adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) (12/01/90)
>>UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. Full man pages. >>3000UX-100: 4MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 100MB Quantum HD 19ms access. >>3000UX-200: 8MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 2UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. >>Full man pages. >>Price of $3999 for the 3000UX-100, $4999 for the -200, the 3000UX-200 >>also includes an ethernet board bundled with. Bundles also include >>the 1950 monitor. These prices were confirmed by my local dealer. >>Official commercial release at UNIFORUM (feb???) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The local Unix & NeXT Guru's reply to my forward him the previous msg.-- (Brian is the local Guru, Randy is the local sysadmin.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Brian Bartholomew <bb@math.ufl.edu> To: Adin Burroughs <adin@math.ufl.edu> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 10:55:06 EST Hmmm. Ballpark competitive, maybe. Here are some comments about the competition you are facing: Commodore offering: I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is supposed to be signifigantly better. If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time porting it. I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra. At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. SCO did this shit with the XENIX on the PC's, too. 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? What kind of monitor is that? How big is it? Can it compete in resolution with a Sun? A NeXT? I would prefer high-res mono to low-res color, as that allows me much more text on the screen. Anything less than 300 meg is too small, add $500 for a bigger drive. Price: $4,999 + $500 = $5,499. Are there educations discounts to cut this any? NeXT offering: 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why would you want to? Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied. Sun offering: SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today. You've seen it and worked with it. It is probably faster than either of the other platforms. $3,500 for unit + complete SunOS. Add $750 for drive. Get X from Randy. Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts applied. ----- Brian's opinionated conclusion: I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and Ardent's too. I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet. Try one more time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS. In another iteration, this will be a reasonable package for someone who wants Amiga backward-compatibility bad enough to pay for it. DO YOU really want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That is the choice I am making with my PC. I am keeping my PC, but getting a separate workstation. NOT getting a 386 or 486 PC. Brian -Adin Any answers? Comments? -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | .Sig 1.1 under construction..... U of F, Gainesville, FL | | adin@math.ufl.edu | | adb@beach.cis.ufl.edu | | Iceman@maple%decnet.circa.ufl.edu | | 'Tis better to have loved and | | lost than to have never loved at all........ | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
huebner@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner) (12/01/90)
I've remained stoic about this continually invading thread by my patience is wearing thin. My analyst suggested a scathing reply would cleanse my psyche :) In article <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: |> The local Unix & NeXT Guru's reply to my forward him the previous msg.-- |> (Brian is the local Guru, Randy is the local sysadmin.) Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek" |> Hmmm. Ballpark competitive, maybe. Here are some comments about |> the competition you are facing: |> |> |> Commodore offering: |> |> I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is |> supposed to be signifigantly better. Not to mention Standard. I mean, the whole idea behind SVR4 is to bring the AT&T and BSD deviations back together. It is really the only option, I feel. |> If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of |> it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT |> distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time |> porting it. Of course, since Open Look is leading the pack in terms of available applications, I don't think this would be too wise. |> I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra. |> At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the |> networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. SCO |> did this shit with the XENIX on the PC's, too. I don't know what this means. Every A3000UX setup I've seen or have seen "advertised" includes these things. I think they're just trying to be specific about what is included. They way MS-DOS platforms are being sold these day (ie: no parallel port, etc) it pays to be specific! |> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's |> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry |> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just |> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100) Also the A3000 has a fast hard disk (especially when compared to the dreaded floptical drive) which make an excellent swap space. (Does the A3000UX use DMA? I'm not sure of this one) |> |> What kind of monitor is that? How big is it? Can it compete in |> resolution with a Sun? A NeXT? I would prefer high-res mono to |> low-res color, as that allows me much more text on the screen. Recent specs released regarding this A2410 would certainly indicate that it can compete. 1024 x 1024 x 256 is definitely workstation quality. Granted, this is at additonal cost (Better multisync monitor + card price) but I expect it to be less expensive than the NeXT color option. Of course hires mono is available from both Commodore and some other company (Viking?) Not sure how Unix/X support these, but it would seem logical the the Commodore product at least was fully supported. |> Anything less than 300 meg is too small, add $500 for a bigger drive. If you sink another $500 into the 200 Meg price you would have about 400-500 Meg online. Who needs this much? Maybe a developer but.... |> Price: $4,999 + $500 = $5,499. Are there educations discounts to cut |> this any? Don't know yet. Commodore has offered Edu discounts on everything else. I'm not sure if $4,999 is correct price or not. Commdore won't say and no one know where Byte got their numbers (except Byte) |> |> NeXT offering: |> |> 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better |> video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled |> software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for What so special about the bundled software? Half of it is PD or developer- oriented stuff (so is every NeXT buyer a NeXT developer?) and the other stuff is only useful to maybe 10% of people who use computers (Mathematica is strictly for math mutants, sorry). Improv sounds nice, but do I really need a NeXT to run a spreadsheet? And to get that, I have to plop down good money within 1 month. I certainly won't see my machine until 1991. Does NeXT still include the on-line dictionary and encyclopedia? I always thought this was sort of "filler" - to make it look like the NeXT had gobs of software, throw in some really BIG databases. |> bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why |> would you want to? Because X is a supported standard and there are about 3 times as many Open Look applications as NeXT (source - Application Watch from PC Week Mag) |> Brian's opinionated conclusion: |> |> I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and |> Ardent's too. I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a |> workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet. Try one more |> time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS. In another |> iteration, this will be a reasonable package for someone who wants |> Amiga backward-compatibility bad enough to pay for it. DO YOU really |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore. |> is the choice I am making with my PC. I am keeping my PC, but getting |> a separate workstation. NOT getting a 386 or 486 PC. Equally opinionated reply: Your arguments of non-BSDness and Broken-up OS completely fall apart. I It sounds like (re:Unix SVR4) that you are criticizing a system you haven't even seen in operation yet. Also, I haven't heard of any A3000UX system sold or desribed that didn't include the entire SVR4 stuff including man pages and gnu stuff (and it has "hack") :) Their 4 Megabyte entry level system is great for people who don't need that much memory to begin with. I also like that the Amiga can run standard Unix binaries. However, I had heard next user have had good luck in converting a.out to MACH, so perhaps this doesn't detract from the NeXT. It certainly doesn't help! But mainly, I've been waiting too long for the Amiga to start getting the kind of good software and support that finally seems to be arriving. I certainly don't want to jump ship now. The NeXT has very few NeXT-specific applications available and I don't think this will be improving too quickly. It sounds as if all the third-party support gained up to this point was purchased rather than earned. Oh well, enough of this. I can now put this thread in my kill file with a clear conscience. ---- Robert Huebner huebner@aerospace.aero.org The Aerospace Corporation, Computer Security Dept. "Take it to alt.religion.computers!" ----
jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) (12/01/90)
Your friend is not too up on UN*X issues, so you might want to pass this along to him. In article <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: > From: Brian Bartholomew <bb@math.ufl.edu> >> I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is >> supposed to be signifigantly better. S5R4 is S5R3 + BSD + other stuff... Very different than S5R3 >> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just If you stay out of X, 4Mb is plenty for J. Random User. I used a 3.5Mb UN*X box for a couple of years w/o ever running into any major problems, except lack of disk space. :-) >> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? '030 at 25Mhz. '040 RSN (1Q91 is a rumor I heard) >> bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why >> would you want to? So you can use the wide selection of already written X code out there. >> SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today. The 3000UX should run anything the SLC does, unless the code uses SunTools for its windowing. >> Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts >> applied. If you need fast integer, cheap unix, and nothing else, get this. (Floating point is not too bad, actually, about .75MFLOPS.) >> I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and S5R4 is a superset of BSD. Get a clue. -- J. Eric Townsend Internet: jet@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU Systems Manager - University of Houston Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120 EastEnders list: eastender@karazm.math.uh.edu "This meme's for you..." --me
gerry@dialogic.com (Gerry Lachac) (12/02/90)
In article <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: > > From: Brian Bartholomew <bb@math.ufl.edu> > To: Adin Burroughs <adin@math.ufl.edu> > Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 10:55:06 EST > > Brian's opinionated conclusion: > > I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and > Ardent's too. I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a Depends on what world you are viewing UNIX from. In the "REAL" world (read "business") there is only one choice, AT&T System V. BSD only has really only inroads in the university world, no small potatoes either. If you've been to the last two years of Uniforums and UNIXExpo's, you would have seen that the business ($$$) UNIX market is System V. Even SunOS is moving away from a BSD-based kernel to an AT&T System V Release 4 - based kernel. An Amiga 3000 Unix box can make a significant impact in the business world. The educational market is another story...
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (12/02/90)
In <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: >>>UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. Full man pages. >>>3000UX-100: 4MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 100MB Quantum HD 19ms access. >>>3000UX-200: 8MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 2UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. >>>Full man pages. >>>Price of $3999 for the 3000UX-100, $4999 for the -200, the 3000UX-200 >>>also includes an ethernet board bundled with. Bundles also include >>>the 1950 monitor. These prices were confirmed by my local dealer. >>>Official commercial release at UNIFORUM (feb???) >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is > supposed to be signifigantly better. Depending on what vendor is being spoken of, there may not be much choice soon. Sun, for one, will be fuly SysVR4 in the next major release, as are many other vendors. Even DEC is going that way, regardless of their affiliation with the 90 megabuck smokebomb (OSF). > If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of > it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT > distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time > porting it. Huh? OpenLook is a spec for a graphic user interface, while X is a transport mechanism for communication between applications and a display. X is included in the CBM offering. Of couse you can replace OpenLook with virtually anything you want for the GUI. > I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra. > At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the > networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. SCO > did this shit with the XENIX on the PC's, too. Who said they call full man pages an extra? If the above inclusion is complete, it does not say that they are extra. If it is not complete, and something about them being extra is said, then I would say that CBM has been misquoted. There has never been any doubt that the man pages were included. The CBM distribution is VERY complete, and no shoddy tricks are pulled by leaving out such things as compilersand text processing tools. > 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's > are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry > about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just > how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? If it runs in 4 meg, there is absolutely nothing wrong with offering it in that configuration. Many folks prefer it that way, so that they can use third party memory, or perhaps memory they have already. Perhaps a user can afford only the minimal configuration and plans to expand later. Isn't it better to have the choice? Do you worry about a Unix vendor that offers a workstation without hard disk? Of course not. I won't even dignify the negatively loaded question 'just how slow is it?', except to say that if you are going to compare it to a NeXT, why would you care? Clock speed is 25 MHz. > What kind of monitor is that? How big is it? Can it compete in > resolution with a Sun? A NeXT? I would prefer high-res mono to > low-res color, as that allows me much more text on the screen. Don't know about the NeXT, but it does not match the resolution of a Sun. On the other hand, it is a low cost monitor, and offers all the resolution that a standard Amiga does (the machine _is_ a standard Amiga, but happens to have Unix installed), and thus provides colour. For higher resolution, there is a 4-grey-scale monitor available. > Anything less than 300 meg is too small, add $500 for a bigger drive. > > Price: $4,999 + $500 = $5,499. Are there educations discounts to cut > this any? The size of the disk to make it useful is purely a function of the amount of stuff on it and the intended use. 100 meg is usable. 200 is better, and VERY usable. 300 is better still, and so on up. Point is, it's the same with the RAM; it gives you the choice of going for the minimum and adding your own stuff to it. Let's leave it at $4999, giving you 200 megs of disk, 8 megs of RAM, and a very usable configuratin. > > NeXT offering: > > 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better > video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled > software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for > bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why > would you want to? Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with. > Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied. Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid. > Sun offering: > > SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today. > You've seen it and worked with it. It is probably faster than either > of the other platforms. $3,500 for unit + complete SunOS. Add $750 > for drive. Get X from Randy. > > Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts > applied. Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price, so the comparison is again invalid. > I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and > Ardent's too. Try it. BSDness is in there, a lot of it. That's what SysVR4 is all about; it is the merged SysV and BSD. You may be pleasantly surprised. BSD 'pureness' on Suns is coming to and end too. > I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a > workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet. That's a fair comment. There are a number of issues that have yet to be explored, such as support, to cite one example. > Try one more time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS. Broken up? Please point out how it is 'broken up'. > In another > iteration, this will be a reasonable package for someone who wants > Amiga backward-compatibility bad enough to pay for it. DO YOU really > want it that bad? Well, I do. I have two Suns and two Amigas. I will be getting Unix for the A3000 I already have. While I think of it, I might point out that the 3000UX is nothing more than a particular configuration of standard Amiga products. When I install Unix, I will probably dedicate about 200 megs of HD for it, leaving the other 200 for Amiga stuff. The tape drives can both be used for either OS. > Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga > things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That > is the choice I am making with my PC. I am keeping my PC, but getting > a separate workstation. NOT getting a 386 or 486 PC. Well, _that_ I can understand! I won't be getting a '386 or '486 machine either. :-) -larry -- The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
mitroo@flounder.cis.ohio-state.edu (varun mitroo) (12/02/90)
In a previous article, Robert Huebner writes a series of idiotic comments: > Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek" He sound like a geek himself. > |> If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of > |> it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT > |> distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time > |> porting it. > Of course, since Open Look is leading the pack in terms of available > applications, I don't think this would be too wise. Of course. I am writing this on a SPARCstation SLC - one of hundreds here at OSU that are set up with X-Windows or NeWS. All the instructional computer science classes are using X-Windows, including the graphics classes. Of course, since we are not using Open Look, we are all hopelessly trailing the pack, as Mr. Huebner wisely states. Of course. > |> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's > |> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry > |> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just > |> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? > Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the > user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best > price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay > more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100) 4 megs is obviously not enough. Naturally, everybody is going to want to go through the trouble of getting mail-order memory. Why doesn't Commodore just sell it with enough memory without putting a mark-up on the memory? > Also the A3000 has a fast hard disk (especially when compared to the > dreaded floptical drive) which make an excellent swap space. (Does the What does he have against NeXT? Almost nobody uses a NeXT optical drive for swap space. They all have hard drives. The optical drive is not slow, esp. when compared to a floppy. Running a NeXT with only an optical drive is very possible. I have a cube with 12megs ram and only optical, and I have far better performance than my Amiga with 2 floppies. > Recent specs released regarding this A2410 would certainly indicate > that it can compete. 1024 x 1024 x 256 is definitely workstation quality. > Granted, this is at additonal cost (Better multisync monitor + card price) > but I expect it to be less expensive than the NeXT color option. Of course Again, what does he have against NeXT? You can get a NeXTstation color with 68040, 12 megs RAM, 105 meg hard drive, 16" sony color monitor for $5700 edu. (due in early 1991). If amiga is selling their cheapest '030 Unix system for $4000, how can you possibly get a ~$2000 color monitor (such as the one with NeXT) and the A2410 card and still be cheaper? (Amiga has 8 megs RAM less and no ethernet) > |> 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better > |> video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled > |> software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for > What so special about the bundled software? Half of it is PD or developer- > oriented stuff (so is every NeXT buyer a NeXT developer?) and the other The bundled software includes a word processor, mathematica, a librarian program, a good text editor, a dictionary, a thesaurus, an excellent programming environment (Interface Builder), and lots of really interesting developer software such as a ray tracer. A complete version of Tex, emacs, vi, etc. is also included. Version 1.0 also includes lisp and a database program (Sybase) that is unbundled in 2.0. > stuff is only useful to maybe 10% of people who use computers (Mathematica > is strictly for math mutants, sorry). Improv sounds nice, but do I really > need a NeXT to run a spreadsheet? And to get that, I have to plop down good > money within 1 month. I certainly won't see my machine until 1991. > Does NeXT still include the on-line dictionary and encyclopedia? I always > thought this was sort of "filler" - to make it look like the NeXT had gobs > of software, throw in some really BIG databases. What's Mr. Huebner's problem? Mathematica is really incredible (it takes some time to understand it, though). They are using Mathematica on macintoshes in the math department here. He probably is going to rave about Maple when it's released for the Amiga. Having the dictionary always available is very useful. The librarian program can access any kind of database. In addition to having the unix man pages and the NeXT manuals, NeXT also includes the entire works of Sheakespeare. If you can, try using a NeXT. See how quickly it finds the word "gleek" in every Shakespeare work. This is more an example of what can be done with the librarian program than actually of much use. But imagine what could be done if law books or medical references were used. Including Shakespeare is an extra with the software - you can remove it if you want (I did with mine). > |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga > |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That - That's what I'm doing - > I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to > offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video > areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore. Mr. Huebner obviously has no need to run unix. He likes AmigaDos, and is sore that when Commodore is trying to market the amiga as a unix machine, it is outmatched by workstations such as SUNs and NeXTs in terms of price and performance. > Their 4 Megabyte entry level system is great for people who don't need > that much memory to begin with. This point had already been discussed by Mr. Huebner earlier. 4 megs is not enough to run X-Windows. Of course, Mr. Huebner has no need for X-windows and he won't have a need for more than 4 megs. More than enough for AmigaDos, though. > But mainly, I've been waiting too long for the Amiga to start getting the kind > of good software and support that finally seems to be arriving. I certainly > don't want to jump ship now. The NeXT has very few NeXT-specific applications > available and I don't think this will be improving too quickly. It sounds > as if all the third-party support gained up to this point was purchased > rather than earned. This is Mr. Huebner's problem, and it's one that is understandable. It has been far too long overdue that the Amiga get the respect that is due. Amiga users can get very defensive and childish about their computers because of this. Mr Huebner, Try being objective. Suns are very good computers. They are fast, networkable, and are good at running windowed unix. The NeXT is similar, but not as fast, and it is geared more towards a personal computer market. There are impressive claims about the new NeXTstations, but that remains to be seen. Before making claims about computers, try sitting down at one and really seeing what can be done with it. Sit down with Improv on a NeXT. I think you might be impressed - I was. When Amiga officially releases a unix amiga, we'll see. Maybe commodore has something in store to match the strong bids from other companies in the very competitive workstation market. I hope so. Varun Mitroo mitroo@cis.ohio-state.edu
ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) (12/02/90)
mitroo@flounder.cis.ohio-state.edu (varun mitroo) writes: >In a previous article, Robert Huebner writes a series of idiotic comments: >> Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek" >He sound like a geek himself. He do? >Of course. I am writing this on a SPARCstation SLC - one of hundreds here >at OSU that are set up with X-Windows or NeWS. All the instructional >computer science classes are using X-Windows, including the graphics classes. >Of course, since we are not using Open Look, we are all hopelessly trailing >the pack, as Mr. Huebner wisely states. Of course. No, he is right. Open Look is now what Sun wants you to use. >> user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best >> price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay >> more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100) >4 megs is obviously not enough. Naturally, everybody is going to want to >go through the trouble of getting mail-order memory. Why doesn't Commodore >just sell it with enough memory without putting a mark-up on the memory? No, I'd rather see the memory as an option. The a3000 can be configured many ways to suit your needs (budget). Of course, I'd like to see them given away :) >> Also the A3000 has a fast hard disk (especially when compared to the >> dreaded floptical drive) which make an excellent swap space. (Does the >What does he have against NeXT? Almost nobody uses a NeXT optical drive for >swap space. They all have hard drives. The optical drive is not slow, esp. >when compared to a floppy. Running a NeXT with only an optical drive is >very possible. I have a cube with 12megs ram and only optical, and I have >far better performance than my Amiga with 2 floppies. Amazing. A 12meg machine with an optical drive faster than a disk drive really did that? He is refering to ZorroIII bus specs. I don't think anyone would use a floptical for swap space either, but he is refering to the 4 megs here. >> Granted, this is at additonal cost (Better multisync monitor + card price) >> but I expect it to be less expensive than the NeXT color option. Of course >Again, what does he have against NeXT? You can get a NeXTstation color with >68040, 12 megs RAM, 105 meg hard drive, 16" sony color monitor for $5700 edu. >(due in early 1991). If amiga is selling their cheapest '030 Unix system for >$4000, how can you possibly get a ~$2000 color monitor (such as the one with >NeXT) and the A2410 card and still be cheaper? (Amiga has 8 megs RAM less and >no ethernet) Well, sounds nice (apart from no bus). We won't know what the a3000ux really means until the release. There is no point getting religous on it. Commodore (I am sure) is taking into consideration the other CISC workstations. Also, non-educational pricing is very important. There is an increasing business market for unix (sysV4 will be VERY popular). >> What so special about the bundled software? Half of it is PD or developer- >> oriented stuff (so is every NeXT buyer a NeXT developer?) and the other >The bundled software includes a word processor, mathematica, a librarian >program, a good text editor, a dictionary, a thesaurus, an excellent >programming environment (Interface Builder), and lots of really interesting >developer software such as a ray tracer. A complete version of Tex, emacs, >vi, etc. is also included. Version 1.0 also includes lisp and a database >program (Sybase) that is unbundled in 2.0. Sounds real nice. Again, no one really knows what C= will bundle with it until it is out the door. >> |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga >> |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That > - That's what I'm doing - >> I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to >> offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video >> areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore. >Mr. Huebner obviously has no need to run unix. He likes AmigaDos, and is >sore that when Commodore is trying to market the amiga as a unix machine, >it is outmatched by workstations such as SUNs and NeXTs in terms of price >and performance. I like it too. And I also like Open Look. So I can have both (and a memory or disk upgrade helps both worlds:) a pool of resources). Byte did mention that the A3000ux outperformed the NeXT. They forgot to mention which NeXT, though. Having Amiga software such as AmigaVision and Imagine will become invaluable soon. >This point had already been discussed by Mr. Huebner earlier. 4 megs is not >enough to run X-Windows. Of course, Mr. Huebner has no need for X-windows >and he won't have a need for more than 4 megs. More than enough for AmigaDos, >though. Plenty for AmigaDos:) Also discussed earlier. Chill out. >Mr Huebner, Try being objective. Suns are very good computers. They are fast, >networkable, and are good at running windowed unix. The NeXT is similar, >but not as fast, and it is geared more towards a personal computer market. >There are impressive claims about the new NeXTstations, but that remains to >be seen. My gut feeling is that an A3000 with an 040 option will really hit home (talk about a link between personal computer and workstation) >Before making claims about computers, try sitting down at one and really >seeing what can be done with it. Sit down with Improv on a NeXT. I think >you might be impressed - I was. When Amiga officially releases a unix >amiga, we'll see. Maybe commodore has something in store to match the strong >bids from other companies in the very competitive workstation market. I hope >so. I had a demo of the NeXT, I liked it. I ended up buying an A3000 for various reasons. Byte thought the Amiga very competitive. If C= has brains (and suddenly they do, I mean they beat EVERYONE to sysv4 (except Sun Im not sure of), stuck a 1000*800*4 mode in the chip set (isnt that new?) and have somewhere in that closet a new graphics board. If they play the "bundled software" and "disk space" game right they will earn what they have wanted for years. SO wise to stop chasing DOS compatiblilty and grab unix. 1991 sounds like a wild ride. CTDV? SYSV4? TOASTER? AMIGAVISION? DISNEY? OS2? ECS? Hang on! -- ---------------------------------//------------------------------------- Doug Dyer Clemson University // "Splunge!" - MP ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu \\ // -----------------------------\X/----------------------------------------
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/02/90)
ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) in <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu> writes:
I had a demo of the NeXT, I liked it. I ended up buying an A3000 for
various reasons. Byte thought the Amiga very competitive. If C= has
brains (and suddenly they do, I mean they beat EVERYONE to sysv4
(except Sun Im not sure of), stuck a 1000*800*4 mode in the chip set
(isnt that ...
