vic@wookumz.ai.mit.edu (Vic Rattlehead) (11/12/90)
A guy sent this to me and I'm reposting it WITHOUT permission. I hope he doesn't mind... :-) Anyway, I'd like to get some opinions on it from people who have actually seen the 3000 and Amiga Unix. I'd hate to think that this is an acurate representation of it. >Date: Sun, 11 Nov 90 13:58:53 +1100 >From: s883334@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (James Alan Hall) >Heres what my friend had to say after using/seeing the unix 3000...pity >i didnt get to go... > >--------------------------- > >>yer i went (although things are heavy work wise here as well :-( ) >>basically i'd heard from somewhere that the 3000 was going to be shown >>i also wanted to have a look at what was around Unix wise. Big thing >>was the fact that all except 2 exhibitioners was from sydney (talking >>companies like Sun,Pyramid,DEC etc.. ) which seems pretty bad for Melbourne >>(well me and my mates hunting for Unix jobs later this year anyway). Having >>been reading about the 3000 since may i was eager to have a look at it. >>First impressions are that it is small(the actual box would sit under your >>average monitor) as for the monitor i checked out the de-interlacer it >>certainly makes for better smoother resolution. Since this was a Unix >>expo the basic thrust of CBM was for the 3000ux they had 1 dos2.0 machine, >>after all the hype about 2.00 i was expecting a Mac like front end. I >>admit i don't use workbench much, more a cli person i guess, but appart >>from the better resolution/colours i didn't get too excited about it. The >>thing with listing all files from wbench is a bit kludgy to use. it works >>but the output could be better. To the actual performance, they didn't >>have a lot of software on board. Dpaint was there i played around with >>hires 640-512 which looks ok. Ran a couple of lo-res animations that come >>out nicely on the monitor. And then started mucking around with the Dpaint >>logo movement animation. I managed to crash the 3000 here. Just sat there >>with the snooze thing ... no guru or anything :-( . Basically that was >>a 3000 with 2mb (1c 1f) + 40Mb Hd.. going on prices that is 6500..(not >>cheap!) then u need a monitor. +700->1000 for that.I don't know whether >>thing have changed but last bit of c.s.a i read they were saying kick start >>was loaded in -512K from fast ram size. It seemed to be in rom here. >>Most of this was a sideline to the 3000ux. As i've said this is the unix >>amiga running SYSV R4.0 unix the same as most of the other exhibitors. The >>price for this is $2000. Big hassles are you will need >80MB hd , >4Mb >>of ram. 1 machine had 8mb of ram, another had 18MB of ram (2c 16f) and >>i think maybe an extra scsi harddrive obviously all this stuff isn't cheap. >>To get the full effect there was also a NEC multisync (large screen) which >>looked nice(big $$$ tho i spose). Anyway i played around upon the 8mb >>1 first ( this had a 2024 monitor i think 1200*1000 Black + white) . Their >>wasn't much X software to test out appart from clocks etc(all conveiently >>slack cpu users) but there was 1 demo that drew graphics in a window. I >>got 4 of these going and the machine really started to slow down. This is >>a big worry IMHO as these aren't very graphics intensive. Another strange >>thing was i did a man man in an xterm window and it took a full minute to >>format the manual entry before i could see it. The SYSV release stuff >>speaks of virtual memory.. whether what i was doing was making it heavily >>page fault or not i don't know. I did a similar thing on a 386 Intel SYSV >>unix box and it was almost instant. As for look of the interface , if >>you have seen 'open look' which is what they are all flogging it is >>supposed to look similar to the MAC style interface. It looked crummy >>on the monitor and this is a 1200*1000 again it looked a lot better on a >>VGA screen of the compaq unix box. I then joined in on an arguement >>with CBM bignoters from the US + sydney about NO support for users in Melb >>and my own beef about education initiatives by CBM >>, some guy george ?? (from some user group) was kicking away, they denied >>it all as usual. It was then that an apparent 'power surge' crashed the >>other 3000UX (the one with 18MB) this was a bit of an embarressment as >>they had to end up ripping out a bridgeboard (openning up the 3000 with a >>screw driver at an exhibition and ripping out the board). We then waited >>while they finally restarted it again. This 1 had 2 monitors (the NEC >>multisync + another colour CBM 1(1950???))) on boot up you have a menu >>which gives you a choice of SYSV r4 dos2.0 or (in this case ) the MSDOS >>stuff. So basiaclly as u said in 1 of your c.s.a posts on minix u run >>either unix or dos. It booted up. The 'open look' looks nice on the >>NEC monitor and as usual there was no real software to run on it. We >>basically watched some bignoter from the US solve the baboon puzzle (which >>is putting a series of squares of that baboon with the red nose back together >>to make the picture again) hardly real stuff. I have a feeling that this >>3000UX would be more responsive than the other but at the price of 18MB + >>an extra scsi drive + big monitor i couldn't see much change from $11-12k >>if you wanted to go the full hog..(which seems the only option if you >>want to run unix seriously on this thing). So basically i was left thinking >>that they might as well make it a seperate machine as they rip the guts >>out of the amiga to make it a unix box...rather sad really.Maybe its the >>price to i spose..i could give up eating or something for a year. >>Anyway that was the commodore bit...theres some more to tell with regard >>to the opposition 386/486 which i was fairly impressed with.. mind you >>again we are talking 5-8mb + 80-120mb hd so it wasn't cheap... >> >> >>screwdriver etc -Vic