Squonk@UMass.BITNET (07/10/86)
Greetings,
A few digests ago I requested information on the AT&T Unix PC. I
recieved 4 responses. Two said essentially that the 3B2 is a fast
box if you can keep it from crashing. The other two letters spoke
highly of the Unix PC as a development system. So far, so good. I
called up AT&T to find out more about the financial end of the deal
only to find that it suffers from PC RTs disease. Too little for too
much. I believe that the following points should be made:
-The notes on the digest itself suggest that you should run with
an extra 512k over the basic 1M configuration. The 512K card
with two serial ports comes with a four digit price tag. If
Atari can give you a FULL meg, an extra 68000, monitor, keyboard,
disk, box, power supply for a smaller four digit figure (which it
can) then there is something wrong here.
-I have AT&T literature quoting the floppy as being able to hold
320k, 360k, and 1.5M (unformatted for the 1.5). Interestingly
enough they are three different pieces of literature and they
dont say that it can read or write the other formats. This makes
me wonder a bit about compatability.
-The 3B1 (Unix PC with 256K ram chips on the motherboard instead of
64K chips) with 2M of ram and 67M of disk space has a 5 digit
price (+/-$5). The postings on this digest show that the Sun
3/52 is available at what is probably a better price. By the
time you end up paying another say $2000 (this is an off the head
guess based on the 512K ram board) to get it up to 4M, a sizable
sum for the 23M tape backup unit (which is essential), and an
Ethernet iterface (I have no evidence one exists), your going to
at least match that $13,900 listed for the Sun. The Sun has full
networking software, BSD 4.2, much better screen resolution, a
faster processor (68020 as opposed to the 68010), etc.
-The pricing on the 3B1 upgrade (from the 7300) seems too high.
If you are buying a brand new 40M drive and 1M of 256K parts
(150ns) you might pay half of what AT&T charges (my price based
on prices in the back of BYTE... If these people can sell this
stuff at those prices so can AT&T). If you were buying a new
unit (NOT replacing the 20M drive or the 64K parts) you would
think that the upgrade price would not be nearly as steep as it
is. For the price difference I can get that same 1M of ram, pick
up a Maxtor 143M drive (the 10Mbit/sec transfer rate isnt
compatable with the Unix PCs 5Mbit/sec transfer rate unless there
is something that can slow the output from the drive) and still
have pocket change. While this drive is not compatable I can
certainly get a smaller drive for less money.
-InfoWorld (June 9,1986) has an article. The way I interpreted
the points made in it were thus: AT&T will be promoting the boxes
multiuser ability. So far they havent sold well (10,000 of
50,000 made to date). The 6300+ (a 286 machine) will make the
7300 obsolete because it will run MSDOS and Unix. (Though Id
MUCH rather deal with a 68010 than a 286...)
-My personal thoughts are that the 68010 as a multiuser system
will not catch on as Apple is rumored (ABSOLUTE HEARSAY) to have
a 68020 box ready to be put on the market and Atari is working on
a 68020 Unix box (this rumor seems to have a bit more support)
which will be priced so low that even adding terminals to the
Unix PC will not keep its price/ performance ratio high enough to
match these other machines, ESPECIALLY if they have graphics
hardware.
I hope someone at AT&T reads this.. If the price were lower I would
most likely buy one. Its fast, easy to use and has had time to have
the bugs ironed out of it (the last cant be said about the 68020
micros that are about to hit the market). It simply costs FAR too
much to be considered competative in the micro or workstation market,
and as my wallet says Im a micro market buyer I probably wont be
using a Unix PC. "Oh well.."
-Stephen Halpin
Disclaimer: The opinions stated here are OPINIONS, nothing more.
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