Please explain how you claim that C= "... beat EVERYONE to sysv4 .." when it's
not even clear you KNOW what SVR4 is all about (let alone "spell" it properly).
As the elected President of the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group, I "try"
to get vendors to display, explain and show-off their SV wares.
We've had some interesting demos, but none from Commodore. But we have had
some 386- and 486-based SVR4 showings. SVR4 is NOT as scarce as you would
lead people to believe.
Fer crissakes, I can go over to TOWER RECORDS AND BOOKS and buy the complete
set of SVR4 manuals for either the generic port or the '386/'486 version.
And the COMPUTER LITERACY bookstores in Silicon Valley have been touting the
complete set of SVR4 docs for awhile.
Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery,
Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports)
.
Check your facts.
Now, before the fires start flaming: I *NEVER* miss an opportunity to "plug"
the fact that CBM does have an SVR4 port in the works and that it's been shown
in the AT&T booths at several UNIX tradeshows! :-)
And at the last Users' Group meeting I read aloud the net posting regarding
the CBM SVR4 Developer System at $4,995.
You shoulda heard the "OOOOOHS!" and "AHHHHHHS!" when I stated THAT price;
let's just hope the "final" price to the end-user doesn't show yet another
lack of market sensitivity and awareness on CBM's part.
CBM is more than welcome to demo the system at any of our meetings or in our
booths at the 1991 West Coast Computer Faire, the 1991 DB-EXPO, etc etc etc
Contact me via email at the address (below). I'd need at *LEAST* 30 days'
advance notice to assure adequate coverage in the local press, other journals,
and flyers posted at local Silicon Valley/Bay Area universities and colleges.
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/02/90)
1) We've seen a lot of SYSV4 versus BSD bashing here. Can anybody actually say with some authority what you give away in going from BSD to SYSV4, rather than just the known-to-be-false statement that SYSV4 is a superset of BSD? What will be the effect at the user/developer interface level? 2) _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent that AT&T finally had to bow to the inevitable (as the workstation market "all" went BSD) and mutate SYSV4 into a BSD clone to be marketable, was the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of free user community programming effort could be brought to bear on improving BSD through several extremely impressive upgrades while AT&T fell further and further behind. Now that AT&T has wrested control of the future of Unix back from the user community, are we going to see the same dreary game of home-mortgage-sized source licence fees and vendor-only code improvements retarding the future of Unix, or has the lesson of open software systems finally been learned, so that cost-of-media source code licenses and ready adoption/sharing of user written OS improvements will keep the future of Unix bright? 3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore learned the BSD lesson yet? 4) BSD's other great advantage was _hundreds_ of utilities, compilers, whatnot bundled with the (cheap, cheap, cheap) OS. Are we getting the "real" Unix with AmigaUX, or just a stripped down file server and a chance to bleed to death $100 at a time buying the utilities that make everyday BSD use the most productive software development environment in existance? Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) (12/03/90)
In article <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: > I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra. > At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the > networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. The way AT&T licenses UNIX, the MAN pages, the C Compiler, the DWB, the UUCP and other networking software *ARE* all extra. Just because Sun has always included them all with SunOS doesn't mean that they aren't extras. All the world is not Sun. 1/2 :-) Besides, C-A is calling it an extra... but one that they throw in for free. If you consider the business UNIX systems that they are trying to compete with, it's very special that they throw them in at all. In AT&T's non-research (i.e. corporate) offices, they often don't even purchase the MAN pages. In the business environment it's just too much disk space. This is how it was last summer when I did an internship with them. (Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for AT&T). -Tom -- tlimonce@drew.edu Tom Limoncelli "Flash! Flash! I love you! tlimonce@drew.bitnet +1 201 408 5389 ...but we only have fourteen tlimonce@drew.uucp limonce@pilot.njin.net hours to save the earth!"
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/03/90)
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
in <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> writes:
[...]
{numerous comments praising BSD and condemning SysV}
And his comment:
_The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was
the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences
to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of
free user community programming effort ...
That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am from the
"school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, and I've had mixed
emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some time.
One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real"
world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable
features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()"
at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work
the same at site nematode.com.
One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to
restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific
features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and
feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use.
As UNIX is becoming "essentially" a standard, it MUST conform to the other
vendors' ports. This follows the reasoning behind the Application Binary
Interface (the UNIX "shrink wrap software" compatibilty) formulated by very
seasoned and capable persons.
Everything I've wanted in SysV is in SVR4, and it appears that everything
from 4.3BSD is in there too: file systems, networking, etc etc etc.
Kent continues:
3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user
community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore
learned the BSD lesson yet?
So? Programs I've written which worked under pre-1.0 AmigaDOS are still
working under the latest OS. What's your point?
And finally, he says:
... the utilities that make everyday BSD use the most productive
software development environment in existance?
Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc? I just had to buy a source
license from Aspen Scientific for their "curses" package (SVR3.2 compatible)
just so my programs WOULD have the same "look and feel" under BSD, A/UX, and
VAX/VMS as they do under SysV; the BSD, A/UX and VAX/VMS curses are garbage,
plain and simple. I've thrashed THIS issue out in comp.sys.att, comp.unix.*,
and several other newsgroups. Guy Harris' only comment about my postings and
other info concerned A/UX (and if you don't know who Guy Harris is, then you
don't know your UNIX history; you can look him up at either auspex!guy or in
"The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System").
And don't talk to me about X; all my application needed was tiled and over-
lapping pop-up fancy-line-border windows, menus and "forms" along with various
text and character video attributes (and now color) and cursor-key, mouse and
keypad user input WITHOUT the overhead of X, especially since most "real world"
business customers do NOT have X-terminals and may be calling in at 2400 to
9600 baud on serial lines. The application couldn't be done under BSD without
writing my OWN graphics library (or buying the Aspen one), since BSD doesn't
provide those features BUT SVR3 and SVR4 do.
Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system, and are
just parroting the statements of others without having had the opportunity
to form your OWN opinions. This is not meant as an insult or an attack, just
an observation based on your comments.
For MANY years I thought *ALL* UNIX systems were garbage because I was
listening to others whose opinions I respected ... until I had the opportunity
to buy my own system and actually LEARN what UNIX is all about (all versions);
I now own, personally, 7 UNIX boxes and have many others available to me
because it wasn't until I could SEE and USE UNIX that I realized how really
good it is for the type of things I and my clients need to do. And that's why
I also formed the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group: to help spread "The
WORD!" :-)
My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character filename
limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with SVR4 you just bring
up the BSD FFS and no sweat.
If you want some SVR4 systems to play with, there are several opportunities
available besides the one listed in the net-posting re: A3000 UNIX; many of
them are '486-based, but some 68040-based ones should be available VERY soon
(assuming I haven't been fed some marketing hype).
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) (12/03/90)
In article <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> varun mitroo <mitroo@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes: >In a previous article, Robert Huebner writes a series of idiotic comments: > >> Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek" > >He sound like a geek himself. > Spare us... >> |> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's >> |> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry >> |> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just >> |> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here? >> Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the >> user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best >> price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay >> more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100) > >4 megs is obviously not enough. Naturally, everybody is going to want to >go through the trouble of getting mail-order memory. Why doesn't Commodore >just sell it with enough memory without putting a mark-up on the memory? > This argument is too ridiculous. I'm sure that whomever you buy your Amiga 3000UX from will be happy to put as much memory in it as you like. > >> |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga >> |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That > - That's what I'm doing - >> I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to >> offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video >> areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore. > >Mr. Huebner obviously has no need to run unix. He likes AmigaDos, and is >sore that when Commodore is trying to market the amiga as a unix machine, >it is outmatched by workstations such as SUNs and NeXTs in terms of price >and performance. > Actually, the 3000UX outperforms NeXTs running the same chip. I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated GUI. I have never seen Open Look to compare it to NeXTStep, though as a workstation GUI I doubt it puts so much effort into visual impressiveness as NeXTStep. If it's an improvement over SunView it'll be pretty good. I have to agree that one ought to use workstations to do workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced (quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT, outclassed by high-end SPARCstations. I do like the selection of software that comes with NeXTstations. I would worry a bit that more software might be slow in coming, as NeXT more or less purchased most of those ports. The company is innovative enough that I doubt that this will be a crippling problem, however. > > Varun Mitroo > mitroo@cis.ohio-state.edu Thom Cleland tcleland@ucsd.edu -- ---- Thom Cleland "It is easier tcleland@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) (12/03/90)
> >Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery, >Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports) > OK. Once and for all, tell me... BYTE, Dec. 1990, pg. 136: "Although many UNIX licensees are well along in completing this task [of porting the new UNIX source codes to their machines], it appears that Commodore will be the first to complete it." This supports the conventional wisdom that CBM is first (or nearly first) in SVR4 Unix release. How does this jibe with the availability of Intel Unix SVR4 systems that you mention above? Am I missing something? Are these SVR4's released? What is BYTE referring to? Thom Cleland tcleland@ucsd.edu . -- ---- Thom Cleland "It is easier tcleland@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi (12/03/90)
In article <2300@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>, lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes: > In <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, adin@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes: > > Let's leave it at $4999, giving you 200 megs of disk, 8 megs of RAM, and a very > usable configuratin. >> >> NeXT offering: >> >> 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better >> video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled >> software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for >> bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why >> would you want to? > > Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure > couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with. Maybe you haven't seen NeXTstep 2.0 running on a 68040 NeXTstation. > >> Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied. > > Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational > discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid. Well, please tell the educ. prices, then. > >> Sun offering: >> >> SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today. >> You've seen it and worked with it. It is probably faster than either >> of the other platforms. $3,500 for unit + complete SunOS. Add $750 >> for drive. Get X from Randy. >> >> Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts >> applied. > > Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in > expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the > other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with > attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price, > so the comparison is again invalid. WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to be even faster than a SparcStation 1+. Note: When comparing the A3000UX and the NeXTstation you should remember that the latter has a 68040 and a motorola DSP. The latter doesn't have color in it's cheapest configuration, though. Jouni
dvljhg@cs.umu.se (J|rgen Holmberg) (12/04/90)
In article <36449@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: [stuff deleted to save bandwidth] > >Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery, >Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Just for the record, there are NO commercially available SVR4 systems until SVR4 specs. are completely solid. Much may happen yet. Jorgen -- ******************************************************************************* email dvljhg@cs.umu.se - other ways to communicate are a waste of time. Everything I say is always true, just apply it to the right reality. "Credo, quia absurdum est."
n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) (12/04/90)
In article <36488@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....
And don't talk to me about X; all my application needed was tiled and over-
lapping pop-up fancy-line-border windows, menus and "forms" along with various
text and character video attributes (and now color) and cursor-key, mouse and
keypad user input WITHOUT the overhead of X, especially since most "real world"
business customers do NOT have X-terminals and may be calling in at 2400 to
9600 baud on serial lines. The application couldn't be done under BSD without
writing my OWN graphics library (or buying the Aspen one), since BSD doesn't
provide those features BUT SVR3 and SVR4 do.
....
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well said! I for one can't afford to set aside the memory, disk
space, and CPU power for the resource-hog that is X. My group can
have quite a few more things going at once without X than with it, a
much more cost-effective practice for those that don't need
*everything* in bit-mapped graphics. It seems that, at least for now,
character-based windowing is the key to true portability.
-- Kev
--
Kevin L. Weller /-------+--------------------\
internet: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu | aTm | GIG 'EM, AGGIES! |
CIS: 73327,1447 \-------+--------------------/lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (12/04/90)
In <36488@cup.portal.com>, thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: > >My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character filename >limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with SVR4 you just bring >up the BSD FFS and no sweat. While 14 character file names are annoying, the SysVism that I got bitten by not too long ago was the 1 second resolution on file dates. Seems the SPARCs are getting fast enough for that to make a difference. -larry -- The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (12/04/90)
In <4134.275a6088@cc.helsinki.fi>, jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >In article <2300@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>, lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes: >> Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure >> couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with. > >Maybe you haven't seen NeXTstep 2.0 running on a 68040 NeXTstation. No I haven't. Is it out yet? When it is, let's compare with the 68040 version of the 3000 running Unix, shall we, when CBM brings it out, of course. >>> Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied. >> >> Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational >> discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid. > >Well, please tell the educ. prices, then. Don't know them.. sorry. >>> Sun offering: >>> >>> SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today. >>> You've seen it and worked with it. It is probably faster than either >>> of the other platforms. $3,500 for unit + complete SunOS. Add $750 >>> for drive. Get X from Randy. >>> >>> Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts >>> applied. >> >> Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in >> expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the >> other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with >> attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price, >> so the comparison is again invalid. > >WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to >be even faster than a SparcStation 1+. I'd have to see that to believe it. >Note: When comparing the A3000UX and the NeXTstation you should remember >that the latter has a 68040 and a motorola DSP. The latter doesn't have >color in it's cheapest configuration, though. I agree. Let us know when it appears. -larry -- The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/04/90)
cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) in <14660@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> writes: >Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery , >Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports ) > !OK. Once and for all, tell me... ! !BYTE, Dec. 1990, pg. 136: "Although many UNIX licensees are !well along in completing this task [of porting the new UNIX !source codes to their machines], it appears that Commodore will !be the first to complete it." ! !This supports the conventional wisdom that CBM is first (or !nearly first) in SVR4 Unix release. How does this jibe with !the availability of Intel Unix SVR4 systems that you mention !above? Am I missing something? Are these SVR4's released? !What is BYTE referring to? It appears that CBM will be the FIRST to market a 680x0-based SVR4 UNIX; as I've said for quite some time, the CBM offering has been demo'd in AT&T booths at UNIX tradeshows for some time. However, two months ago during the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group meeting, I invited Tyan Computer Corp. (612 N. Mary Avenue; Sunnyvale CA; 408/720-1200) to show their '486 SVR4 box with X11R4, and they brought two machines: a 25 MHz '386 and a 25 MHz '486 both running SVR4 and X11R4 in full color. Very Impressive. And they also supplied the "door prizes" for that evening which included a COMPLETE set of SVR4 docs. The reason I invited Tyan was due to their ads in the San Jose Mercury News SELLING these systems, today. Since then, I've received email from several other vendors whose '486 SVR4 ports are already available for sale as of August and September 1990. And I'm personally aware of at least one other vendor presently "doing" an SVR4 port for a 68040-platform (they demo'd an SVR3.2 version of their 68040-based hardware at the same AT&T Users' Group meeting two months ago). Again, CBM's system will "probably" be the first commercially available SVR4 on a 680x0-based platform, but NOT the first SVR4 "out there". I cannot speak for BYTE, and I dropped my subscription years ago due to their editorial prejudices. And until CBM officially releases their SVR4 I'm sure you won't see it available at your local Amiga dealer. As of TODAY, Monday, 3-Dec-1990, there are NO commercially-available SVR4 ports on a 680x0-based platform; there ARE some beta-version and "developer" systems from, among others, CBM. Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/04/90)
dvljhg@cs.umu.se (J|rgen Holmberg) in <1990Dec3.165846.5532@cs.umu.se> writes:
Just for the record, there are NO commercially available SVR4 systems
until SVR4 specs. are completely solid. Much may happen yet.
Precisely. That's why, I suspect, the recently-posted info about the SVR4
development system from CBM comes with 1-year of "free" updates: to accomodate
any changes.
But, as I've already posted, the official AT&T SVR4 documentation set is
available from numerous sources, such as TOWER RECORDS and Computer Literacy,
and the SVID, Issue 3 (for SVR4), has been available for some time.
Also, copies of "APPLICATION OPERATING ENVIRONMENT, AT&T UNIX System V
Release 4.0, Migration Guide for System V Developers" have been available
for quite some time (see below); the price from AT&T is "something like"
$5.13 (I suspect that's their actual production cost). The enclosed material
is from one of my postings to comp.sys.att, unix-pc.general and comp.unix.misc.
And for those who've asked, I am NOT employed by AT&T; the information below
is presented solely for its technical content.
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
-------------------- begin enclosed material --------------------
I continue to receive numerous inquiries concerning SVR4 and its impact on
existing software and applications. In case this hasn't been mentioned before,
I'd like to point interested parties to an EXCELLENT document from AT&T:
APPLICATION OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
AT&T UNIX System V Release 4.0
Migration Guide for System V Developers
From its page 1-1:
``The purpose [...of this document...] is to provide migration data to help
you determine how your existing UNIX system application source code will be
affected by the enhancements and changes provided by UNIX System V Release
4.0 (SVR4.0). The migration data are presented in migration tables, which
indicate how UNIX System V interfaces have evolved from SVR2.0 to SVR4.0.
