dopey@ihlpa.UUCP (James C Blasius) (05/16/85)
I've seen a number of comments and questions on the UNIX PC
recently; I will try to answer some of them and lay some
misconceptions to rest.
I speak as a person who has been working on the UNIX PC
since February, and who has been supporting the AT&T Hotline
and Technical Marketing people since the product was
introduced. I want to stress that the statements and
opinions here are my own and are not to be taken as official
AT&T-IS policy or an AT&T-IS sales offer.
First thing - (my opinion) don't buy a machine with less
than 1MB memory or you will be sorely disappointed. The
difference between 1/2 and 1 Meg is about equal to the
difference between a Moped and a Ferrari, with a smaller
price difference. The 1Meg - 2Meg jump is much less
noticeable. Although the 1/2 MB machine is rather slow, I
don't think that AT&T is being unethical in offering them:
first, it is a common business practice to provide something
very low end as an entry level vehicle; additionally, nearly
everybody in the AT&T support organization is running on a
1/2 Meg machine. They *are* useable, but not as much fun.
10 and 20 Meg disk comparison:
Swap space Size of UNIX System Available Space
~3 meg ~4.5 meg ~2.5 meg
~4 meg ~4.5 meg ~11.5 meg
I've worked with a 10 Meg machine, and this is acceptable if
you aren't running many packages or needing a lot of space.
A number of people in my group are running on 10 meg
machines, using them for word processing, etc, and they
aren't complaining. If you love to play with computers, 20
meg is much nicer. You can put a ton of packages on your
machine.
Wide borders - I agree that they take up a lot of screen
space. For application developers it is possible to make
borderless windows (although it's hard to see the line
between 2 borderless windows since there isn't one!). It is
also possible to make full screen borderless windows through
the User Agent. And, while I would prefer a screen the size
of a Teletype 5620 DMD's, I prefer the UNIX PC to my DMD.
I cannot speak on the Sales issue, I have very little to do
with the AT&T salesmen and, having never been approached by
one, I can't say if they are as bad as people say they are
or not. I can speak on support, since that's my job. When
you buy your UNIX PC or software for it you automatically
have a 90 day warranty on it. This warranty includes access
to an 800 hotline number, which is staffed by some very
competent technical people, and supported by the rest of the
AT&T/IS development organization (and me). They are quite
willing to help customers with problems - from answering
questions on how to use packages to recording problems found
and finding work arounds to them. Support agreements are
available to extend this support. People have asked some
very unusual questions, and the hotline has been very
accomodating.
Flexnames - I did not realize the UNIX PC didn't have them,
but it is true. I have submitted a trouble report.
Uucp comes with the basic system. It is not the newer h-d
uucp. My machine has talked to other UNIX Sytem V machines,
so it uses the standard protocol.
Uucp, the VT100 terminal emulator, telephone manager (which
is pretty neat), the widowing software, and a good number of
standard UNIX System V commands come with the operating
system.
The pre-release electronic mail system ("email") which I
have been playing with is a bit more than windowing scripts
on top of /bin/mail. It includes the ability to mail files
around as "attachments" to letters, rather than having to
explicitly uuto or edit them. It also has a confirm
mechanism whereby mail is sent back from the recieving UNIX
PC when the message is read by the receiver. Both of these
abilities work only with the UNIX PC "email" command;
regular mail can read messages but will not confirm them or
detach or decode attachments.
I will try to post lists of files which come with each
package.
Mutli-user: I will cover the specific problems people have
talked about first, then cover what I feel is the true story
on multi-user.
0. "Over a minute for two simultaneous logins." This is
possible, but will only happen on a 1/2 meg machine. I
tried it with my office mate on his 1M/20M machine; he
logged out, I called up, and we both logged in at the same
time. He took 14 seconds to get his office window; I took
under 30, but I had to tell the machine I was a vt100,
misspell it, and play with the stopwatch.
1. "Generally slow response in multi-user." I asked my
secretary if I could experiment on her (1M/10M) machine
while she worked. She ran vi; I ran things like vi and mm
-t (I wanted to compile things, but she didn't have the
development set. MM is a heavy cpu and multi-process user
too). Afterwards I called her up to ask what she had
noticed performance wise, and she said in effect, "I heard
the phone ring when you called in (must have been the modem
clicking on), but the machine ran fine." On my own machine,
I've simulated multi-user by making ksh in one window and
running james-type normal tasks such as uucico's, vi's,
Microsoft Words, etc, and have not had difficulty or
frustration.
