Concord MA 01742 DBMS
617-369-8499 8087 sup
Sritek micro- $2695 sys 3 file acc $300 Any Multi
3637 S Green Rd card 512K [nt]roff plan
Cleve OH 44122
216 526-9433
Quantum Softw Sys QNX $650 V7 file xfr 16 usr Davong Comm
7219 Shea Ct Genie Word Pr
San Jose CA 95139 Tecmar 8087 sup
408 629-0402 XT
Lantech Sys Inc uNETix $298 V7 emulation fall 83 none 8087 sup
9861 Chartwell Dr
Dallas TX 75243
214 340-3904
VenturCom Venix $400 sys 3 file xfr Yes Davong Sunburst
139 Main St XT RM/Cobol
Cambridge MA 02142 8087 sup
617 661-1230
COHERENT is the oldest and has ethernet support. It also includes
lex and yacc.
IDRIS runs on lots of machines (vax >> 8080) and is very portable.
System call compatible with Version 6, and is much smaller.
nroff/troff are $200 extra each.
MICRO-CARD is a 68000 with 512K of memory. Expensive, but fast.
QNX (alias QUNIX) supports full 1M of memory. V7 compatible.
$650 for cc, screen editor, word processor, RAM disk support.
Designed for the PC, support for windowing promised.
UNETIX has full MS-DOS emulation. Up to 10 windows can be defined
each running a separate process. (In the body of the article, they
say it is only $99, but the above table says $299 (?)). Claims to run
MS-DOS programs faster than MS-DOS due to the Unix buffering system
(reducing disk access). No hard disks, though (aargh!) and only
single user. Real winner when hard disks/multiuser happens.
VENIX is based on original Bell Labs Code. Optimized for size, speed,
and reliability. Version on the PDP11 kernel is only 45K, about half
of normal. It has DBMS system, graphics post-processor, and
FinalWord. MS-DOS emulation underway. Not currently available except
to *qualified* users -- software development types. IBM is teaching
UNIX on the PCs to its employees using Venix.
Lars Nyland
...{duke|mcnc}!lsn
------------------------------
Date: 4 Aug 1983 1627-PDT
To: INFO-IBMPC
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>
Subject: Faraday PC Motherboard
We just took delivery of a Faraday Electronics IBM-PC compatible
motherboard. Single quantity price is $500. Quantity discounts can
bring the price down to $250, but Faraday's idea of quantity is 10K
boards per month.
The board is a superset of IBM-PC motherboard in that it contains two
asynchronous ports and a printer port. The board is about the same
size as the IBM board but gains a lot of space by using 16K EPROMS and
getting rid of the cassette port. It comes with 64K RAM installed but
is expandable to 256K. There are 5 expansion slots compatible with
the IBM-PC.
There is no BASIC in the ROM but the BIOS supports the Async port if
the switches are set to no display. There is also a provision for a
reset button, a feature sorely lacking in the PC.
For anyone out there who is into roll-your-own PCs this looks like a
pretty cheap way to get started. Faraday Electronics operates on a
cash in advance basis and took about two weeks to deliver. The profit
margins on this sort of product can't be much.
Faraday Electronics
1029 Corporation Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(415) 961-0600
------------------------------
Date: 4 Aug 1983 1803-PDT
To: INFO-IBMPC
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>
Subject: Lotus 1-2-3 Memory Requirements
One of the primary uses of the microcomputers has been for spreadsheet
programs. The large memory space has made these programs more useful.
I have never seen published just how big a spreadsheet can be handled
in an IBM-PC fully stuffed with memory. An accountant friend of mine
needed this information so he could plan ahead and not run out of
memory on April 13th. The following tables are officially
unofficially from Lotus and apply to the 1-2-3 spreadsheet program.