For those interfaces whose functionality has been enhanced or changed, this
guide provides a description of those changes.
[...]
This guide is written for advanced users and programmers, such as Independent
Software Vendors (ISVs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs), who need migration
information for porting applications to SVR4.0
[...]
To derive maximum benefit from the information presented in this guide, you
should be thoroughly familiar with the UNIX system, particularly user commands,
system calls, and subroutines. In addition, you should be familiar with C
programming constructs.
''
To say the least, this document is a "MUST HAVE." It's about 200 pages, spiral
bound, and is accompanied by the latest AT&T MIGRATION TOOL software version
1.01 on two floppy disks, one for 3B2 (MC01-1491-X) and the other for 6386.
Chapter 2 has the migration tables, detailing ALL the differences and migration
between SVR2.0 to SVR2.1 to SVR3.0 to SVR3.1 to SVR3.2 to SVR4.0.
The document is described as:
SELECT CODE# 350-306
AOE AT&T UNIX SYS. V
REL 4.0 MIGRATION GD/
SYSTEM V DEVELOPERS
Page 1-7 has "How to Order Documents" (for this, and the other SysV refs) per:
- Within the continental United States, call 1 (800) 432-6600
- Outside the continental United States
Phone call 001 1 (317) 352-8556
FAX call 001 1 (317) 352-8484, or
call 001 1 (317) 352-8628.
Telex call 5101009077
- In Europe, order books from AT&T UNIX Europe Ltd. by calling
+44 1 567 7711 ("+" represents the international dialing code)
- In Canada, call 1 (800) 255-1242
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
-------------------- end enclosed material --------------------seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/04/90)
In-Reply-To: message from ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu Even though the NeXTStation will outperform an A3000UX from the box, their still both "unavailable." You can't get a NeXTStation until NeXT gets the '040s it needs, and the A3000UX isn't supposed to be released until after January's showing in Dallas (Uniforum). Hasn't NeXT said something like February or later for shipment? I'd be willing to bet that at least one of the '040s for the A3000 will be available by then...there you'd have the same speed, roughly the same cost, color, and a more standard version of Unix. What was it they guy in Byte said? The most complete version? :') Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (12/04/90)
In article <36488@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: > Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me > MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3. > Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling, > line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc? Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue. BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert: il. Line delete: dl. There's no color support, but there also aren't two color terminals in a thousand. And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature by calling up Berkeley and asking for it. > Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system, I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed BSD failings. ---Dan
jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi (12/04/90)
In article <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >> > Actually, the 3000UX outperforms NeXTs running the same chip. How interesting. So is the 3000UX even out yet? I suppose it will have a 68030. Well, ALL the NeXTs currently in production have the 68040. And the old NeXT's are being upgraded. And the NeXTstations and the new Cubes are out now (you have to wait a bit until you get the machine though, due to 68040 processor delays). And I think we have been comparing the 300UX to the NeXTstation. > I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas > run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the > near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated "Stantard UNIX"?!?!? There are 2 main camps on Unix. The other is BSD and the other AT&T. Both are quite common. Well, NeXT has adopted a special branch of BSD - Mach - but it is because Mach is the fastest version (especially for I/O) around (as far as I know) and it can handle multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong. > workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine > workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced > (quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT, > outclassed by high-end SPARCstations. I still don't get how you can say that 3000UX is comparable to NeXT. It is same as comparing a 486 to a 386 (or even worse since NeXT has the DSP). Only thing that IS comparable in these two machines is the price. Jouni Alkio - I had about $3000 to spend - I looked at A3000 and Atari TT - And 386/486 - And MAC IIsi - ... but I will get a NeXT.
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/04/90)
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: > xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > [...] > {numerous comments praising BSD and condemning SysV} >And his comment: > _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was > the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences > to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of > free user community programming effort ... >That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am from the >"school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, and I've had mixed >emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some time. >One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real" >world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable >features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()" >at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work >the same at site nematode.com. Umm. Thad. All those workstations that let AT&T know they had to incorporate BSD in SYSV or go out of the computer business weren't running SYSV, they were running BSD clones. And not because it was cheaper. You had to pay a BSD license on top of a SYSV license. The workstation manufacturers didn't pick BSD because it was impossible to find a standard release; they picked it because it worked better for their customers doing those customers' applications. BSD's open source policy meant that user developed software could be ported among platforms, which meant their customers saw a much more cost effective, leading edge capability combined hardware and software platform. The marketplace saw SYSV as junk, and the AT&T platforms running it did so poorly in the market, AT&T did massive layoffs for the first time in their history, to make up for the losses. >One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to >restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific >features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and >feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use. Gee, I just saw it as corporate greed, bureacratic stupidity, development incompetence, idea infertility, and hostility to their customer base. >As UNIX is becoming "essentially" a standard, it MUST conform to the other >vendors' ports. This follows the reasoning behind the Application Binary >Interface (the UNIX "shrink wrap software" compatibilty) formulated by very >seasoned and capable persons. Naturally, that's why there are two intensely hostile GUI groups -- to make sure all the platforms conform. That's why POSIX blessed the idiotic 14 character file name limit into the forseeable future. Trust me, nobody's doing anything out of sweetness and light. AT&T was watching their market share vanish, and read the handwriting on the wall. >Everything I've wanted in SysV is in SVR4, and it appears that everything >from 4.3BSD is in there too: file systems, networking, etc etc etc. I'm happy for you. Every time I've been stuck on a SYSV system, I felt like I was trying to work with my hands tied behind my back. >Kent continues: > 3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user > community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore > learned the BSD lesson yet? >So? Programs I've written which worked under pre-1.0 AmigaDOS are still >working under the latest OS. What's your point? That all the third party code is a god-awful mess of BPTR's, casts, and other idiocy, from trying to conform to Tripos, and that all that could have been gone long before the OS finally settled out if the free labor had been used. Where's the win in having software development retarded, and the number of commercial programs decreased, by forcing the developers to try to learn two ways of thinking at once? The added complexity of Tripos has probably cut the available software by 1/3 (wild ass guess). >And finally, he says: > > ... the utilities that make everyday BSD use the most productive > software development environment in existance? >Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me >MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3. >Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling, >line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc? I don't do curses programming; pretty interfaces deserve graphics support, and _any_ curses is an inadequate hack. Nevertheless, BSD curses completely supports the applications I've seen use it. The methods may be different, but the results on the screen are the same. >And don't talk to me about X; OK, I won't, but in my field, if you can't do it, you're unemployed, as I am. >Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system, Bingo! Could it be that's why I asked for a comparision to find out how much of BSD I'd be losing? Any gains are gravy. > and are just parroting the statements of others without having had the > opportunity to form your OWN opinions. My opinions of SYSV have been formed on SYSV, but not the newer releases. The ones I've worked on were just half a step above being a direct insult to the user. My opinions of open software systems to go along with open hardware systems are based on common sense and the success of those who won't take no for an answer and disassemble the code anyway, to find out just what vendor supplied bug is keeping them from writing the software miracle that will double hardware sales. BSD is so good that lots of software houses develop code for completely different machines under BSD just to have the great _programmers_ development environment available. I'm under no illusion that _any_ Unix system is friendly to the non-programming user. > This is not meant as an insult or an attack, just an observation based > on your comments. Taken in that spirit. >My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character filename >limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with SVR4 you just bring >up the BSD FFS and no sweat. I rest my case. ;-) Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/04/90)
In <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan
Bernstein) writes some comments which I'll address in a moment. But first I
assert this is neither the TIME (too late) nor the PLACE (wrong newsgroup) for
OS wars (and how DID this thread get cross-posted to alt.religion.computers?)
so I'll be brief and hopefully succinct, and try to keep this interesting.
First a background summary to put the remainder of this post into perspective:
In October I discovered a severe deficiency with BSD curses compared to SysV's
curses, and I instigated much discussion in comp.sys.att, unix-pc.general,
comp.unix.questions, comp.unix.programmer, and comp.unix.aux in this regards.
I followed up ALL the leads, read ALL the docs, and discovered a lot. Among
the material I studied are included the sources of the latest 4.3BSD "Tahoe"
curses library, 4.3BSD termcap, the pertinent SVR3 books (SVR3.2 Programmer's
Reference Manual and SVR3.2 Programmer's Guide, Vol. II), the O'Reilly books
("termcap & terminfo" (Sept.1990 edition) and "Programming with curses"), and
a large number of other curses-related documents, and even email with Berny
Goodheart (root@tndsyd.oz.au (0000-Berny Goodheart(0000))) who's the author of
the JUST-published "UNIX CURSES EXPLAINED", Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0 13 931957 3.
I've checked the AT&T Toolchest, and was finally referred to Vaughn Vernon of
Aspen Scientific for a source license to their SVR3.2-compatible "curses" due
to the deficiencies of BSD curses. I even keep the BSD curses' source online
so I can check and verify comments I make in these regards:
CLI6> ls -l sys6b:*bsd4.3*
----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:08:30 90 45303 libcurses-bsd4.3.tar.Z
----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:11:49 223 112593 window-bsd4.3.tar.Z
Dirs:0 Files:2 Blocks:313 Bytes:157896
Now for Dan's response to my post:
>In article <36488@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>> Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
>> MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
>> Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
>> line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc?
>
>Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue.
>
>BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert:
>il. Line delete: dl. There's no color support, but there also aren't two
>color terminals in a thousand. And you can pretty much standardize the
>name for a new feature by calling up Berkeley and asking for it.
>
>> Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system,
>
>I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a
>nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed
>BSD failings.
At first I was going to dismiss Dan's comments as just some more BSD-babble
parroting the BSD party line opinions and conveniently omitting any fact, BUT
I've seen this same kind of BSD-response sooo often I've been wondering "Why?"
for over 4 years.
To date, I have never seen any compelling facts that support the contention
"BSD is better than SysV". (Bear with me, see below)
And please limit any comments to the kernel, system libraries, and "devices";
EVERYTHING else is just a program(s) which can be ported to any system of
one's choosing as I did to put the BSD networking software on most my SysV
systems because I was unhappy with the stock WIN 3B/TCP stuff.
Regarding termcap, ALL the SysV-like ports to which I have access support BOTH
termcap and terminfo (and the corresponding libraries) for "compatibility"
reasons (this includes stuff from AT&T, HP, and others).
I stated the SysV 14-char filename limit has been a hassle, but SVR4 solves
that problem. Networking, sockets, BSD FFS, etc all exist in SVR4. What's
left that I'm not seeing? Dunno (at least from the application level).
Dan's comment: "And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature
by calling up Berkeley and asking for it." SHEESH! That's just the nature of
the PROBLEM with which I opened my original post! Government and business
clients will NOT tolerate eleventy-seven different "versions". AT&T's high
license fees are designed to prevent "random", non-standard hacks which create
a plethora of "proprietary" features at (only) some sites; the goal is to
have, from a business point of view, a stable platform upon which one can run
the $$$ software one buys, and ONLY with that stability will UNIX become more
accepted and widespread.
Dan's OWN examples belie his arguments, and illustrates the PROBLEM with BSD
(the random user hacks not generally found with SysV). To wit:
He states: "BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line
insert: >il. Line delete: dl."
Maybe on *HIS* "BSD" system, but not on mine. For example: right out of the
4.3BSD curses' source code, in tty_cr.c, we find the pattern strings:
namp = "ambsdadbeohchzinmimsncnsosulxbxnxtxsxx";
namp = "albcbtcdceclcmcrcsdcdldmdoedeik0k1k2k3k4k5k6k7k8k9hoicimip\
kdkekhklkrkskullmandnlpcrcscsesfsosrtatetiucueupusvbvsveALDLUPDOLERI";
and from 4.3BSD's curses.h we find (supporting the above):
extern bool AM, BS, CA, DA, DB, EO, HC, HZ, IN, MI, MS, NC, NS, OS, UL,
XB, XN, XT, XS, XX;
extern char *AL, *BC, *BT, *CD, *CE, *CL, *CM, *CR, *CS, *DC, *DL,
*DM, *DO, *ED, *EI, *K0, *K1, *K2, *K3, *K4, *K5, *K6,
*K7, *K8, *K9, *HO, *IC, *IM, *IP, *KD, *KE, *KH, *KL,
*KR, *KS, *KU, *LL, *MA, *ND, *NL, *RC, *SC, *SE, *SF,
*SO, *SR, *TA, *TE, *TI, *UC, *UE, *UP, *US, *VB, *VS,
*VE, *AL_PARM, *DL_PARM, *UP_PARM, *DOWN_PARM,
*LEFT_PARM, *RIGHT_PARM;
And in the 4.3BSD docs we find:
alternate char set: not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on
page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo"
region scrolling: "cs" to set the region line range, and "sf", "sr", "SF"
and "SR" to manipulate the region
line insert: "AL" (not Dan's "il" (not in the source))
line delete: "DL" and "dl" (which differ; not just Dan's "dl")
color: not in 4.3BSD
Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted
to that available with SysV. Even AT&T conceded the realities of the "real
world" by supporting DEC's "vt100" mode and alternate character sets for SVR3
curses; due to sheer numbers of vt100-like terminals out there it's become a
de facto standard and cannot be ignored.
As for "There's no color support, but there also aren't two color terminals in
a thousand.", that's a suprising comment to make in a newsgroup where one can
read about many Amiga-hosted terminal emulators. :-)
In "my" world, clients do NOT have X-terminals but they will have monochrome
and color VT100-like, VT240, and other ASCII-graphic devices for which a
SVR3.2 curses is perfectly suited. These clients are the BigGuys who process
your checks, medical records, tax returns, military procurement, and &tc.
They're switching to UNIX for its networking, interconnectivity and other neat
features including stability and freedom from proprietary operating system
"gotchas" as new hardware is necessarily acquired.
I would NEVER denigrate the fine, taxpayer-supported R&D work done at UCB and
at many other places. The BSD networking HAS become the standard. But those
are application-level enhancements for the most part, and even AT&T had to
concede some of the neat goodies of BSD by putting them in SVR4, making them
part of the new standard. Those concessions DIDN'T imply that SysV was a
deficient unusable OS, and many of the BSD-isms and SysV-isms can co-exist on
the same system. I prefer ready availability of sources, but I also have to
look beyond the Ivory Tower to the Real World because that's where my clients
and I operate.
I'm getting long-winded again, but I'm hoping some of these discussions are
proving useful/interesting. At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any
continued discussions of BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I
felt a documented response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments
were a "... complete travesty of the truth ...."
You be the judge. :-)
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]nfs1675@dsacg3.dsac.dla.mil ( Michael S Figg) (12/04/90)
In article <1990Dec1.162908.15163@dialogic.com>, gerry@dialogic.com (Gerry Lachac) writes: > > Depends on what world you are viewing UNIX from. In the "REAL" world > (read "business") there is only one choice, AT&T System V. BSD only > has really only inroads in the university world, no small potatoes > either. Universities aren't the only ones using BSD. The government also has a large BSD base, and with AT&T System V itself moving towards BSD it seems like BSD is moving towards being the 'main' road, not an inroad, in the UNIX world. -- -------- o A herd of bagels | Michael Figg DSAC-FSD | | -- oo o o escaping from a deli. | DLA Systems Automation Center | | -- ooo oo Looking for Lox in | Cols, Ohio mfigg@dsac.dla.mil -------- o o all the wrong places | CIS: 73777,360
karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) (12/05/90)
In article <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: >In article <36488@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >> [BSD curses doesn't have all these features that are in SysV curses] > >BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert: >il. Line delete: dl. Dan, are you really talking about the curses library, or the termcap library? In SysV, these features are available at the curses level. (I also happen to think curses was done poorly from the start, and about 3/4 of it should be removed, but that's another issue.) Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.isc.com or uunet!ima!karl), The Walking Lint (Followups to alt.religion.computers only.)
cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) (12/05/90)
>WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to >be even faster than a SparcStation 1+. > Cosmic! I had wondered whether reports that the 68040 would beat out many SPARC chips was just overzealous Amiga crowing. To hear it confirmed via another (though perhaps equivalent) source cheers me. There's future in CISC after all (especially if we get some parallel-capable platforms built). So the 68040 Amiga 3x00UX series will be SPARC peers, not little brothers... ditto NeXT. > > Jouni > -- ---- Thom Cleland "It is easier tcleland@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) (12/05/90)
In article <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >How interesting. So is the 3000UX even out yet? I suppose it will have a >68030. Well, ALL the NeXTs currently in production have the 68040. And >the old NeXT's are being upgraded. And the NeXTstations and the new >Cubes are out now (you have to wait a bit until you get the machine >though, due to 68040 processor delays). And I think we have been >comparing the 300UX to the NeXTstation. > >> I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas >> run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the >> near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated > >"Stantard UNIX"?!?!? There are 2 main camps on Unix. The other is BSD >and the other AT&T. Both are quite common. Well, NeXT has adopted a >special branch of BSD - Mach - but it is because Mach is the fastest >version (especially for I/O) around (as far as I know) and it can handle >multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think >that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong. > >> workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine >> workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced >> (quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT, >> outclassed by high-end SPARCstations. > >I still don't get how you can say that 3000UX is comparable to NeXT. It >is same as comparing a 486 to a 386 (or even worse since NeXT has the >DSP). Only thing that IS comparable in these two machines is the price. > > Jouni Alkio For Christ's sake, this is EXASPERATING. 68030 is not 68040. Don't compare platforms running different chips. It's stupid. The 68040 is finally shipping, both NeXT and Amiga will have them, the NeXT will probably have them on the motherboards first, fine. If you're going to buy a Unix box, you should learn a bit of Unix information. AT&T, BSD, SunOS, and Xenix are uniting into one Unix, the new *INDUSTRY STANDARD*, called System V Release 4. It will be administered by an organization called Unix International, which has many members. AT&T will be taking care of some development, I presume, in concert with Berkeley etc. X Windows and Open Look are a part of this standard. This is the standard being adhered to by Amiga, by Sun, by AT&T, and by most everybody. BSD will continue to run on machines that aren't upgraded, but as an independent development environment for Unix is to be no more. IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this standard. Workstation vendors are. Commodore is joining them. That is what I mean by industry standard. It seems you have posted the exact same arguments before. Please read the responses you will get before repeating them. There's nothing wrong with NeXTs, indeed there's a great deal right with them, very innovative. Based on what I've seen, I will choose a 3000UX 68030 over a cube and a 3000UX 68040 over a slab. I can wait the extra month or two (actually, I'll have to wait considerably longer :^) ). Why? I want to be industry standard for maximum productivity (given that the standard is adequate, which in this case it is), and I want to spend my bandwidth on applications other than redrawing the screen. I'm glad you like your NeXT. Enjoy it, it's a good machine. -- ---- Thom Cleland "It is easier tcleland@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (12/05/90)
In article <6057@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes:
You can't get a NeXTStation until NeXT gets the '040s it needs, and the
A3000UX isn't supposed to be released until after January's showing
in Dallas (Uniforum).
Why wait 'til Uniforum? As I understand it, if you want a 3000UX
now, Commodore will sell it to you as development/extended beta test
system. I don't think you can get a software only version yet to run
on a 2000 w/accelerator board. Commodore does a pretty good job of
having things stable when they are finally released, and not doing the
formal announcement until a product is ready to ship. This often
means an extended limited release/beta test period. (Maybe we will
get AmigaDOS 2.0 for Christmas? Please!!!!)
Also there seems to be a defensive attitude about wait til the
68040 Amigas get here... I saw a system with a GVP 50 MHz 68030,
Video Toaster, multiple monitors, etc. over a month ago. A customer
system, not a dealer demo. Ran a couple of (integer) benchmarks
faster than the NeXT 040 demo machine. I guess it depends on which
machine you see first, after playing with the Toaster, I almost fell
asleep at the NeXT demo. If NeXT thinks that it is capable of running
in the same league they had better think again. :-)
(Flame Retardant) The Amiga system I saw was not cheap, in fact
it may have been more expensive than a 68040 NeXT with a color board
and monitor, but boy was it nice!
