kiniry@gauss.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Kiniry) (11/15/90)
Well everybody, I have finally got to see and use 2.0, a 3000, and better yet a 3000UX. Here in Tallahassee, at Florida State University, we had an outdoor demonstration of the 3000UX on Tuesday 11/13/90. I helped run the entire demo all day long with one other guy who is the Commodore rep for FSU. We also had a 2500 hooked up to the laser disk player running various demos, AmigaVision, etc. We even had the laserdisk bringing in a signal on the workbench as I was working with a bunch of stuff. Needless to say, we impressed quite a few folks, gave away a bunch of T-shirts, popcorn, and cokes. Anyway, on to the review of the 3000UX from someone who knows the Amiga and UNIX inside and out. Okay, first for the AmigaDos side. The 2.0 user interface is wonderful, they have done an exceptional job at Commodore producing a product which looks and feels professional - way beyond a Macs or Windows 3.0 interface. The ability to list files without icons and manipulate them is great, I have very little complaints about 2.0. But on to UNIX... Well, the 3000UX is running XWindows on a hires interlaced two color screen. (So thats 640 by 400 with black on white or vice versa.) Commodore has followed all of the OpenLook specifications to the letter, but this results in a magnified look. Remember, the specs are in pixel sizes, so when you use a 640 by 400 screen for your entire interface, it looks like you are using a magnifying glass to look at the upper right corner of a Sun workstation. Second, it's kind of slow. It felt to me like the Sun 3/50's we have here in the graduate lab at FSU. But of course this was standing alone, i.e. we did not have it hooked up to the network. I looked at the proc table and there were about 40 processes in there, so of course it felt a little slow. But I could live with that. The machine that I used, by the way, had a 200 Meg hard drive which was partitioned as follows: 160 Meg UNIX, 10 Meg swap space, 2 Meg UNIX boot, 6 Meg for 2.0, 2 Meg for 1.3, and 20 Meg for a Work partition. That doesn't seem exactly right to my memory, but it gives you a good idea of how it's set up. Also, this machine had 10 (ten) Meg of ram. What else? Well, no source for anything, I guess this comes with the extended UNIX license from Commodore. Interlaced Productivity flicker isn't too bad, but stuff looks a little blurry on the Commodore monitor. It had a ethernet card in it, the devices were there in UNIX, but all of the UNIX experts could not figure out how to hook it up to the network when we took it up to the Supercomputer Research Institute this morning. It seems that Commodore just didn't package a few necessary items with it. Documentation? Well, two thin books with big print which seemed to be written for a high school kid, (they didn't say much, no help at all). It did come with an Amiga 3000 demo though, pretty nice except for the music section - crummy. More in another message...
kiniry@gauss.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Kiniry) (11/15/90)
So, what about the teasing pictures on the manuals, and beta spec sheets for
the 3000UX which show X in full color on at least a 1024 by 800 screen? Is
this the big hint about a possibly 24 bit graphics board from Commodore? This
board is even mentioned on the spec sheet. Also, what about a 1.44 Meg floppy
drive, it too is mentioned. Is this possibly an indicator for a 386 Bridge-
board. (Please, I hope it's not only at a godforsaken 10 or 12 MHz and $1600-
it's not worth it to even produce it Commodore...) Also mentioned in the
manuals, (and even shown all the diagrams for and etc.) is the 2500UX. Looks
promising. Also, I had lunch today with the owner of Amazing Computers from
Tampa and got some more interesting information. Like, the 2.0 upgrade for
use 500/1000/2000/2500 users is expected to cost "a couple hundred dollars".
Timing for final release? (Remember, I was using a 2.01 version and the UNIX
side is still Beta.) I was told Commodore is just ironing out 2.0, tweaking
things here and there, and waiting for the official okay from the folk at
AT&T (I think) to say the SysV.r4 is alright. Price? The system I was working
on was quoted at "around $7000". The other numbers I got sounded a little
high to me. (Like $5000 for the low end machine...)
Summary: It looks like Commodore has something here, especially if they
release a workstation version (meaning no hard drive and larger monitor).
The larger monitor and higher resolution is a MUST! The people at SCRI
(SuperComputer Research Institute) kind of laughed when they saw that little
13" monitor running an OpenLook interface on a 640 by 400 screen. But if we
get the color, the monitor, and the rumored higher clock speed (50 MHz), this
machine will truely take off.
Any questions can be EMailed to me at kiniry@gauss.math.fsu.edu
or kiniry@nu.cs.fsu.edu
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NOTE THESE ADDRESSES!!!
Joseph Kiniry
<standard disclaimer applies to this and previous message>robbar@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Baruch robert) (03/26/91)
Anyone running an Amiga 3000 under Unix SysVr4? Let me know! I want to talk with you.