2. General comment on multi-tasking and windows: it only
takes one 5620 DMD or other windowed workstation to slow
down a 3B20S/VAX/just about anything, if the person on the
workstation is trying to kill the machine. The same is true
of the UNIX PC. Under normal loads (several editing
processes plus several suspended editing processes, using
the phone manager, doing one compile) the machine should be
able to support 2 to 3 users given adequate memory. 9 users
(a specific question on the net) would not be reasonable if
they were all on at once, though I see no reason why 9
infrequent users would cause any difficulty.
3. Windowing over a phone line: this is going to be slow
at 1200 baud. UCSD Pascal is slow at 1200 baud. Anything
screen oriented is slow at 1200 baud. The windowing at 1200
has not frustrated me much yet, although it might if I used
it frequently. Since the primary advantage of windowing
(for programmers anyway) - switching between simultaneous
processes - is not available remotely, I would advise
experienced UNIX users to bypass the user agent when logged
in remotely. The machine will behave just like any other
ordinary UNIX machine in this case. Another thing remote
users should be aware of is that applications requiring bit-
mapped graphics cannot be used remotely. I believe the
packages which cannot be used remotely are Microsoft Word,
GSS-CHART, CDI-Sound Presentations, and Dbase III.
4. My opinion: The windowing environment lets you take
advantage of the multitasking abilities of the UNIX System,
which is what the UNIX System is all about. I love having a
computer on which I can do development work, word
processing, terminal emulation, and telephone management.
And the best part about it (which definitely has to do with
multi-user), is that the machine is inexpensive enough that
I don't have to share it.
The hard disk is kind of noisy. I have an older model, and
I hear both the fans and disks have gotten quieter. The
noise doesn't bother me, and in fact it lets me know how
hard the system's working. It provides something of the
same feel as a performance suspension on a car - not as soft
(or quiet) as it might be, but with an excellent feel for
the road (or load).
I won't venture to compare the UNIX PC with the Macintosh
because my experience with the latter is too limited. I
will go so far as to point out the the UNIX PC comes with an
operating system. For me, that's important.
Window operations (drag and resize) are in fact
disappointingly slow, compared to either the Mac or the HP
portable. Applications using windowing will have no problem
with this however; the windowing kernel support is nice and
fast.
The mouse too has been something of a disappointment. I am
used to the mouse on the 5620 DMD, which is beautiful; this
is obviously a less expensive mouse. I still use it,
splitting about 50/50 between mouse and keyboard.
The keyboard has about as good a feel as any I've tried,
even the VT52 which I loved. The caps lock key is in a
funny place (where the CTRL key should be), but as I
understand it that is a trade-off, the typist's keyboard
versus the programmer's keyboard. The typists won.
At first I thought the extra keys were a pain/mistake, but
now that I'm used to it, I split between the mouse and the
keyboard on how to get things done. The keys are of
standard use, and most are pretty obvious about what they
do.
Comment from out there: "I feel that a system that is buggy
and as slow as this system... should not be put out by
AT&T." This machine is not inherently slow, it is only slow
if you don't give it proper resources. You must have seen
one with 512kB of ram - those can be slow. With one MB ram
this machine is at least as fast as most of the GP/comp
center machines I've worked on at BTL/ATTIS. Slow compared
to your personal 3B20S, otherwise no. Despite bugs, I find
the machine quite useable and have transferred almost all
the work I can onto it.
Security - a big beef for me. This is a UNIX system and has
passwords, etc, for security's sake. Normal users should
not be able to mess it up. Malicious users will be able to
sabotage it if they can get in. The first thing corporate
users have to do though is to make people put passwords on
ALL the logins (including root). Even the developers here
at AT&T-IS have problems assigning passwords, so this will
be a problem in the business world.
Disk drives - I will see what I can find about them.
I will be happy to try to answer questions you may have
about the AT&T UNIX PC, although as I've already said I'm
not an official marketing person or anything. I will try to
post a list of what commands come with which packages in the
near future.
James C. "Blastum" Blasius
ihnp4!ihlpa!dopey