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) (12/05/90)
In article <EACHUS.90Dec4195111@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: >In article <6057@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: > Also there seems to be a defensive attitude about wait til the >68040 Amigas get here... I saw a system with a GVP 50 MHz 68030, >Video Toaster, multiple monitors, etc. over a month ago. A customer >system, not a dealer demo. Ran a couple of (integer) benchmarks >faster than the NeXT 040 demo machine. I guess it depends on which Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030. I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What benchmarks did you use? Also, please do not use pitiful benchmarks like dhrystones. Does anybody in the Amiga community have SPECmarks for them? I'd love to see what they are. I love the Amiga just as much as the next guy, but please do not post clearly false results. I will dig up some benchmark code from somewhere and run it on an 040 NeXT and then on a 50 MHz 030 Amiga and we'll see what we get. See ya, Ralph Ralph Seguin gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu 536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) (12/05/90)
>Even though the NeXTStation will outperform an A3000UX from the box. Their >both still "unavailable." The NeXTs are shipping (as of a week ago). True, if you order one now, you may have to wait until February to get one. But for those of us with foresight to have gotten on the list a couple of months ago, we're eagerly awaiting an early Christmas present.
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (12/05/90)
In article <36537@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: > Dan's comment: "And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature > by calling up Berkeley and asking for it." SHEESH! That's just the nature of > the PROBLEM with which I opened my original post! Government and business > clients will NOT tolerate eleventy-seven different "versions". I fail to see your logic. Why does the ability to easily standardize a feature make for problems? TELNET was originally a MIL-STD protocol, and it has lots of options. You can pretty much call up the IETF and ask for another option number. The government uses TELNET all the time. What's the problem? > alternate char set: not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on > page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo" Perhaps Doug would know when and where as/ae were added. [ region scrolling is cs, line insert is AL, line delete is DL/dl ] Sorry for my typos. In any case, the features are there, and they are used. You stated that BSD doesn't support these features; you are wrong. > Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted > to that available with SysV. What serious deficiency are you talking about? It is impossible for a program to use color or alternate character sets really well, since different terminals have different colors and different alternate characters. Other than that, everything you've claimed missing from BSD is there. > At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any > continued discussions of BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I > felt a documented response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments > were a "... complete travesty of the truth ...." Okay, only a partial travesty of the truth. ---Dan
jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi (12/05/90)
In article <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: > In article <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: > > 68030 is not 68040. Don't compare platforms running different > chips. It's stupid. The 68040 is finally shipping, both NeXT > and Amiga will have them, the NeXT will probably have them > on the motherboards first, fine. I think that you should only compare products that are: AVAILABLE and IN ABOUT THE SAME PRICE RANGE I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists. And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040 NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.) Jouni
dvljhg@cs.umu.se (J|rgen Holmberg) (12/06/90)
In article <4153.275d0746@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >In article <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >> In article <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >> >> 68030 is not 68040. Don't compare platforms running different >> chips. It's stupid. The 68040 is finally shipping, both NeXT >> and Amiga will have them, the NeXT will probably have them >> on the motherboards first, fine. > >I think that you should only compare products that are: > >AVAILABLE and IN ABOUT THE SAME PRICE RANGE > >I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists. What bout this then. Compare an A3000 with an accelerator card to a Next. The A3000 is available now. It has a huge software base ( not vaporware like most sw for the Next ). The OS takes only 2 megs of harddisk space. The environment is fast, multitasking and user-friendly. > >And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040 >NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is >nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a >forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.) > > Jouni The Next is a good machine but since you want comparison I will give it to you. Acorn Archimedes A3000. The machine is right up there with the Next and the Amiga 3000 in performance. The machine is cheaper than any of them ( around $3000 without discount ). There is NO software base but you don't care, right? Jorgen -- ******************************************************************************* email dvljhg@cs.umu.se - other ways to communicate are a waste of time. Everything I say is always true, just apply it to the right reality. "Credo, quia absurdum est."
spike@world.std.com (Joe Ilacqua) (12/06/90)
In article <36537@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: <At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any continued discussions of >BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I felt a documented <response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments were a "... >complete travesty of the truth ...." At this point with 4.4BSD on its way with many new and interesting features, I think the debate will go on. And given the facts that, (if all goes according to plan) 4.4BSD will be freely availble in source form, and that it runs on the 386, 4.4BSD may be the death of SYSV. ->Spike -- The World - Public Access Unix - +1 617-739-9753 24hrs {3,12,24,96,192}00bps
rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer) (12/06/90)
In article <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4] >standard. Workstation vendors are. I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are. As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the best of my knowledge) isn't. Unless/until OSF and UI merge their product, there still won't be a single industry standard "Unix", whatever that means. -- "The goons are riding motorcycles, but WE'VE | (Steve) rehrauer@apollo.hp.com got a whole big metal car! This will be like | The Apollo Systems Division of stepping on ants..." -- Freelance Police | Hewlett-Packard
mitroo@python.cis.ohio-state.edu (varun mitroo) (12/06/90)
In article <EACHUS.90Dec4195111@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: >machine you see first, after playing with the Toaster, I almost fell >asleep at the NeXT demo. If NeXT thinks that it is capable of running >in the same league they had better think again. :-) This is exactly the point that many people have missed. There is no way that the NeXT can compare hardware or software-wise with the amiga in terms of video. You can run a NewTek Demo Reel on a stock 500 and not be able to on a NeXT. The two computers are different machines for different tasks. NeXT is releasing a high end graphics board with 32 bits/pixel and an i860 processor in 1991 (with 8 bits alpha). It also includes a JPEG compression chip. This board sounds amazing for video work, but there will still be a long time before software is made to fully utilize it. The amiga is a far better choice for this. > > Robert I. Eachus Varun Mitroo mitroo@cis.ohio-state.edu
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (12/06/90)
In <4e6afc49.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>, rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer) writes: >In article <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4] >>standard. Workstation vendors are. > >I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are. >As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the >best of my knowledge) isn't. Unless/until OSF and UI merge their >product, there still won't be a single industry standard "Unix", >whatever that means. DEC _IS_ embracing SVR4, according to a blurb I read in a Unix mag about a month or two ago. Caused quite a chucle around our office. -larry -- The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (12/06/90)
In article <1990Dec5.061558.21893@engin.umich.edu> gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) writes:
Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030.
I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What
benchmarks did you use? Also, please do not use pitiful benchmarks
like dhrystones. Does anybody in the Amiga community have
SPECmarks for them? I'd love to see what they are. I love the
Amiga just as much as the next guy, but please do not post clearly
false results. I will dig up some benchmark code from somewhere
and run it on an 040 NeXT and then on a 50 MHz 030 Amiga and we'll
see what we get.
(FLAME ON!!!!)
Come on Ralph, get your head on straight. If I were running
dhrystones out of on chip cache, I would expect the 25MHz 68040 to be
50% faster than the 50MHz 68040. BUT I WAS BENCHMARKING SYSTEMS.
Using "real" application code that required lots of memory accesses,
in this case on a 1 Mbyte array. I like this particular program as a
benchmark because 1) it is small (about 2K source lines), 2) it is
very insensitive to compiler optimization, and 3) it has a good
balance between integer operations, branching code, and memory
references. The various Mac2's, including the 2fx, and the NeXT get
dragged down by poor bus speeds. I wanted to check how good the GVP
card was under stress. (Answer, good but expensive.)
If you do lots of floating point operations the 040 will blow the
68882 and most RSIC chipsets away. BUT I WAS TALKING ABOUT INTEGER
PERFORMANCE AND SAID SO. Different people use machines for different
things. Typically, I need to benchmark for integer and byte
manipulation operations, since the systems I deal are either used for
discrete event simulation and message processing or have attached
signal processors. (The Video Toaster is one hell of a signal
processor, but not the kind I usually get asked about. :-)
Last but not least: Don't insult Dhrystone, particularly Dhrystone
2.1. It is a very good and well designed benchmark. Just don't
believe anything vendors tell you about Dhrystone numbers. When I was
benchmarking a (name deleted to avoid singling out one of the guilty)
in the manufacturers demo facility, I got a Dhrystone figure less than
one third of what their marketing literature quoted. I got ahold of
their performance person in the manufacturing plant, and told him my
figure. I then "guessed" at 5 of the ways they had cheated to get the
quoted number but that left me about 25% short. He told me that the
marketing number used a timing package that excluded all system calls
and part of the procedure call overhead! Yeech.
It used to be, when the SPECmark first came out, the numbers were
trustworty. I've recently seen some quoted numbers which were worse
that Dhrystones.
I've personally done thorough benchmarking jobs on over thirty
systems. (And quick and dirty benchmarking of lots of others.) If you
don't do your own benchmarking, and know all the gotchas, almost every
marketdroid will try to pull considerable wool over your eyes.
Commodore is one of the few that don't. (But then again they don't need
to: The manual for my 2630 card: "...the A2630 may deliver a 400%
- 600% speed increase in most integer based operations." The lowest
improvement I have measured was 5.36x a base A2000 with FAST memory,
the highest 10.7x. Great show Dave Haynie.)
(Flame off.)
I guess that got it out of my system. It's just that it seems
all to often some procurement officer believes the marketdriods
claims, and then I (or someone else) gets called in to study the
"problem" with the software. It would be nice if the purchasers
believed the reports of the people they hired to evaluate the systems
instead of the vendors claims.
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren Rittle) (12/06/90)
In an article seen not too long ago, Ralph writes: >In article <EACHUS.90Dec4195111@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: >>In article <6057@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: >> Also there seems to be a defensive attitude about wait til the >>68040 Amigas get here... I saw a system with a GVP 50 MHz 68030, >>Video Toaster, multiple monitors, etc. over a month ago. A customer >>system, not a dealer demo. Ran a couple of (integer) benchmarks >>faster than the NeXT 040 demo machine. I guess it depends on which > >Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030. I'd like >to see the benchmarks and results you used. What benchmarks did you use? Also, >please do not use pitiful benchmarks like dhrystones. Does anybody in the >Amiga community have SPECmarks for them? I'd love to see what they are. >I love the Amiga just as much as the next guy, but please do not post clearly >false results. I will dig up some benchmark code from somewhere and run it >on an 040 NeXT and then on a 50 MHz 030 Amiga and we'll see what we get. > > See ya, Ralph > >Ralph Seguin gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu Actually not as preposterous as one NeXTer might think: (the facts as I see them :-) With identical memory sub-systems, Motorola has claimed that an '040 will run about 3-4 times faster than a like '030 system clocked at the same speed running the code, running under the same operating system! Sounds good to me, let's start here. 1) GVP's memory sub-system (on the A3001 card at least) is better than the orignal NeXT cube's memory sub-system. (I can and will send proof, if needed) Maybe NeXT improved the memory sub-system in the new design, who knows. In any event, GVP's was only slightly better, so I won't worry about it. :-) I'll give the NeXT the benifit of the doubt. 2) 040@25MHz vs. 030@50MHz, according to the above if these systems were running the same code under the same OS, we could expect the '040 system to be about 1.5 to 2 times faster. (Based upon seeing that CPU bound programs really do run twice as fast on GVP 030@50MHz vs GVP 030@25MHz) 3) Ah, now the wild-card, the OS! UNIX, even NeXT Mach has quite a bit of overhead even when just running normal user processes. AmigaOS being a multi-tasking OS has overhead also, of course, but it is on the order of 10% (Yes I have made some measurments myself!), as compared to 30% to 50% for UNIX (CS friend looked into this out at ISU when I was an undergrad there.) Let's not play a number game here, get out the UNIforum papers and look for yourself. Add all this up and what do we see: Yes, an Amiga with 030@50MHz running AmigaOS could compare to a NeXT 040@25MHz running UNIX. I can't wait for 040 boards for the Amiga when we will be able to see the 040 really fly. So see, Ralph, this statement that Sean makes is really not out of line. In terms of how responsive a system feels, AmigaOS wins hands down over UNIX (even UNIX running with GUI on a really big powerful and costly machine). Enjoy your new NeXT and leave the comments in comp.sys.next please! Loren -- ``In short, this is the absolute coolest computer device ever invented!'' -Tom Denbo speaking about The VideoToaster by NewTek ``Think about NewTek's VideoToaster! Now think about the Amiga!'' Loren J. Rittle lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) (12/06/90)
jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists. >And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040 >NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is >nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a >forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.) Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing) 1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.) Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?) 2) The A3000 is more than a UNIX box. It has a LOT secial about it. 3) Someone mentioned somewhere to expect great software for the NeXT due to minimal mem. configurations for the machine 8 megs (the developers could expect a lot of memory, disk space too). Well, we are talking about OpenLook->X software applications, not AmigaOS (which is maturing at a wonderful rate :). Well, I'll take a 3000. PS to amigans: ftp the turrican demo on hubcap or abcfd. REAL GOOD. Oh well, send all flames and "incorrect spellings :)" -> comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc -- ---------------------------------//------------------------------------- Doug Dyer Clemson University // "Splunge!" - MP ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu \\ // -----------------------------\X/----------------------------------------
lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren Rittle) (12/06/90)
Many moons ago the flame war started, who knows by whom, who cares!
(Note the following is a request for peace, will a respected NeXT
person please quite the NeW NeXT fanatics who are posting messages
like crazy in OTHER newsgroups! I read comp.sys.next, I just don't
want to read about NeXT in comp.sys.* (where * != next))
Both machines use the 680x0, what on earth are we fighting about!
Both are much better than brain dead PC. Both have uses. Enough
is enough!
Get the NeXT crap out of comp.sys.amiga or you will see more
messages in comp.sys.next in one day then you have seen in the last
month, I mean it!
--
``In short, this is the absolute coolest computer device ever invented!''
-Tom Denbo speaking about The VideoToaster by NewTek
``Think about NewTek's VideoToaster! Now think about the Amiga!''
Loren J. Rittle lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edujalkio@cc.helsinki.fi (12/07/90)
In article <12097@hubcap.clemson.edu>, ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) writes: > jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: > >>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists. > >>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040 >>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is >>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a >>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.) > > Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing) > > 1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.) > Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?) Gee. I think that the suggested retail price of NeXTStation is $4995. The educ. price is about $3200. This includes 8MB RAM, 105MB HD, Megapixel display, etc. I would really like to know if that $4000 is the EDUCATIONAL or RETAIL price for A3000UX. If it is educational, I wonder what is the point in paying nearly $1000 more for a system with 68030 instead of 68040 and without DSP. I also doubt the Amiga system comes with as good display than the NeXTs. Even if there was a 68040 Amiga for about $3000 educational, I would still choose NeXT - because of DSP and the wonderful development environment. Jouni
mwm@fenris.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) (12/07/90)
DEC _IS_ embracing SVR4, according to a blurb I read in a Unix mag about a month or two ago. Caused quite a chucle around our office. Your Unix rag may be wrong. OSF1 is a very nice system indeed (at least for as little as I've looked at it), and DEC has committed to it's next major Ultrix release being based on OSF1. Note that this doesn't mean that DEC won't release a SysVR4 based OS. After all, we've committed to doing a POSIX-compliant version of VMS. Besides IBM, HP, Hitachi and Groupe Bull have all committed to shipping OSF1 based products. Nixdorf, Encore, Intel & Intergraph have also announced OSF1 products. (gee, all but the last three are OSF founders, and OSF1 is heavily based on the Encore Mach product...) Also, watch out for ANDF. If it delivers on it's promises, it'll trump ABI, and make shrink-wrap software for OSF platforms easier than shrink-wrap softare for MSDOS platforms. <mike --
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/07/90)
In-Reply-To: message from eachus@linus.mitre.org I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good. I'm more concerned about when, and for how much, I'll be able to buy Amiga UNIX for my A3000. I'll definately have to get another HD (only have 50MB), and some more RAM (4MB) before I even consider it though. Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) (12/07/90)
In article <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >In article <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >version (especially for I/O) around (as far as I know) and it can handle >multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think >that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong. BSD is most certanily a standard. More of a standard, imho, than ATT is. I hate att unix, r4 might be ok (the docs look like bsd docs), but r3 sucks major time. SunOS is a weird cross between bsd and att, but it is far more bsdish than attsysvish. Mach CANNOT support mulitipul CPU's AT THIS TIME. It is a priority to set up, and shouldn't be too long now. Once that happens, could you imagine the NeXTcube with a accellerator? The main cpu a 68040 and 4 other 68040's (symmetric multiprocessing, of course. There would be no "main" cpu -- imagine that, though). We're talking about a cube that could handle 60+ users!! Geesh, easly 60+ users. As a one user machine, it would be beautiful.. Mach is really good for I/O, as is the NeXT. Also, the Mach kenal (kernal , that is) is tiny compared to attr4 kernals, and other bsd kernals. - Vareck Bostrom bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++ Vareck Bostrom ++ ++ bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++ ++ bostrov%storm@cs.uoregon.edu ++ ++ ++ ++ All this signifigance ++ ++ what does it mean? ++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) (12/07/90)
In article <EACHUS.90Dec4195111@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: > (Flame Retardant) The Amiga system I saw was not cheap, in fact >it may have been more expensive than a 68040 NeXT with a color board >and monitor, but boy was it nice! I love that "color board and monitor". The NeXT "color board" is a 16.7 million color system. It uses a 33 MHz intel 80860 processor and has a dedicated JPEG compression processor. You can put up to 32 mb of ram on the NeXTdimension. Resolution is 1120x832. - Vareck Bostrom bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++ Vareck Bostrom ++ ++ bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++ ++ bostrov%storm@cs.uoregon.edu ++ ++ ++ ++ All this signifigance ++ ++ what does it mean? ++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) (12/07/90)
In article <EACHUS.90Dec5174626@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: >In article <1990Dec5.061558.21893@engin.umich.edu> gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) writes: > > Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030. > I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What Though I do favor the NeXT over the Ami, I must say, that statement is incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second, I have tested a 68030 / 50 MHz (scion.cs.orst.edu, a HP 9000/375 -- reguardless of what nslookup says) and that gets 20000-22000 dhrys. Yes, the 25mhz 040 is faster than the 50 mhz 030, but BARELY faster. Now, if you are talking about floating point, you are absoultly correct, the 68040/25 gets between 2.0 and 3.3 MFLOPS, the 68882 at 50 mhz gets about 0.4 MFLOPS. Raytraceing on the 040 next seems to be VERY fast, MUCH MUCH faster than any 030, true. MUCH faster than the ss-1+ (SPARC+Weitek 3170 at 25 MHz) in fact. And a bit slower than the HP9000/845, and MUCH slower than an Ardent Titan-3 with vector. (Also MUCH slower than a IBM RS/6000 POWER system, but hey, it runs AIX (puke here) so who cares!?). Anyway, I can't wait for the 60 MHz 040. Or the 60 MHz POWER, for that matter. Wouldn't that be interesting, as 20 MHz POWER blasts everything already. Later. - Vareck Bostrom ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++ Vareck Bostrom ++ ++ bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++ ++ bostrov%storm@cs.uoregon.edu ++ ++ ++ ++ All this signifigance ++ ++ what does it mean? ++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) (12/07/90)
In article <1990Dec5.234035.23604@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren Rittle) writes: >3) Ah, now the wild-card, the OS! UNIX, even NeXT Mach has quite >a bit of overhead even when just running normal user processes. >AmigaOS being a multi-tasking OS has overhead also, of course, but >it is on the order of 10% (Yes I have made some measurments myself!), >as compared to 30% to 50% for UNIX (CS friend looked into this out Mach is MUCH better than reg. Unix, though a bit worse than AmigaOS. Not much though. Overhead is somewhere like 15% for Mach. > >Add all this up and what do we see: >Yes, an Amiga with 030@50MHz running AmigaOS could compare to a >NeXT 040@25MHz running UNIX. I can't wait for 040 boards for >the Amiga when we will be able to see the 040 really fly. >So see, Ralph, this statement that Sean makes is really not out >of line. In terms of how responsive a system feels, AmigaOS >wins hands down over UNIX (even UNIX running with GUI on a >really big powerful and costly machine). Enjoy your new NeXT Really? I don't think so. Running X on a MIPS magnum or a DEC5100 (with whatever ontop of it) blows away the ami. Even the 040 ami and the 040 NeXT. A POWER/530 will crush the ami and the NeXT, and I mean crush on the order that a Cray YMP/8 will crush a HP9000/220. Admittidly, I havent seen any good games for the POWER. (or the cray, for that matter). - Vareck Bostrom ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++ Vareck Bostrom ++ ++ bostrov@mist.cs.orst.edu ++ ++ bostrov%storm@cs.uoregon.edu ++ ++ ++ ++ All this signifigance ++ ++ what does it mean? ++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) (12/07/90)
Thom Cleland writes: >If you're going to buy a Unix box, you should learn a bit of Unix information. >AT&T, BSD, SunOS, and Xenix are uniting into one Unix, the new *INDUSTRY >STANDARD*, called System V Release 4. Very misleading. System V Release 4 is an attempt to make SysV the Unix standard by giving it the power and completeness of BSD Unix. Meanwhile, the people behind BSD are working on 4.4BSD, which may very well leave System V Release 4 in the dust. There have been two Unix standards in the past: BSD and SysV. BSD is generally considered the more complete and powerful implementation. SysV is popular because it has AT&T's backing and is standard on many business machines. However, it has lacked BSD's completeness, and Release 4 is an attempt to address this. It remains to be seen how successful this attempt will be. Meanwhile, BSD marches forward toward 4.4BSD. At any rate, the NeXT is not a great machine because it is a Unix machine. It is a great machine because it gives you the power of Unix without making you deal with Unix directly. A typical NeXT user should never have to learn vi, grep, ls, or any other Unix command. A typical NeXT user should have to know nothing about what BSD stands for (Berkeley Standard Distribution). The equivalent can't be said about the users of X Windows OpenLook (the GUI for Amiga's Unix).