If you have 320K memory and a cell width of 10:
Fill all cells with:
Characters (10) = 14,160 Cells
Numbers (9) = 18,400 Cells
Formulas (simple) = 6,150 Cells
If you have 544K memory and a cell width of 10:
Fill all cells with:
Characters (10) = 28,500 Cells
Numbers (9) = 37,600 Cells
Formulas (simple) = 12,480 Cells
------------------------------
Date: 4 Aug 83 21:46:57-PDT (Thu)
To: info-ibmpc @ Usc-Isib
From: harpo!gummo!whuxlb!mkg @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Word Processing Query
My wife is using WordStar in her business and has come to despise it.
Having looked at the manuals and played with it a little, I can see
why she dislikes it. Yes, it's no nroff, but it does have a habit of
going out of its way to make simple tasks time consuming and tedious.
Does anybody have experience with other word processing packages for
the PC? I'd like to hear what you think about it and why you'd choose
it over WordStar. Please respond to me by mail and in a week or so,
I'll post a summary of all the comments I get.
Thanks in advance.
Marsh Gosnell BTL Whippany (201) 386-7095 whuxlb!mkg
------------------------------
Date: 5 Aug 1983 1807-PDT
To: Gene Autrey-Hunley at SRI-KL
cc: info-ibmpc at ISIB
From: HFISCHER@USC-ECLB
Subject: Re: Hard Disk
I've been very pleased with the hard disk on my XT. Having worked
with Caelus and Diablo's on last generations mini's, it's hard to
imagine that this size package is so quiet and fast, and that there is
no way to have to open it up for "spring cleaning" and alignment! Its
performance for disk-intensive work seems much better than what I
expected based on mini performance of the past. Of course, It's not
an IBM 3038, but did you want everything?
Herm Fischer
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 83 17:47:39 PDT
To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib
From: Scott Burris <v.burris@UCLA-LOCUS>
Subject: 8 Inch Drives
Has anyone had any experience with 8 inch drives for the PC? I have a
friend who is going to buy 3 of them (PC's that is), and he wants 8
inch floppy disks that can hold 1 meg. (i.e. double sided, double
density). Any suggestions, experiences, etc. would be appreciated.
Scott... v.burris@UCLA-CS (ARPA)
or
v.burris@UCLA-LOCUS
or
...ucbvax!ucla-vax!burris (UUCP)
------------------------------
Date: 5 Aug 1983 1921-PDT
To: Scott Burris <v.burris@UCLA-LOCUS>
cc: info-ibmpc
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>
Subject: Re: 8 Inch Drives
At ISI and the ARPA office we have 8" drives from Flagstaff
Engineering. Flagstaff's strong point is that they make software and
hardware that allow you to read just about any format of disk. Our
primary goal is to be able to read Displaywriter files. (A
Displaywriter is an IBM stand-alone word processor). The Flagstaff
software will read display writer files and turn them into Easywriter,
Wordstar, or ASCII text files. In addition, we can read just about
any format of CP/M, EBCDIC, or whatever disks. These programs are
utilities which convert files from the foreign format to normal DOS
files.
The Flagstaff board is a modified disk controller card. The drive is
in an outboard box and uses its own power supply. A ribbon cable
connects this box to the modified IBM controller card in the PC. I
believe the modifications are exclusively to read and write single
density disks so this might not be the route for you. If you are into
maximum 8" capacity in DOS format, the Tall Tree JFORMAT program may
be the answer. This program will format any 8" drive at various
densities. I believe the max is 1.2 MByte. Tall Tree gave us a list
of manufacturers but Flagstaff was the only one we contacted due to
the Displaywriter capability.
As I explained in an earlier INFO-IBMPC, beware of controllers that
use digital data separaters! If you are going for double density on
8" disks, the controllers that use digital data separaters may get you
into trouble. This is why Flagstaff uses modified IBM controllers.
IBM has a custom chip set that does this function in analog logic
(analog phase lock loop vs digital phase lock loop).
------------------------------
End of Info-IBMPC Digest
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