helmutn@cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Helmut Neumann) (12/07/90)
Hi, you can only get the advantages of the 040 with an adequate RAM-Design and if you can use the new Cache-Modes (delayed write back etc.) correctly. OS 1.3 and 2.0 can not correctly use these new Modes, so the advantage will only be seen under a new OS like Unix and if you add additional RAM to the 040-Board. Simply adding the 040 to the A3000 only raises the FPU-Performance. Bye, Helmut.
bandw (12/07/90)
In article <1990Dec6.070235.27302@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lrg7030 @uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren Rittle) writes: >Get the NeXT crap out of comp.sys.amiga or you will see more >messages in comp.sys.next in one day then you have seen in >the last month, I mean it! Careful Loren. As a NeXT believer (I use one every day), I feel strongly about the machine. But I, like most other comp.sys.next subscribers have NEVER condoned the unreasonable and unwanted postings of the self appointed NeXT evangalists. My own feeling is that these people often present a negative image of NeXT rather than the positive one they intend. What was at first informative for members of other groups became a barrage that now seems to be running it's course. Please allow it to die naturally. At worst, make note of the offending authors and try to settle this via e-mail. What you suggest amounts to a sort of network terrorism that is a terrific example of the "two wrongs making a right" principle.
es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) (12/07/90)
In article <6141@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: > >I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this >does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good. > The cost to become a developer is $75, and approval is essentially automatic. So basically just think of it as adding $75 to the cost of the machine. Yes, ANY developer can buy it, including certified, which is $50/year. -- Ethan Woody Allen on Los Angeles: "I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?"
torrie@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Evan James Torrie) (12/08/90)
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) writes: >In article <EACHUS.90Dec5174626@aries.linus.mitre.org> eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: >>In article <1990Dec5.061558.21893@engin.umich.edu> gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) writes: >> >> Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030. >> I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What >Though I do favor the NeXT over the Ami, I must say, that statement is >incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not >in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second, >I have tested a 68030 / 50 MHz (scion.cs.orst.edu, a HP 9000/375 -- reguardless >of what nslookup says) and that gets 20000-22000 dhrys. Yes, the 25mhz How much of that is due to the difference in compilers?? HP's compilers are well known for producing very good results on Dhrystone. Have you tried running Dhrystone on any of HP's 040 machines? I recall a Motorola employee posting results on comp.arch a while back which gave around 35000 dhrys/second for an 040 at 25MHz. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Evan Torrie. Stanford University, Class of 199? torrie@cs.stanford.edu Today's maxim: All socialists are failed capitalists
laughlin@fornax.UUCP (Bob Laughlin) (12/08/90)
In article <1990Dec7.132653.527@uunet!bandw> craig@uunet!bandw writes: >Careful Loren. As a NeXT believer (I use one every day), I feel >strongly about the machine. But I, like most other comp.sys.next >subscribers have NEVER condoned the unreasonable and unwanted >postings of the self appointed NeXT evangalists. My own feeling is >that these people often present a negative image of NeXT rather than >the positive one they intend. I completely agree with this. As a NeXT and Amiga user (and Amiga owner) I have a lot of respect for both machines. Unfortunately the quality of input from the NeXT crowd in this newsgroup borders on infantile and tends to draw infantile responses from Amiga defenders. The quality of discussion in comp.sys.next is much higher and I think reflects better on the kind of person attracted to the NeXT. Unlike some others I feel comp.sys.amiga IS an appropriate place for discussing the relative merits of both machines. I'd like to see a higher calibre of discussion is all. -- Bob Laughlin laughlin@cs.sfu.ca
dsherif@csserv2.ic.sunysb.edu (Darin D Sheriff) (12/08/90)
In article <4165.275e781d@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >In article <12097@hubcap.clemson.edu>, ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) writes: >> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >> >>>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists. >> >>>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040 >>>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is >>>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a >>>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.) >> >> Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing) >> >> 1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.) >> Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?) > >Gee. I think that the suggested retail price of NeXTStation is $4995. >The educ. price is about $3200. This includes 8MB RAM, 105MB HD, >Megapixel display, etc. > >I would really like to know if that $4000 is the EDUCATIONAL or RETAIL >price for A3000UX. If it is educational, I wonder what is the point in >paying nearly $1000 more for a system with 68030 instead of 68040 and >without DSP. I also doubt the Amiga system comes with as good display >than the NeXTs. > >Even if there was a 68040 Amiga for about $3000 educational, I would >still choose NeXT - because of DSP and the wonderful development environment. > > Jouni GRRRRRRR!!!! I thought I got rid of all of you with the kill option. Kindly move this to the comp.sys.next area. If I wanted to know all there is about the Next, I would read the appropriate group. (Actually I do but that is not the point.) I read comp.sys.amiga because I am interested in news about the amiga not the Next. -- Darin Sheriff. Just a College student with an Amiga. "According to the classical laws of Aerodynamics, it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly." --- DR WHO --- Disclaimer: Wasn't me.
n368bq@tamuts.tamu.edu (Raoul Rodriguez) (12/08/90)
O.K... TO settle this price/performance thing, I went down to the local
campus computer store (where they sell NeXT machines) to get a first
hand look at the machine, and also to get the prices... And, this is
what I found...
There are currently 4 diffrent NeXT setups... and all 4 setups come with
two diffrent Hard Drives, 105 or 340 (with the 105 you don't get a lot
of software, but with 340 you get a bunch). The prices in "("'s are the
educational prices, the plain prices are the retail price. The dealer
wasn't sure on the last three cube setups... so they have a "+" after
them...
1) The NeXTStation (The Slab) (Greyscale)
- 105 HD $4,995 ($3,328) (Don't forget to add tax)
- 340 HD $7,995 ($5,052)
2) The NextStation with color (up to 4032)
- 105 HD $7,995 ($5,774)
- 340 HD $9,995 ($7,941)
3) The Cube (Greyscale)
- 105 HD $7,995 ($5,774)
- 340 HD $10,000+ ($8,302)
4) The Cube w/color (16.7 million (32 bit))
- 105 HD $15,000+ ($10,194)
- 340 HD $17,000+ ($12,722)
The NeXTStation (Slab) is made to be unexpanded, there are no slots.
The Cube however has three slots. The greyscale cube can be upgraded
to color for $2995 for the board, and a 20 inch color monitor will run
and additional $1850.
The NeXT family uses the Scsi II interface, so, there are not that many
drives out there, upgrading your storage space is moderatly difficult
because there are only two companies that manufacture SCSI II drives
(Quantum just jumped in, so I didn't include them), and the prices are
high compared to regular SCSI. (I can get those as well)
All and all, I think that the machine to compare to the A3000UX would
be the NeXTStation with color, and that runs at $5774 (educ. disc) for
the 105, but the 3000 comes with a 200 HD... so tack on another $1000
for 100 more megs of hard drive space for the NeXTStation (color), and
the machine that compares to the 3000 actually costs ~$6,500 (educ.disc)
and ~$9,000 retail (on both prices, you still need to add tax)
All and all, I think we need to re evaulate the price/performance
comparison...
Raoul Rodriguez
"People may not believe what you say, but they will always believe
what you do."
yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) (12/08/90)
Chill people (those who've been flaming me for writing about the NeXT). This post is just to answer a couple of questions an Amiga fan asked: ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) asks: >1) What is the end-user's price for the NeXT? $5000 for the NeXTStation (30% discount to developers and 30-40% to educational buyers). That's $5000 without a discount. >3) ... we are talking about OpenLook->X software applications, not AmigaOS The main body of NeXT applications are NeXTStep applications. NeXTStep is the GUI and user/programmer environment on the NeXT.
gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) (12/08/90)
In article <676@storm.UUCP> bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) writes: >Though I do favor the NeXT over the Ami, I must say, that statement is >incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not >in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second, Please do not base performance evluations on pathetic benchmarks like dhrystones. Something like ray-tracing, FFTs, massive matrix inversions, etc. Things that really accomplish something are a better indicator of speed. >POWER system, but hey, it runs AIX (puke here) so who cares!?). Kinda buggy isn't it :)? >Anyway, I can't wait for the 60 MHz 040. Or the 60 MHz POWER, for that >matter. Wouldn't that be interesting, as 20 MHz POWER blasts everything >already. Later. 60 MHz 040? Hmmm... you'll be waiting a long time. They did, after all just start shipping the 25 MHz. There are also many problems involved in producing chips with clockrates that high. Now for the ultimate: A professor here that I did some research for is currently working on a MIPS R2000 clone with a 4ns clock. For those of you who don't do inversions too well, a 4 ns clock is a 250 MHz clock. Make for a peppy DECstation :) See ya, Ralph Ralph Seguin gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu 536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) (12/08/90)
In article <677@storm.UUCP> bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) writes: >on the order that a Cray YMP/8 will crush a HP9000/220. Admittidly, >I havent seen any good games for the POWER. (or the cray, for that matter). The best game of all time for X machines is Xtank. A must have :) Runs on a Cray too :) See ya, Ralph Ralph Seguin gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu 536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) (12/08/90)
In article <3725@rwthinf.UUCP> helmutn@cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de writes: >Hi, >you can only get the advantages of the 040 with an adequate RAM-Design >and if you can use the new Cache-Modes (delayed write back etc.) correctly. >OS 1.3 and 2.0 can not correctly use these new Modes, so the advantage will only >be seen under a new OS like Unix and if you add additional RAM to the 040-Board. >Simply adding the 040 to the A3000 only raises the FPU-Performance. Nonsense. Almost all instructions have been optimized to execute in fewer cycles. Granted a good 32 bit memory design helps considerably, but you will DEFINITELY see a good performance increase by just adding an 040. See ya, Ralph Ralph Seguin gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu 536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (12/09/90)
>2) _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent that >AT&T finally had to bow to the inevitable (as the workstation market >"all" went BSD) and mutate SYSV4 into a BSD clone to be marketable, was >the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences to >the user/programmer community, Well, BSD source licenses required AT&T source licenses, so the cost of a BSD source license >= the cost of an AT&T source license. Given that it required a "32V or better" license, those folks with 32V licenses only paid the price of a 32V license, rather than the price of an S5 license, but I don't think AT&T's sold 32V licenses for a while. *Commercial* sites didn't get licenses that I'd call "almost free", although university sites did. >so that the tremendous resource of free user community programming >effort could be brought to bear on improving BSD through several >extremely impressive upgrades while AT&T fell further and further >behind. I suspect it can be attributed more to the fact that, when VAXes started becoming UNIX platforms, the VAX UNIXes from AT&T were far elss functional - especially for big virtual-memory jobs (the reason why Berkeley put demand paging into BSD) - than the Berkeley versions. This "seeded" the VAX UNIX community with BSD - especially those members of the community more likely to develop software - so that the bulk of the user-community improvements were for BSD. This may have been somewhat of a self-sustaining process, helped along by the fact that, for much the same reason, those workstation vendors who adopted UNIX started with BSD. >Now that AT&T has wrested control of the future of Unix back from the >user community, are we going to see the same dreary game of >home-mortgage-sized source licence fees and vendor-only code >improvements retarding the future of Unix, Not all vendors *now* make all their improvements generally available. You can't say that's all AT&T's doing. >or has the lesson of open software systems finally been learned, so >that cost-of-media source code licenses and ready adoption/sharing >of user written OS improvements will keep the future of Unix bright? Perhaps, if 4.4BSD comes out and is mostly or completely AT&T-free, it will provide an alternative to AT&T UNIXes?
dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz (Dale Gold) (12/09/90)
Quoted from - laughlin@fornax.UUCP (Bob Laughlin): > Unlike some others I feel comp.sys.amiga IS an > appropriate place for discussing the relative merits of both > machines. I'd like to see a higher calibre of discussion is all. > -- Since comp.sys.amiga is one of the highest volume newsgroups on the Net, maybe comp.sys.next would be a more efficient forum for all these arguments. I'll happily read it there when I've got time to kill. With the vote for the division of comp.sys.amiga going on, I hope that you folks who are enjoying this will spare a thought for those of us who are getting this on our machines at home. It's a waste of our limited time, resources and family phone lines to have these endless computer wars transmitted to us every day. Please do us a favour and vote YES for a newsgroup for comparisons/wars. Cheers, Dale -- /%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%\ | | You gotta have smelled a lot of | | dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz | mule manure before you can sing | | | like a hillbilly. Hank Williams | \%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%/
yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) (12/09/90)
I really want this thread to end. But when I see misinformation like the following, I feel compelled to respond> >The NeXT family uses the Scsi II interface, so, there are not that many >drives out there SCSI II is backward compatible with ole-fashioned SCSI with a $49 part from NeXT. Think of moving from SCSI to SCSI II as moving from the 030 to the 040. You get backward compatibility and more features and performance (SCSI II can handle higher data transfer rates, although I don't know if NeXT takes advantage of this feature). >All in all, I think that the machine to compare to the Amiga 3000UX would >be the NeXTstation with color, and that runs at $5574 (educ. disc.) for >the 105, but the 3000 comes with a 200 HD...so tack on another $1000 >for 100 megs more hard drive space for the NeXTstation Color.... The Amiga 3000UX comes with a 100 MB drive, the 200 MB drive will cost you extra, as on the NeXT. True, the NeXT doesn't give you color in the base NeXTStation, but if your primary concern isn't color the NeXT gives you power and features not found in the Amiga 3000ux for $3000-$3500. The DSP, the 040 chip, the Megapixel display (the optional color display on the Amiga 3000ux does not have Megapixel resolution) with a 17" screen, the bundled software, NeXTStep, et al. By the way, the educational prices you mention only apply to your school. Each school has its own educational pricing for the NeXT, the differences arising from school markups, the volume of machines ordered by the school from NeXT, etc. You can get better deals than the $3328 NeXTstation available from your school at another school. There are also worse deals out there.
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (12/09/90)
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) >I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a >nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed >BSD failings. Hmm, I wonder if you've looked at SYSV curses as it's currently being distributed (e.g. with Sun/OS.) It's much better than the old V7 curses library. One major added feature is *input* support. I can write things like: switch(getch()) { case KEY_RIGHT: do_right_thing(); break; and all those KEY_RIGHT symbols are mapped properly (e.g. function keys). They turn them into 0400+code symbols so they're distinguished from ASCII. It works, they do it right. There's nothing resembling that in the older curses stuff, and I use this new feature a lot. They have a lot more than just cursor keys defined also, you can throw all sorts of handy codes into your switch statements (KEY_CLEAR, KEY_PAGEUP and so on), and add ASCII equivalents of course: case KEY_PAGEUP: case CTRL('U'): /* whatever */ Attributes (underscore, blinking etc) are also handled much better now. And, heavens, you can even write a program which reliably uses box-drawing characters and so forth. Look at the manual page (I'll send it to you if you like.) I think you'll quickly see it's impossible to support the view that SYSV curses is only trivially improved over BSD curses. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
jafo@miranda.UUCP (Sean Reifschneider) (12/10/90)
> Every time I've been stuck on a SYSV system, I felt like I was trying > to work with my hands tied behind my back. > [...] I'd have to say that's just personal experience. You could get somone that works on SYSV, and take them to BSD, and they'd probably say the same thing. When I started working on PCs a year or so ago, I had to use Brief (editor) until they could get a copy of MKS VI in. I felt like my hands were tied in brief. Them getting VI for me improved my productivity immensely. Why? Breif isn't inherantly inferrior to VI (people I work with will argue the opposite quite strongly). It's just that I've been using VI for the last 5 years as my editor/word processor (with nroff). Can't wait until I get my 3000UX! Sean -- From the desk of Sean Reifschneider. Isn't Amiga UUCP great? Thanks Matt. uunet.uu.net!ccncsu.colostate.edu!ncuug!miranda!seanr
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (12/10/90)
In article <BZS.90Dec8172930@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > Look at the manual page (I'll send it to you if you like.) I think > you'll quickly see it's impossible to support the view that SYSV > curses is only trivially improved over BSD curses. I didn't say that. System V curses/terminfo does indeed have lots more features than BSD curses/termcap. But that System V fanatic was accusing BSD of missing basic features which have been around for years. Somehow I don't really care about the infinite pile of frills in System V. ---Dan
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/10/90)
In-Reply-To: message from yoo@well.sf.ca.us I'd also like to see this thread end...I'm tired of wading through it to get at messages of importance. The Amiga (all of'em) and the NeXT (all of'em) are good, useful systems. Each has strong points. Each is severely underrated by the "greater" computing community. I'd own a NeXT in any of its versions before I'd own a Macintosh...and I think I'd go back to a c64 before I'd use any platform based on an Intel chip, with the exception of the i860. But simply put, if I owned ANY other machine besides an Amiga I couldn't do the things I do everyday, both for enjoyment and profit. Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/10/90)
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) in <4271:Dec1003:29:5790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> writes: In article <BZS.90Dec8172930@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > Look at the manual page (I'll send it to you if you like.) I think > you'll quickly see it's impossible to support the view that SYSV > curses is only trivially improved over BSD curses. I didn't say that. System V curses/terminfo does indeed have lots more features than BSD curses/termcap. But that System V fanatic was accusing BSD of missing basic features which have been around for years. Somehow I don't really care about the infinite pile of frills in System V. Oh? How quickly some forget; sigh. I clearly stated there are some parts of BSD which are DEFICIENT (not "missing") when compared to SysV, and, as ONE example, cited the curses issue which recently caused me much grief. "System V Fanatic"? Gee, as previously posted, I even tested curses/termcap on my own BSD machine, and there are several more available to me. A true "SysV Fanatic" wouldn't have a BSD box in the same room as a SysV box. Personally, I consider myself more an Amiga-fanatic! :-) The point of my continued participation in this thread was to elicit some informed statements as to why some think BSD is so much greater than SysV. To date, none have surfaced. Not in this thread nor in the years I've been asking the same question elsewhere. The ONLY comments I'm getting from BSD-fanatics is "BSD is better!" without any supporting evidence. Consider Kent Paul Dolan's recent posting as just another example (my original comments preceded by "> "): You had to pay a BSD license on top of a SYSV license. [...] BSD's open source policy meant that user developed software could be ported among platforms, which meant their customers saw a much more cost effective, leading edge capability combined hardware and software platform. [...] > {Re: AT&T's license fees} Gee, I just saw it as corporate greed, bureacratic stupidity, development incompetence, idea infertility, and hostility to their customer base. [...] Every time I've been stuck on a SYSV system, I felt like I was trying to work with my hands tied behind my back. [...] > Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system, Bingo! Could it be that's why I asked for a comparision to find out how much of BSD I'd be losing? Any gains are gravy. [...] My opinions of SYSV have been formed on SYSV, but not the newer releases. The ones I've worked on were just half a step above being a direct insult to the user. My opinions of open software systems to go along with open hardware systems are based on common sense and the success of those who won't take no for an answer and disassemble the code anyway, to find out just what vendor supplied bug is keeping them from writing the software miracle that will double hardware sales. BSD is so good that lots of software houses develop code for completely different machines under BSD just to have the great _programmers_ development environment available. [...] > My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character > filename limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with > SVR4 you just bring up the BSD FFS and no sweat. I rest my case. ;-) Opinions, opinions, opinions. BSD's "open sources"? Sure, if you already had the SysV source. Then comments about "hands tied" WRT SysV, and SysV being an "insult to user"; more opinions without examples. Then the "undefined" ``programmer development environment'' of BSD. And what might THAT be? If it's just a collection of progams and utilities, then that is NOT BSD-specific since such programs can be ported to or installed upon any system of one's choosing (as I previously stated, and have demonstrated to my satisfaction re: emacs, bison, HDB uucp, smail3.1.19, networking utils, etc.). The fact that such "programmer development environment" utilities may have been first developed on an BSD system is irrelevant. Back in the early '60s such programs were developed on SDS-930 and PDP-10 systems because, then, THOSE machines were readibly available to university students and researchers. You'd be surprised to learn how many good programs from back then I've since ported to TOPS-20 and again to the UNIX (and other) boxes I use today. And I was using ftp, telnet, network sockets, etc. LONG before BSD UNIX even existed, on the ARPAnet host systems such as Tenex, ITS, SAIL, &c back in 1970; that year is significant, because that's the "birth" year of UNIX at AT&T, 20 years ago. Those ARPA networking capabilities and protocols were ported to BSD UNIX from those other systems much later (but NO earlier than 1977 when 1.0BSD surfaced). Point is, you use what machine(s) are available at the time. The fact that a given program runs on machine A does not automatically make machine B an inferior, substandard system simply because a given program hasn't been ported to it. Again, when comparing SYSTEMS, one must restrict the discussion to the kernel and its intrinsic support libraries. Ancillary support programs can be ported to (practically) ANY system. I've been stating facts; most everyone else has been stating opinion and getting emotional about the issue. I suppose this is not the time nor place to discuss the superiority of SysV's ksh to BSD's csh, or .... :-) :-) Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
etxtomp@eos.ericsson.se (Tommy Petersson) (12/10/90)
In article <1990Dec7.152711.6990@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) writes: -In article <6141@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: -> ->I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this ->does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good. -> - The cost to become a developer is $75, and approval is -essentially automatic. So basically just think of it as adding -$75 to the cost of the machine. - Yes, ANY developer can buy it, including certified, which -is $50/year. - -- Ethan - I just wonder if You can buy a Developer A3000UX bundle in Sweden, even if You register as a developer... :-( No? I didn't think so... - Woody Allen on Los Angeles: - - "I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only -cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?" Tommy Petersson
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (12/11/90)
>BSD's "open sources"? Sure, if you already had the SysV source.
Much of the BSD sources are right now sitting in UUNET's anon FTP
area, and the rest are heading there. So much for that. That includes
kernel source.
BSD was/is vastly superior to SYSV, at least pre-SYSVR4 which
basically cloned most of BSD so what's there to say? The fast file
system alone was enough to make you run the other way from systems
which lacked it. Not to mention SYSV's lack of any backup facility. A
stable file store is kind of important, at least to me.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLDhuebner@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner) (12/11/90)
In article <22059@well.sf.ca.us>, yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) writes: |> I really want this thread to end. But when I see misinformation like the |> following, I feel compelled to respond> Gee. Me too! |>(the optional color display on |> the Amiga 3000ux does not have Megapixel resolution) with a 17" screen, The optional card for the Amiga offers 1024X1024 resolution with appropraite multisync. As for size of the monitor, that up to the user. The neat thing about the Amiga is that you have a choice of peripherals. You don't have to buy the NeXT monitor, you can purchase a well established unit like the NEC 5D or any other you choose. Choice! Expandability.. Well, you get the idea. Also, if you really want this thread to end why, in the name of god, did you post 11 articles on this thread on December 8th alone! From my end, it seems as if you are accountable for more than 50% of the posts (and misinformation) on this topic. If you really want the thread to end, I think you know what to do! Robert Huebner huebner@aerospace.aero.org The Aerospace Corporation
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (12/11/90)
In article <14710@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >>WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to >>be even faster than a SparcStation 1+. >Cosmic! I had wondered whether reports that the 68040 would >beat out many SPARC chips was just overzealous Amiga crowing. To read the "spec sheets" (actually, manufacturer's hype sheets; the spec sheets are only rated in nanoseconds), the SLC cranks out 12 MIPS, the 25MHz 68040 itself is capable of up to 20 MIPS (which says absolutely nothing about how fast a real 68030 computer will go, since the system design determines how much of the potential can actually be reached), and a 25MHz 68030 kicks up about 6 MIPS. However, those are chip numbers and may have little to do with real world performance. A good model for this is the Personal Workstation review this month of the IBM PowerStation systems. These little workstations have this supposedly amazing "America" chipset, IBM's second generation RISC effort, and at least at the time of their release, set the record for SPECmarks on a desktop system. The PW folks seem pretty good at cranking out benchmark numbers; they run CPU, FPU, and Disk tests, and good ones like SPEC and AIM. They found, for a single person running a single program, the RS6000s do kick some butt, on both hard disk (well, it was UNIX, and they compare it to crawlers like PCs and Macs as well as disk-wise real computers), integer, and floating point. When they run a multitasking benchmark like AIM, the thing looks more like a really expensive '386 system. That RISC design, which does get speed from being superscalar, is extremely sensitive to the software its running. More traditional RISC architectures, like the SPARC and the 68040 (which will act very much like a RISC in real benchmarks, I suspect), aren't quite so sensitive, but still only perform like the marketing folks claim when they have full pipelines and all. The 68030 doesn't hit the same peaks, but it's also very hard to slow down with multitasking. All of which means, don't pay too much attention to marketing hype like "MIPS" numbers. When reality sets in, I'm sure the 68040 will be a nice improvement over the 68030, but I don't think you're often going to see 3x-6x speed increases outside of bad benchmarks and perhaps some finely turned special purpose single threaded number crunching jobs. It also helps to know ahead of time why you're buying this computer and what you expect to do with it. Lots of us techies want faster machines, and a good percentage of that crowd may even have a real use for them. >Thom Cleland "It is easier -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "I can't drive 55" -Sammy Hagar
cseaman@sequent.UUCP (Chris "The Bartman" Seaman) (12/11/90)
yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) writes: > Chill people (those who've been flaming me for writing about the NeXT). Not on your life. I must say that congratulations are in order. We have a winner in the coveted -MB- award for December (and it's only the 10th as I write this!). Young-Kyu Yoo clearly takes the cake for the most arrogant, ill-advised, mis-placed articles ever to grace comp.sys.AMIGA. NOW SHUT UP! Regards, Chris -- Chris (Insert phrase here) Seaman | ___-/^\-___ qatul batlh. cseaman@gateway.sequent.com <or> | //__--\O/--__\\ qatul Huch. ...!uunet!sequent!cseaman | // \\ qatul roj. The Home of the Killer Smiley | `\ /'
cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) (12/12/90)
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: | xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) | _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was | the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences | to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of | free user community programming effort ... | | That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am | from the "school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, | and I've had mixed emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some | time. | | One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real" | world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable | features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()" | at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work | the same at site nematode.com. Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin counts on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and SGI, not even for important or critical bugs. A secondary issue is to be able to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special 'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver, or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like this are surprisingly important to local users). We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not because we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or utilities. Believe me, we'd all like to run stock systems, straight off the vendor distribution tapes; it'd be significantly less work. But our users have this liking for working systems and prompt fixes for the bugs they find, neither of which the vendors we buy from have been particularly good in supplying. | One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to | restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific | features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and | feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use. Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly useful one. [Needless to say, I do not speak officially for the University of Toronto as a whole or for UTCS.] -- "If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something." - C. Philip Wood cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu ...!{utgpu,utzoo,watmath}!utgpu!cks
martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) (12/13/90)
In article <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writes: >thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >| xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) >| _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was >| the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences >| to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of >| free user community programming effort ... >| >| That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am >| from the "school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, >| and I've had mixed emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some >| time. >| >| One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real" >| world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable >| features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()" >| at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work >| the same at site nematode.com. > > Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so >many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make >custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin counts >on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and SGI, not >even for important or critical bugs. Generally, only large companies or universities have system administrators who are able to fix bugs in the Unix kernel. Does this mean that small and medium size companies cannot use Unix? Do Sun, DEC and SGI ship software with critical bugs and fail to fix them? Would you buy an OS that was so buggy that the sources were included so you could fix it yourself? No wonder the business world has been avoiding Unix. >A secondary issue is to be able >to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special >'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is >utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a >passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets >instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver, >or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or >similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the >University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make >disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying >SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like >this are surprisingly important to local users). If you need OS source code to do this, then you bought the wrong OS. > > We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not >because we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or >utilities. Believe me, we'd all like to run stock systems, straight >off the vendor distribution tapes; it'd be significantly less work. >But our users have this liking for working systems and prompt fixes >for the bugs they find, neither of which the vendors we buy from have >been particularly good in supplying. > >| One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to >| restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific >| features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and >| feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use. > > Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one >defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly >useful one. Perhaps the problem is that Berkeley admitted that BSD was broken and AT&T refused to admit their Unix was broken? Whichever, distributing sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea if you are trying to capture the business market.
baker@wbc.enet.dec.com (12/13/90)
-Message-Text-Follows- Without getting involved in the argument itself, I'd like to mention a relevant article in the December issue of the Communications of the ACM. It's called, "An Empirical Study of the Reliability of Unix Utilities", authors are Barton P. Miller (et al). The gist of the article is that these folks wanted to see how robust the utility programs were under random input (the idea was inspired by bad phone lines on a rainy night).. Testing a number of different Unices, they sent random character strings as input to the various utility programs, and on the average, 24% of the programs reacted *very* badly. "Very badly" in this context means that the utility either went into an infinite loop, or it core dumped... Unfortunately, although SunOS, BSD, and AIX are represented in the tests, ATT V.4 isn't. So, will *your* next command be one of the 76% that work, or the 24% that don't ? Regards Art Baker
scott@mcs-server.gac.edu (Scott Hess) (12/13/90)
In article <16482@cbmvax.commodore.com> martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) writes: Generally, only large companies or universities have system administrators who are able to fix bugs in the Unix kernel. Does this mean that small and medium size companies cannot use Unix? No. But small and medium sized companies (and small and medium sized schools, for that matter) oftern have people who are perfectly capable of applying patches that someone elsewhere wrote. It's not like everyone across the country who owns Unix source must find their own method of fixing each and every bug . . . Do Sun, DEC and SGI ship software with critical bugs and fail to fix them? Would you buy an OS that was so buggy that the sources were included so you could fix it yourself? No wonder the business world has been avoiding Unix. Many of the bugs are not "critical", but are simply misfeatures. It's not critical that your stty work nicely, or that your getty automagically determines the line speed, it's just alot nicer. >A secondary issue is to be able >to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special >'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is >utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a >passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets >instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver, >or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or >similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the >University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make >disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying >SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like >this are surprisingly important to local users). If you need OS source code to do this, then you bought the wrong OS. ??? I don't get it. Can you do this with VMS, or something? Out of the box? I've never heard of an OS which covered every single possibility of user-configurability without distributing source. >| One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to >| restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific >| features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and >| feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use. > > Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one >defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly >useful one. Perhaps the problem is that Berkeley admitted that BSD was broken and AT&T refused to admit their Unix was broken? Whichever, distributing sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea if you are trying to capture the business market. Why, can't businesses find a use? I'd think the opposite would be true - many businesses can afford to bring someone in to add features if they have to, even small ones. There is currently a consulting firm which will come in and get GNU stuff running on your machines, and add things you need, for a fee, of course. This is how it should work - rather than begging the company to come fix your stuff, you should be able to do it on your own. That cures many problems (for instance, if ATT is not all that interested in a version of vi with built-in robots and rogue.) I'm not really arguing that all software should have source included, or anything. Sure, that would be really nice, but I don't believe in it enough that I distribute my stuff with source (I gotta make a living, after all). But I can see many reasons why _I_ would want source to my Unix, not the least of them being the ability to find out what's really going on in there, rather than realying on a scanty, and probably buggy, manual to tell me . . . -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad <I still speak for nobody> "Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ." "Buy `Sweat 'n wit '2 Live Crew'`, a new weight loss program by Richard Simmons . . ."
JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) (12/13/90)
>>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4] >>standard. Workstation vendors are. > >I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are. >As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the >best of my knowledge) isn't. Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"... :-( Kurt -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- || Kurt Tappe (215) 363-9485 || With. Without. And who'll || || 184 W. Valley Hill Rd. || deny it's what the fighting's || || Malvern, PA 19355-2214 || all about? - Pink Floyd || || jkt100@psuvm.psu.edu --------------------------------------|| || jkt100@psuvm.bitnet jkt100%psuvm.bitnet@psuvax1 QLink: KurtTappe || -----------------------------------------------------------------------
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (12/13/90)
From: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) >Whichever, distributing >sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea >if you are trying to capture the business market. Hey! Who let the MBA in? And I suppose you're next going to argue that auto manufacturers should put their own locks on car hoods to help capture the business markets? Look, all OS's have bugs. Many are tolerable. Most are tolerable by most people. But if you're the site that has to virtually shut down operations because of a security flaw which doesn't seem to bother that many other sites (e.g. if it's an internet break-in opportunity, most customers won't be on the internet) then you're in trouble w/o the sources. Beyond that kind of extreme situation there are many shades of gray. None of this is peculiar to Unix, everything I say could apply to VMS, AOS/VS etc. Systems with absolutely no security, like DOS or Macs (or Amigas I assume, but I don't know Amiga/OS), are obviously excluded from these examples. I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over when someone can log in. Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with some things which are fraught with peril.) (I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a logic I agree with, but just an example.) So you tell the vendor, and the answer is "we don't have too many customers who want that (they always know exactly what their customers want, until someone comes in to auction off the furniture), so forget it". One compromise I've called for for years is that the sources to certain critical applications, such as login and password checking modules, should be supplied as source (certain pieces, like the encryption stuff, might not, just appear as library calls, but the mainline logic at any rate.) If I want to add code to demand longer passwords, or a secondary password if I think it's a really odd time (or place) for this particular person to be logging in, why should it be so difficult? What's the big deal? There probably aren't any big deal trade secrets in the login sources (in fact, I know Unix' login sources quite well, they're quite boring and predictable, which is good!) It's this binary mentality that either you get all the sources, or none that goads me. How about a few device driver sources? Some windows applications (admittedly some vendors do make these available, tho it's usually just the most trivial cases)? Is this sort of stuff really the family jewels? Not likely. Fortunately this situation is changing itself within the Unix community as almost everything you might want is available as a freely distributable source equivalent. I can't help but wonder where the motivation to write all those free-source clones comes from if there's really no need. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/13/90)
cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writes: >thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >| xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) >| _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was >| the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences >| to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of >| free user community programming effort ... >| >| That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am >| from the "school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, >| and I've had mixed emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some >| time. >| >| One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real" >| world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable >| features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()" >| at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work >| the same at site nematode.com. > Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so > many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make > custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin counts > on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and SGI, not > even for important or critical bugs. A secondary issue is to be able > to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as [...] > (all these examples are real ones from around the University of > Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make disparate systems > look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying SGI's stty to > understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like this are > surprisingly important to local users). > We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not > because we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or > utilities. A fourth "good" from having system source available is the _tremendous_ increase in programmer productivity it gives. When chasing down a bug, it is much faster to chase _my_ bug through the vendor's code to see just why it is a bug, than to chase _their_ bug all over my code, looking for something that just isn't there. In a day of source level debuggers, having _all_ the source is crucial. Having it priced out of reach is a devastating blow to code implementation. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/13/90)
martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) writes: >cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writes: >> Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so >> many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make >> custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin >> counts on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and >> SGI, not even for important or critical bugs. > Generally, only large companies or universities have system > administrators who are able to fix bugs in the Unix kernel. Does this > mean that small and medium size companies cannot use Unix? Do Sun, DEC > and SGI ship software with critical bugs and fail to fix them? Would > you buy an OS that was so buggy that the sources were included so you > could fix it yourself? No wonder the business world has been avoiding > Unix. Compared to what? In the micro world, MS-DOS has still got bugs in it from the first release. In the mainframe world, the most successful vendor, IBM, releases OSs so buggy it is standard practice for big businesses to "rent" _several_, full time (in some cases, 24 hours, 7 days a week) IBM systems analysts to be on-site to fix problems that would otherwise prevent them from conducting business. Compared to the general run of commercial OSs, Unix is a marvel of robustness and utility. Watch a Unix site bring itself back on line from a cold, dropped power shutdown, unattended, including fixing the corrupt file structures on its way up. Compare that to the one armed paperhanger mood bringing up a mainframe from a similar shutdown. I'm talking from person experience in all these cases. >> A secondary issue is to be able to adapt the system to important >> local requirements, such as a special 'nice' value for processes you >> want to run only when the system is utterly idle, mass creation of >> (student) accounts from canned data, a passwd command that refuses to >> let you use stupid passwords and lets instructors change student >> passwords, a new working SMD disk driver, or a rdump that understands >> using a remote account besides "root", or similar things (all these >> examples are real ones from around the University of Toronto). A >> tertiary issue is the ability to make disparate systems look and feel >> the same (by such methods as modifying SGI's stty to understand a >> number of BSDoid options -- things like this are surprisingly >> important to local users). > If you need OS source code to do this, then you bought the wrong OS. Nonsense. I've visited many vendors _making_ computers who do their own software development for their machines on a VAX under BSD. It isn't an accident that every OS that matters is either adopting Unixisms or being replaced by Unix. Take a look again at the principals in the two competing "standard" Unix efforts; no one of consequence is left out. Except for extremely special purposes, it won't be long before "the world's not Unix" will no longer be a fair putdown. > Perhaps the problem is that Berkeley admitted that BSD was broken and > AT&T refused to admit their Unix was broken? Whichever, distributing > sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad > idea if you are trying to capture the business market. Perhaps your experiment has been limited to talent-free businesses; the ones I've worked at had programmer staffs in the hundreds; one sold computers, one sold software, one sold ships. The one selling ships had the most programmers. Source code access is just too important to be hindered by the false image of people randomly hacking the kernel; that's not what happens in the real world. In the real world, user found patches go back to the vendor, where they are evaluated, added if sound, and distributed in the next release. No business is _forced_ to hack the source code it has available, or to run anything but a clean, vendor release OS. Every site that _does_ do kernel hacks also knows that the way to isolate problems with newly installed software is to go back to the clean release, and install patches one by one until the one causing the problem is isoleted. That's standard practice, well known, and completely removes the "hacked OS" bugaboo. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) (12/13/90)
In article <BZS.90Dec12232338@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > >From: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) >>Whichever, distributing >>sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea >>if you are trying to capture the business market. > >Hey! Who let the MBA in? I'm insulted. (I'm not an MBA, but they do sometimes use computers). > >And I suppose you're next going to argue that auto manufacturers >should put their own locks on car hoods to help capture the business >markets? > >Look, all OS's have bugs. Many are tolerable. Most are tolerable by >most people. But if you're the site that has to virtually shut down >operations because of a security flaw which doesn't seem to bother >that many other sites (e.g. if it's an internet break-in opportunity, >most customers won't be on the internet) then you're in trouble w/o >the sources. > >Beyond that kind of extreme situation there are many shades of gray. > >None of this is peculiar to Unix, everything I say could apply to VMS, >AOS/VS etc. Systems with absolutely no security, like DOS or Macs (or >Amigas I assume, but I don't know Amiga/OS), are obviously excluded >from these examples. > >I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over >when someone can log in. > >Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not >have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put >that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which >disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with >some things which are fraught with peril.) VMS has that and much more built into it. Some versions of so-called "Secure" Unix also offer features like this. >(I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a >logic I agree with, but just an example.) I would agree in an engineering company or a university. If I was running the MIS department of a fortune 500 company, a bank, or a government contractor, I would strongly disagree with you. [...] >If I want to add code to demand longer passwords, or a secondary >password if I think it's a really odd time (or place) for this >particular person to be logging in, why should it be so difficult? > >What's the big deal? There probably aren't any big deal trade secrets >in the login sources (in fact, I know Unix' login sources quite well, >they're quite boring and predictable, which is good!) > >It's this binary mentality that either you get all the sources, or >none that goads me. > >How about a few device driver sources? Some windows applications >(admittedly some vendors do make these available, tho it's usually >just the most trivial cases)? Is this sort of stuff really the family >jewels? Not likely. I agree with you. Source code for this kind of stuff should be available to those who are interested. > >Fortunately this situation is changing itself within the Unix >community as almost everything you might want is available as a freely >distributable source equivalent. > >I can't help but wonder where the motivation to write all those >free-source clones comes from if there's really no need. >-- > -Barry Shein > I agree with you that source code is a really great thing for those of us who are capable of modifying it. In an academic or engineering environment, it is a necessity. What I really dislike is people who design operating systems so poorly that simple reconfigurations require modifying the sources and recompiling the kernel. OS kernels should be like color TVs; there are no user-servicable parts inside. VMS does this fairly well. Even AmigaDOS is way ahead of Unix in this. Operating systems (IMHO) should be simple, modular and expandable. In AmigaDOS, filesystems and networking protocols can be dynamically added or removed from the system. Why can't Unix do this? The other issue is the suitability of Unix to businesses. Why do most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it? Too many computer scientists and programmers write systems for their own world, instead of the real world. Reality is that if your product requires the user to have sources to configure his system or fix bugs, then you cannot expect to be taken seriously outside of the academic environment. Disclaimer: I don't work for the Unix group here, but I do deal with BSD sources every day. :^( Martin Hunt "Windows 3.0 is hot because it's really fun. It has martin@cbmvax.commodore.com brought some excitement back into the PC industry" Commodore-Amiga - Microsoft marketing manager I wonder who took the excitement out in the first place?
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (12/14/90)
From: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) >I agree with you that source code is a really great thing for those of >us who are capable of modifying it. In an academic or engineering >environment, it is a necessity. What I really dislike is people who >design operating systems so poorly that simple reconfigurations >require modifying the sources and recompiling the kernel. OS kernels >should be like color TVs; there are no user-servicable parts inside. > >VMS does this fairly well... WHAT? How about those zillion OS tuning parameters in VMS? More importantly, how come Unix has been able to live w/o them all these years (just as another data point, so have IBM mainframe OS's.) No user serviceable parts...just answer a few simple questions about what you would like for page-cluster sizes and minimum/maximum resident and working sets and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. Oh, and let's let mere mortals muck with system logical names under VMS and see what you end up with... >Even AmigaDOS is way ahead of Unix in >this. Since you got the VMS example wrong it would be nice to know what you mean by this for those of us who don't use AmigaDOS. >Operating systems (IMHO) should be simple, modular and expandable. Right, and all together now, "except for the stuff I need..." >In AmigaDOS, filesystems and networking protocols can be dynamically >added or removed from the system. Why can't Unix do this? Sounds like a "user-serviceable part", make up your mind. Do you want tons of little tuning features or not? >The other issue is the suitability of Unix to businesses. Why do >most businesses with VAXen run VMS? Boy, you've narrowed the set quite a bit. Do most businesses have Vaxes? etc. Mostly because, until relatively recently, DEC refused to support VMS and Vaxes were a good hardware buy. How many businesses are buying Vaxes to run VMS anymore? I dunno, but judging by DEC's recent stock prices (~$50, down from a high of $175 three years ago), not an impressive number. And DEC just announced a $1B cost-trimming program. But I guess we should all follow their lead...? Meanwhile, Sun continues its 140% compounded annual growth, and they sell neither Vaxes nor VMS. Only Unix. (That's more significant than it might first appear, name another company over $1B that only sells Unix and the hardware to run Unix on. Now go thru companies that happen to sell Unix as a sideline [DEC, DG, Prime] and how they're doing financially, IBM is the only major exception I can think of, not sure how HP is doing OVERALL these days.) If we're really going to follow your logic we should all run out and buy 3090's to run MVS on, since that accounts for more bucks out there than a Vax can hold in its registers (I might be right on that, hmm, $4B/register, 16 registers, $64B, that's probably about the size of the MVS market...amusing.) >Because it's easy to configure, is well supported >and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it? Bosh. How many VMS shops don't have VMS hackers. Ever do a VMS OS upgrade and watch every third-party package bite the dust? I have. This is mythology, have you ever run a VMS shop? I have, it's a pain in the butt, give me Unix any day. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
seanf@sco.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) (12/14/90)
In article <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: >Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue. kithrup 34$ type captoinfo captoinfo is /usr/bin/captoinfo There's termcap support. Not great, mind you (it's like saying the '386 runs C because you can get a C compiler), but it's there. >. There's no color support, but there also aren't two >color terminals in a thousand. You mean like color X terminals? Running under, say, Suns? Lots of people have color terminals, especially those running a variant of BSD. So why isn't there color support in termcap for it? -- -----------------+ Sean Eric Fagan | "*Never* knock on Death's door: ring the bell and seanf@sco.COM | run away! Death hates that!" uunet!sco!seanf | -- Dr. Mike Stratford (Matt Frewer, "Doctor, Doctor") (408) 458-1422 | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.
lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (logan shaw) (12/14/90)
In article <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) wrote: >Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has >adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody >else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"... >:-( Well, I don't know if it's a tragedy. With IFF, I can take the output from a ray-tracer and load it into a paint program without having to send the image(s) through a program which converts formats. On the Amiga, a font is a font and a picture is a picture and a sample is a sample. I haven't been able to do the same thing when using certain other machines. We may not have compatibility with everyone else, but at least we have it with ourselves, and that's more than some can say. > Kurt >-- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >|| Kurt Tappe (215) 363-9485 || With. Without. And who'll || >|| 184 W. Valley Hill Rd. || deny it's what the fighting's || >|| Malvern, PA 19355-2214 || all about? - Pink Floyd || >|| jkt100@psuvm.psu.edu --------------------------------------|| >|| jkt100@psuvm.bitnet jkt100%psuvm.bitnet@psuvax1 QLink: KurtTappe || > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- =----------------Logan-Shaw---(lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)----------------= "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct thy paths" - Proverbs 3:5-6
cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) (12/14/90)
In article <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes: >>>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4] >>>standard. Workstation vendors are. >> >>I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are. >>As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the >>best of my knowledge) isn't. > >Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has >adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody >else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"... >:-( > You speak wisdom, but I think it won't happen this time. The recognized leader in desktop workstations, Sun, and SPARC clone makers in the workstation market, not to mention AT&T. I don't know how fast the academic VAXes and the like will port over. Ah, sentence fragment... "Sun...et al...-->" are supporting SVR4. OSF/Motif is a power play by IBM et al, but if I hear correctly there will be an OSF/Motif clone process which one can run under SVR4 (old rumor). I think it's pretty clear that SVR4 doesn't have anything to worry about in terms of competition from A/UX or AIX. Precious little from Mach/NeXTStep, though they'll be a factor on NeXTs and some RISC/6000s. OSF/Motif will be the one to look out for. But read the MSDOS press that we hate... WIth the same blind "of course this is the only _real_ operating system" chutzpah that they use to speak about MS-DOS, they speak of SVR4. OSF/Motif, for better or worse, is given a token mention and the same irritating dismissal that Apple and Commodore have traditionally received at the hands of the MSDOS press. IF the gossip I hear is true: OSF/Motif runs with a Mach kernel and has several advantages over SVR4 in terms of pure performance these opinions which I restate above are typical of the mainstream press DEC and HP/Apollo are making SVR4 OSs as a hedge ... then I think we as AMiga devotees have had the tables turned on us--supporting ;the mainstream simply because it's the mainstream. Don't get me wrong--that's important in the workstation market like it isn't so much in the PC market (esp. for a smaller vendor like CBM), it's just amusing. > Kurt -- // / Thom Cleland / It is easier / // / tcleland@ucsd.edu / to get forgiveness / \X/ / ASOCC * Amiga Users' Group at UCSD / than permission... / \____________________________________\____________________/
ST402248@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Scott Porter) (12/14/90)
> Barry Shein writes: > I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over > when someone can log in. > Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not > have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put > that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which > disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with > some things which are fraught with peril.) > (I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a > logic I agree with, but just an example.) Try VAX/VMS for one. VMS allows you to have complete control over when a user is allowed to login. It allows you to divide the week into primary and secondary days and allows you to set by the hour when a user can login. It also allows you to set when a user can dialin, do network logins, run batch jobs, etc ... all independently. Thus you can have a user be able to dial in only from 8-10 p.m. M-F, but all day on Sunday. Let them have network access only on weekends, and allow logins from a terminal server all day long, but batch files can be run only on saturday night. All this is independently controllable for each user. How's that for control? Of course VMS has other problems which we won't go into at the moment but control over login times, I don't think is one of them. -- Scott (ST402248@Brownvm) Stupid .sig file omitted by a sense of taste.
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (12/14/90)
In article <16499@cbmvax.commodore.com> martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) writes: > >I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over > >when someone can log in. > VMS has that and much more built into it. Ah, yes, VMS. VMS, where the equivalent of ``make'' doesn't even come with the system. VMS, where you can buy an idle daemon for just $695 that UNIX users get for free off a source group. VMS, where DEC desperately tries to get its customers to install patches for security holes that are letting a virus run rampant through nearly every networked VMS machine in the world. VMS, where just one vendor has control, and will continue to set outrageous prices through next century. Now that's a cost-effective, secure operating system. > Why do > most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not > come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported > and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it? Oh, yeah, sure. Anyone who looks at the real statistics from DEC will observe that Ultrix and UNIX have slowly been eating away at the VMS market share. Even the most pessimistic projections show VMS with under half the VAX market by the year 2000. So why do you think this happens? Because VMS is so cost-effective and superior, right? ---Dan
peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) (12/15/90)
In article <39042@nigel.ee.udel.edu> ST402248@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Scott Porter) writes: > >> Barry Shein writes: > >> I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over >> when someone can log in. > >Try VAX/VMS for one. VMS allows you to have complete control over >when a user is allowed to login. It allows you to divide the week >into primary and secondary days and allows you to set by the hour >when a user can login. It also allows you to set when a user >can dialin, do network logins, run batch jobs, etc ... all independently. >Thus you can have a user be able to dial in only from 8-10 p.m. M-F, but >all day on Sunday. Ok, all this is even available on PCs when you use them in a Novell NetWare network. And as there is announced also a Novell software for the Amiga, we probably get this also under normal AmigaDOS! -- Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions... Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk
rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) (12/15/90)
In article <BZS.90Dec13145908@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: >From: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) >>I agree with you that source code is a really great thing for those of >>us who are capable of modifying it. In an academic or engineering >>environment, it is a necessity. What I really dislike is people who >>design operating systems so poorly that simple reconfigurations >>require modifying the sources and recompiling the kernel. OS kernels >>should be like color TVs; there are no user-servicable parts inside. >> >>VMS does this fairly well... > >WHAT? I feel it does, having helped to manage a VMS system for several years, managed several UNIX systems, and written a number of system applications under both VMS and UNIX. (I also threw together a VMS device driver, but haven't done that under UNIX yet....) >How about those zillion OS tuning parameters in VMS? They're the knobs on the back of your TV set, I suppose. Sure, you can live without a tint knob, if the factory adjusted it more-or-less right. But sometimes you want to be able to change it. Hopefully, the default settings will be close to what you need; in operating systems, it really depends on your load. >More importantly, how come Unix has been able to live w/o them all >these years (just as another data point, so have IBM mainframe OS's.) Uhh, UNIX actually does have quite a few of them, they're just hidden in different places. Getting reasonable performance out of a Sun or DECstation without 16MB of memory requires poking around with desfree and the other memory management parameters. The param.c file (or your local equivalent) often requires tuning for your site (how many processes do you want? how much shared memory?). What's the difference? VMS has more, yes, but you can basically ignore them and usually still get reasonable performance, just as you can leave UNIX's desfree/lotsfree/... alone and get (usually) reasonable performance. The main difference I see here between VMS and BSD UNIX is that VMS has fewer parameters hardcoded (like the ones in the BSD process management code, commented with 'this is a magic number, you probably don't want to change it'). Lots of UNIXes have these tunable now, too. >Oh, and let's let mere mortals muck with system logical names under >VMS and see what you end up with... What does this have to do with the points above? I mean, presumably it does, but.... I wouldn't want to give 'mere mortals' write access to /vmunix's parameters on a BSD box, either. Seriously, and to try to avoid a *major* flame war (minor ones are fun and often informative), there are things about VMS's system design I'd like to see in UNIX. * System parameters should be documented and tunable. VMS gets this partly right--they document them, just often very obscurely, and they're usually tunable. I don't want to see a magic number in the code like "use a 10ms quantum because it works right on our PDP-11/07" which are likely to give less-than-optimal performance on a 30MHz 68030 machine. I think newer UNIXes are moving in this direction. * Device drivers should be easy to install into the system. AIX gets this right, according to hearsay at least. Being able to install them dynamically is good if availability is important. * At least some of the interfaces to kernel routines should be documented, so that local kernel changes are less likely to break when you do an upgrade. There are other things I'd like to see in both. * The ability to have a foreign file system installed easily. VMS can do this in theory (you write an ACP process to interpret the file system commands) but I've never seen anyone do one, and it would be a lot of work. The Apple //gs, Macintosh, and Amiga all have this. Does SVR4? (They support both SysV and BSD, at least.) I think that Mach is a good step in this direction (not just for file systems, but for VM etc. as well.) * A larger set of system management tools. 'ps' and 'ac' on the UNIX side don't do much for me. 'MONITOR' on the VMS side, and 'iostat/vmstat/pstat' on the UNIX side, let you see potential problems, but the fixes are often obscure. Performance tuning on both UNIX and VMS is a black art. Oh well. I'm curious about whether UNIX is evolving much any more, actually. VMS is changing incrementally (data file recovery is an optional product now, for instance, and access control lists are a relatively recent [ca. 1985?] addition). UNIX seems to be doing the same; neither one has many innovations in commercial versions, at least. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Or maybe it is. Anton +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) (12/15/90)
In article <29400:Dec1405:54:4990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: >Ah, yes, VMS. <grin> Another not-perfect OS. (Hi Greg.) >VMS, where the equivalent of ``make'' doesn't even come with the system. True. It probably should, but hey, DEC's in business to make money, and right now they've decided that they can make more by forcing their users to buy it separately. This will change in the future the instant they decide that their profits will go up by including it as part of the base VMS package to attract customers. >VMS, where you can buy an idle daemon for just $695 that UNIX users get >for free off a source group. You can buy idle daemons for UNIX systems, too. There's at least 6 "watchdog" type programs on the DECUS tapes; there's a ton of public-domain VMS software around. You don't see it as much on USENET for the obvious reason that USENET is primarily UNIX machines. >VMS, where DEC desperately tries to get its customers to install patches >for security holes that are letting a virus run rampant through nearly >every networked VMS machine in the world. <blink> Excuse me? Which security hole would this be? There's a few around, but I haven't seen a serious one which has let in a virus of sorts, except for sites which leave open unprotected network accounts (kinda like leaving open a plain UUCP account). Overall, I'd say that most VMS systems are more secure than UNIX ones, but not necessarily because of the OS--because most sites running VMS care more about security. Besides, if you want to pick on VMS for a network security problem, you could at least mention that UNIX has had the sendmail and finger bugs fixed so that *that* virus can't get around. (And there are plenty of sites out there which haven't fixed it yet....) >VMS, where just one vendor has control, and will continue to set >outrageous prices through next century. True. >Now that's a cost-effective, secure operating system. It's got the potential to be more secure than most off-the-shelf UNIX versions today, I think. Why? Because it provides some tools (like access control lists and [optionally] file classification levels) that make it easier to give people limited privilege in a relatively safe way. That doesn't mean there aren't secure UNIXes out there (there certainly are). Cost-effective? It depends on what you need it for. If you need to use an application which runs only under VMS, it's infinitely more cost-effective than UNIX. If you want to develop software in C, UNIX is very likely more cost-effective. If you want to develop COBOL or Ada software, for instance, you have to start looking carefully at the different options the OSes and compilers give you. >> Why do >> most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not >> come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported >> and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it? It's considerably easier to configure and support than Unix is, at least all Unixes I've seen, though I've heard the new AIX version isn't bad for configurability (comments?). But I think the real reasons lots of businesses run VMS are (a) it existed before UNIX was widely available, and there's a lot of software they can't afford to port; and (b) it provides functionality that current VAX UNIX versions don't (volume shadowing and multiple volume sets, for instance). >So why do you think this [the UNIX/Ultrix incursion] happens? >Because VMS is so cost-effective and superior, right? Because VMS was at nearly 100% of the VAX market, and UNIX has its own set of attractions (portability not the least)? When you start out with 100% of market share, you don't really expect to stay there if somebody else (or you :-) start making a competitor.... Anton +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) (12/15/90)
In article <29400:Dec1405:54:4990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: >In article <16499@cbmvax.commodore.com> martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) writes: >> >I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over >> >when someone can log in. >> VMS has that and much more built into it. > >Ah, yes, VMS. > >VMS, where the equivalent of ``make'' doesn't even come with the system. Not a big loss. You can get it PD. Remember, languages don't come with VMS either. Of course you can always get GNU C. >VMS, where you can buy an idle daemon for just $695 that UNIX users get >for free off a source group. You can also get one PD for VMS. Of course its not as neat as the $695 one. >VMS, where DEC desperately tries to get its customers to install patches >for security holes that are letting a virus run rampant through nearly >every networked VMS machine in the world. Yeah, right. There was a security hole in 4.7 that DEC distributed patches for. Of course it was nothing compared with the security holes in typical Unix implementations. >VMS, where just one vendor has control, and will continue to set >outrageous prices through next century. This is the first thing you've said I agree with. > >Now that's a cost-effective, secure operating system. > >> Why do >> most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not >> come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported >> and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it? > >Oh, yeah, sure. Anyone who looks at the real statistics from DEC will >observe that Ultrix and UNIX have slowly been eating away at the VMS >market share. Even the most pessimistic projections show VMS with under >half the VAX market by the year 2000. VMS still holds well over half the market. Of course, Unix will eventually win out as it becomes more of a standard. >So why do you think this happens? >Because VMS is so cost-effective and superior, right? Why do people use MS-DOS systems? I am not arguing for the continued existence of VMS. I was merely trying to refute the increasing common assumption "If Unix does it that way, that must be the best way to do it." VMS has many advantages over Unix. It also has many disadvantages. To say an operating system is inferior because you don't like DEC, its pricing, or because your favorite utility is not included, is narrow-minded. > >---Dan Martin Hunt Commodore-Amiga martin@cbmvax.commodore.com "Windows 3.0 is hot because it's really fun. It has brought some excitement back into the PC industry" - Microsoft I wonder who took the excitement out in the first place?
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/16/90)
In-Reply-To: message from lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu IFF is an Amiga standard, and one that sets it apart from just about every other system. I don't believe it was ever supposed to become an "industry" standard. IBM and Apple haven't been successful at this, so why should Commodore? The only thing that's close to being anything close to an industry standard is GIF. Not PICT, PICT2, TIFF, PCX, etc. Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
alfter@uns-helios.nevada.edu (SCOTT ALFTER) (12/17/90)
In article <RANG.90Dec14123755@nexus.cs.wisc.edu> rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) writes: > * The ability to have a foreign file system installed easily. VMS > can do this in theory (you write an ACP process to interpret the > file system commands) but I've never seen anyone do one, and it > would be a lot of work. The Apple //gs, Macintosh, and Amiga all > have this. Does SVR4? (They support both SysV and BSD, at least.) > I think that Mach is a good step in this direction (not just for > file systems, but for VM etc. as well.) The IIGS does have this capability (file system translators, or FSTs), but it's presently severely underused (can you say "no ability to read Mac disks yet?"). FSTs are available for ProDOS (the Apple II's native file system), AppleShare (for file servers), and High Sierra (for CD-ROM), but that's it presently. I've heard the Amiga has something similar, but I'll leave the answer to somebody who knows what he's talking about WRT the Amiga. The Mac doesn't have this capability at all. Otherwise there would be no need for Apple File Exchange. With an HFS (the Mac's file system) FST installed in a IIGS, you could just pop a Mac disk in any drive and read and write info. The Mac can't do that; Apple File Exchange is a standalone program that translates stuff between HFS, ProDOS, and MeSsy-DOS. MultiFinder might make using it a bit easier, but if I have a text file on a ProDOS disk that I want to read into Microsoft Word, I'd have to run Apple File Exchange first. If the Mac had FSTs, you could read the file directly off the ProDOS disk into Word. Scott Alfter-----------------------------_/_---------------------------- / v \ Apple II: Internet: alfter@uns-helios.nevada.edu ( ( the power to be your best! GEnie: S.ALFTER \_^_/
torrie@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Evan James Torrie) (12/18/90)
alfter@uns-helios.nevada.edu (SCOTT ALFTER) writes: >In article <RANG.90Dec14123755@nexus.cs.wisc.edu> rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) writes: >> * The ability to have a foreign file system installed easily. VMS >> can do this in theory (you write an ACP process to interpret the >The Mac doesn't have this capability at all. Otherwise there would be >no need for Apple File Exchange. With an HFS (the Mac's file system) But does in System 7.0, according to the initial docs... Of course Sys 7.0 is "just around the corner" :-| -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Evan Torrie. Stanford University, Class of 199? torrie@cs.stanford.edu Where can a nation lie when it hides its organic minds in a cellar dark and grim? They must be ... very dim.
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (12/18/90)
In article <14934@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes: >In article <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes: >>Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has >>adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody >>else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"... >>:-( That's a bad example, since IFF was created for the Amiga, and made public domain so that anyone, on or off an Amiga, could use it for free. That doesn't at all detract from its usefulness on the Amiga, and I'm not all that sure that having IBM and Apple stand behind it would do that much good, other than perhaps getting some more interesting FORMs standardized -- they did good at the beginning with ILBM, 8SVX, SMUS, etc. but still really need to address some more complex issues, like forms for 2-D and 3-D structured drawings, DTP, etc. A more obvious one might be the character set. The Amiga uses ISO characters, but 1/2 the printers out there use Epson or IBM characters, which are a defacto industry standard which works OK in the US, though perhaps not as well world wide. And some people even complain about the Amiga keyboards, which are inspired by the obvious industry standard, the VT100 keyboard, rather than the drastically inferior (especially to Emacs users) PC-AT keyboard. >You speak wisdom, but I think it won't happen this time. The >recognized leader in desktop workstations, Sun, and SPARC clone >makers in the workstation market, not to mention AT&T. I don't >know how fast the academic VAXes and the like will port over. And, of course, there are the PCs. Sure there's Xenix and others on the PCs, but the real UNIX on most of them is SRV3, so one would expect most PC business UNIX users to adopt SRV4. Apple uses SRV3, so it's also reasonable to expect that some day they'll move to SRV4; no one's going to use the Mac OS as a UNIX GUI unless they're already using the Mac OS (eg, they're already Mac developers). Even Atari, if they really have a UNIX, would likely adopt SRV4 (so they can run programs for Amiga UNIX most likely). And, of course, Motorola themselves use AT&T UNIX on their systems. > // / Thom Cleland / It is easier / -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "I can't drive 55" -Sammy Hagar
oovvoo@mixcom.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk) (12/19/90)
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: >A more obvious one might be the character set. The Amiga uses ISO characters, >but 1/2 the printers out there use Epson or IBM characters, which are a defacto >industry standard which works OK in the US, though perhaps not as well world >wide. . . I remember the first time I borrowed the DeskJet printer we had just bought at work, and in the process of configuring it for my Amiga (it was set up for the PC at work, of course ... ), I discovered that the DeskJet actually *SUPPORTED* the ISO font, if you set the switches right. I was impressed by that (along with the beautiful print quality, of course), and am planning on getting a DeskJet 500 right after the holidays (unless HP comes out with the DeskJet 1000 XL before then!) >-- >Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" > {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy > "I can't drive 55" -Sammy Hagar -- - Mike Shawaluk | If you turn it over, but don't let go, oovvoo@mixcom.UUCP | you will be upside down.
m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT) (12/21/90)
In article <6352@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: > >IFF is an Amiga standard, and one that sets it apart from just about every >other system. I don't believe it was ever supposed to become an "industry" >standard. IBM and Apple haven't been successful at this, so why should >Commodore? > >The only thing that's close to being anything close to an industry standard is >GIF. Not PICT, PICT2, TIFF, PCX, etc. > >Sean If you read the original IFF docs in the RKM, it was very clear that Electronic Arts (who wrote the original standard) intended IFF to be an industry-wide standard; they specified byte ordering and other processor dependencies so that the standard would be portable from Amiga to MsDOS to whatever. In some ways, they succeeded. I recently was playing an IBM version of "Bar Games" at a computer store. Just for kicks, I decided to dump out the data files, and sure enough the first part of the file contained "FORM" and "ILBM" ... IFF is never going to be a true industry standard, but for what it covers, it is very good. Now if we could get things other than graphics and sound standardized ... like text ... or databases ... Wildstar
skank@iastate.edu (Skank George L) (12/22/90)
In article <41363@ut-emx.uucp> lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (logan shaw) writes: >In article <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) wrote: >Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has >adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody >else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"... >:-( The IFF standard was origonally used by Electronic Arts for their games. Commodore and Electronic Arts have (or were) working together to make it a standard. I don't really see what the problem is, it is a nice general, all encompassing standard, and it has drifted over into the Mac, IBM, and Atari worlds, I've even seen people who wanted to use it on their SUN's. Besides, what other standard would you use GIF? And as for the business about SVR4 UNIX not being standard, GIMME A BREAK!! AT&T invented UNIX. --George
davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) (12/22/90)
>>>>> On 20 Dec 90 17:28:27 GMT, m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT) said:
GUY> IFF is never going to be a true industry standard, but for what it
GUY> covers, it is very good. Now if we could get things other than graphics
GUY> and sound standardized ... like text ... or databases ...
Is this Microsoft's newly-out Multimedia Standard? All I've seen is a news
article about it that did not go into any detail on the standard. I figured,
though, that if Microsoft is supporting it, it will be a standard (after all,
a standard is a standard is a ...). My question is -- can the Amiga support
it?
--
====================================================================
David Masterson Consilium, Inc.
(415) 691-6311 640 Clyde Ct.
uunet!cimshop!davidm Mtn. View, CA 94043
====================================================================
"If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"mike_myke_schwartz@cup.portal.com (12/28/90)
I have not followed the entire thread of this debate, because it consists of 112 articles... so please forgive me if I am rehashing old stuff. I did read the first article about the Amiga as a Unix Workstation, and thought I might add a few points: 1. Byte magazine reviewed the Amiga as a Unix workstation and gave it high marks, noting a significant performance benefit over anything within like 5x the price of the AU3000 ($4000), including and specifically the NeXt machines. 2. It is unfortunate that a Unix machine demands 12Meg of RAM and a gigabyte of hard disk to be usable as a workstation. And Unix may not even have applications that are more worth using than cheaper machines. Perhaps people should spend time optimizing Unix so that it would allow more of that 12Meg to be used for applications instead of for OS overhead. 3. Why not use the Amiga instead of a workstation for "workstation things"? Is it true that companies like Sun and Silicon Graphics are looking at the Amiga operating system with a little amazement, because it is the ONLY REALTIME multitasking operating system of any major workstation? 4. It is of more interest to me that the good things from Unix are ported to run under the Amiga environment than to have a Unix machine with "forward" Amiga compatibility. 5. Where is the video toaster for the Sun? 6. Using AmigaNet hardware/software, the Amiga is a powerful networking solution that rivals Unix networks. I must qualify this by saying that with this software, you get ethernet, plus every workstation can share ANY device (including
mike_myke_schwartz@cup.portal.com (12/28/90)
Obviously, my last article was interrupted (by this blasted lousy interface they have for the portal here). Just to conclude, what I see in this thread of verbal abuse (er, I mean discussion), is that NeXT owners are just stuck on NeXT, Mac owners are stuck on Macs, and Amiga owners are stuck on Amiga. But the facts are: The Amiga can Run X-windows, open look, Unix, Mac software (using AMAX), MS-DOS and Amiga software. While Unix is clearly the only hope I can see for a true standard interface for a wide variety of platforms, it does not make any platform perform very well (it looks like Unix is only going to be portable to systems with large RAM and hard disks instead of being portable to anything anyway). What the other operating systems do provide is a platform for writing programs that gain the best performance out of the specific machine. A 4MB 68030 Amiga with 80MB of hard disk should run multiple applications similar to what you would run on a Unix machine with much more hard disk and RAM. I would like to know what Unix really buys for you when you could have the identical applications and features (like USENET) from a non-unix machine with better performance.
n177ac@tamuts.tamu.edu (Daryl Biberdorf) (12/28/90)
In article <37298@cup.portal.com> mike_myke_schwartz@cup.portal.com writes: >2. It is unfortunate that a Unix machine demands 12Meg of RAM and > a gigabyte of hard disk to be usable as a workstation. And Unix > may not even have applications that are more worth using than > cheaper machines. Perhaps people should spend time optimizing > Unix so that it would allow more of that 12Meg to be used for > applications instead of for OS overhead. UNIX machines don't *have* to demand 12 MB of RAM and a gigabyte of hard disk space. I run UNIX on a machine with 2 MB of RAM, a 40 MB hard disk, and a 10 MHz 68010 processor. (AT&T's infamous 3B1.) I mainly run in text mode, although tere are a couple of window managers available. UNIX itself is not the problem, I believe. The problem is in things like XWindows, a complete distribution for which, I believe, takes up about 40MB of hard disk space (include files and all that). That's one BIG GUI. In more realistic terms, 12 MB of RAM is not that tall of an order anymore. At $50/MB, 12 MB works out to $600 or so. When you're talking about machines that cost $8k or more, $600 isn't that bad. Hard disk prices are expected to fall dramatically over the next couple of years. That, coupled with falling memory prices, should make UNIX much more accessible. >3. Why not use the Amiga instead of a workstation for "workstation > things"? Is it true that companies like Sun and Silicon Graphics > are looking at the Amiga operating system with a little amazement, > because it is the ONLY REALTIME multitasking operating system of any > major workstation? Perhaps because AmigaOS doesn't support memory protection? I *love* my Amiga, but it still crashes a bit too often (even once/month) for my taste. I know that "clean" programs won't do this, but we all now how concerned programmers are about about writing clean code versus meeting deadlines. --Daryl Biberdorf, n177ac@tamuts.tamu.edu
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (01/02/91)
In article <37299@cup.portal.com> mike_myke_schwartz@cup.portal.com writes: >Obviously, my last article was interrupted (by this blasted lousy interface >they have for the portal here). > >Just to conclude, what I see in this thread of verbal abuse (er, I mean >discussion), is that NeXT owners are just stuck on NeXT, Mac owners are >stuck on Macs, and Amiga owners are stuck on Amiga. But the facts are: > >The Amiga can Run X-windows, open look, Unix, Mac software (using AMAX), >MS-DOS and Amiga software. While Unix is clearly the only hope I can see >for a true standard interface for a wide variety of platforms, it does not >make any platform perform very well (it looks like Unix is only going to >be portable to systems with large RAM and hard disks instead of being >portable to anything anyway). What the other operating systems do provide is >a platform for writing programs that gain the best performance out of the >specific machine. A 4MB 68030 Amiga with 80MB of hard disk should run >multiple applications similar to what you would run on a Unix machine with >much more hard disk and RAM. Unix runs quite well in 4MB RAM and 80MB fixed disk, IF you have a reasonable implementation of Unix! If AmiUnix really requires something like 16MB RAM and a 1GB disk drive, then it's seriously screwed up. Period. I ran Unix on a 386 with an 80MB fixed disk and 4MB of RAM for quite some time, and ran anywhere from 3-5 local jobs and 4 modems on it.. no problem (except occasionally speed) at all. The Suns at my office do have 16MB RAM, and a 300MB fixed disk. But we do development on these! Of that 300MB fixed disk, 100MB is OS, and that's 'cause we load everything there is, including kernel reconfiguration, drivers for all kinds of diverse and strange devices, etc. You CAN configure a Sun workstation on about 200MB -- but you won't want to. The problem with the SUN operating system space-wise is that it (and many like it, the R3000 MIPS for example) is a RISC processor. That immediately doubles the size of EVERYTHING the chip executes -- and incresed code size equals both increased hard disk and RAM space. When you do less work per instruction, you end up with a (much) larger program. >I would like to know what Unix really buys for you when you could have the >identical applications and features (like USENET) from a non-unix machine >with better performance. Well, I'm not so certain about the "better performance" issue, but I am certain of the following: 1) Unix uses and needs real hardware memory protection. GURUs are impossible on a UNIX machine (save from system kernel bugs!) This is a MAJOR deal when you're doing development -- rebooting because you blew it is a major drag! This also means you can do real work and development on the same machine -- 6-hour program runs are feasible on such an environment. On the AMI one guru and you get to start all over! 2) Unix still has one of the best generalized IPC facilities sets that has come along in operating systems (System 5 now). It CAN be horrifyingly complex, but there isn't much I can't accomplish with it. My experience with AmiDOS isn't nearly as complete here, unfortunately. 3) Flat-address space addressing -- this is a big deal as well. "You see a 32-bit address space, with all cells alike....." And virtual memory (that 32-bit space really COULD be 32-bits in size, given a 4GB disk drive :-)!) Seriously, virtual memory is a major win, since you can cheaply extend your RAM size (at the cost of LOTS of performance) in an almost infinite manner. When those overages are transient (they often are), it's a lifesaver and the performance costs are negligable. This also allows (easily) for shared text segments -- which means 5 copies of the same program all reference the same "pure" program pages! 4) The utilities that come with Unix make it immediately useful to the purchaser. While this is a market-driven thing, I haven't seen such a rich "bundled" utility set in ANY other operating system on ANY platform. This is very significant -- and Commodore could easily address this with the Amiga line. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 808-7300], Voice: [+1 708 808-7200] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (01/04/91)
In article <1991Jan01.211455.2825@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: >In article <37299@cup.portal.com> mike_myke_schwartz@cup.portal.com writes: >Unix runs quite well in 4MB RAM and 80MB fixed disk, IF you have a >reasonable implementation of Unix! >If AmiUnix really requires something like 16MB RAM and a 1GB disk drive, >then it's seriously screwed up. Period. It certainly doesn't require that. But keep in mind, the only OS that's legally UNIX(TM), is a conforming version of SV.4, such as Amiga UNIX. That's a big puppy, no questions asked. You don't have to launch everything, just like you don't have to run everything under the SV.3.2 or whatever it is you run on your PC. But once you get X, NFS, etc. all going, 4 megs ain't quite what it used to be. If you just want a command line stand-alone UNIX, 4 megs is probably just dandy. We ran the SV.3.2 version on A2620s with 2 Megs of RAM -- you wanted four, but two worked. The two A3000/UNIX bundles they'll be selling are [a] 5MB RAM, 100 MB disk, and [b] 9MB RAM, 200 MB disk, Ethernet. >The problem with the SUN operating system space-wise is that it (and many >like it, the R3000 MIPS for example) is a RISC processor. That immediately >doubles the size of EVERYTHING the chip executes -- and incresed code size >equals both increased hard disk and RAM space. When you do less work per >instruction, you end up with a (much) larger program. Modern RISC systems hardly result in a 2:1 code expansion. While in some cases they do less work per instruction, I can't count many CISC processors that do 3 operand arithmetic operations, while most of the RISC machines do. You might find a typical RISC system taking 20% more code space, tops. Not that there aren't systems that eat memory, there certainly are, but the more common RISCs: MIPS, SPARC, 88k, etc. aren't all that more code space hungry than 680x0s or 80x86s. MISC machines, on the other hand, look to be extremely code space hungry. >2) Unix still has one of the best generalized IPC facilities sets that > has come along in operating systems (System 5 now). It CAN be > horrifyingly complex, but there isn't much I can't accomplish with > it. My experience with AmiDOS isn't nearly as complete here, > unfortunately. The Amiga principle here is "fast and simple". At the low level, you have signals and messages, which rely on shared memory. A signal simply indicates some agreed-upon event between tasks, a message passes some data between messages, by reference. UNIX message passing is much slower, and there are lots of different approaches, especially if you include BSD stuff in under the UNIX banner. What you get for the preformance price under UNIX is the ability to cleanly pass data between tasks on different processors, even across a network, using the same mechanisms used to pass messages between tasks on the same CPU/Computer. AmigaOS also has a standard inter application methodology, based on the AREXX language, which is currently missing from UNIX. >4) The utilities that come with Unix make it immediately useful to the > purchaser. While this is a market-driven thing, I haven't seen such > a rich "bundled" utility set in ANY other operating system on ANY > platform. This is very significant -- and Commodore could easily > address this with the Amiga line. The rich set of tools under UNIX comes from its tradition as a development environment. For years, folks bought UNIX, and relatively little other software, and used their computer to create new software. And you could pay a reasonable wad of green for UNIX. And most users were professionals if not experts, or had easy access to experts on-site. Most of the other operating systems in use were intended for a much more commercially active environment, in which all kinds of 3rd party software would be available and the basic OS should be available for reasonable prices, if not free with the computer system. The average person would need OS tools to get around, but this person would not be an expert, would be relatively alone with the system in a business or home, and wouldn't need a vast array of tools. Also, the included tools are rarely of the caliber of a dedicated 3rd party tool, but could easily stifle the growth of good 3rd party replacements if included. A good example is MacWrite on the Macintosh. Not bad, but not great world class word processor. Once Apple unbundled it, the Mac WP market exploded, and now there are all kinds of much better tools available. Large software companies can afford to specialize in one or two basic tools, and they'll do it far better than the OS vendor. If the OS vendor doesn't try to compete, the OS vendor and the 3rd party tool maker can cooperate, and both benefit. When that happens, the user will ultimately benefit. If the OS vendor tries to do it all, that vendor will fail, and very likely scare away the tool makers, who don't want to compete directly with the folks making all the OS decisions. >Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "Don't worry, 'bout a thing. 'Cause every little thing, gonna be alright" -Bob Marley
David.Plummer@f70.n140.z1.FIDONET.ORG (David Plummer) (01/05/91)
Just to clarify... you likely didn't run UNIX on your 386. You most like ran SCO (XENIX). And there's no such thing as AmiUnix. You may have meant AMIX, which was never released (at least not here). The Amiga UNIX being released, is of course, AT&T UNIX SVR4. -- David Plummer - via FidoNet node 1:140/22 UUCP: ...!herald!weyr!70!David.Plummer Domain: David.Plummer@f70.n140.z1.FIDONET.ORG Standard Disclaimers Apply...
shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) (01/05/91)
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: >It certainly doesn't require that. But keep in mind, the only OS that's >legally UNIX(TM), is a conforming version of SV.4, such as Amiga UNIX. Not quite. AT&T has authorized both Interactive and SCO to use the UNIX trademark for their *3.2* UNIX products. I expect there are others as well.