pmorris@bbn.com (Phil Morris) (10/20/90)
Hi all, I just read in Unix Today that with the new Mac IIsi coming out, Apple has reduced it price for A/UX to $795 and are pushing the IIsi w/5MBs RAM and an 80MB disk as a Unix workstation for a total price of $5364 monochrome or $6492 color, including A/UX. These, BTW, are LIST prices, so street prices will be cheaper and educational will be a lot cheaper. All this leads to how much will Amiga Unix be? Hopefully it will be as reasonably prices as A/UX... -Phil -------- Phil Morris (pmorris@dgi0.bbn.com) Disclaimer: ME? I'm only a non-smoking cat; can't believe a word I meow.
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (10/20/90)
pmorris@bbn.com (Phil Morris) in <34018@nigel.ee.udel.edu> writes:
I just read in Unix Today that with the new Mac IIsi coming out, Apple
has reduced it price for A/UX to $795 and are pushing the IIsi w/5MBs
RAM and an 80MB disk as a Unix workstation for a total price of $5364
monochrome or $6492 color, including A/UX. These, BTW, are LIST
prices, so street prices will be cheaper and educational will be a lot
cheaper.
All this leads to how much will Amiga Unix be? Hopefully it will be
as reasonably prices as A/UX...
Take it from someone who's been using Apple's A/UX 2.0 recently; Apple's $795
price is $795 too much.
Do a "uname"; you get "SVR2". Yet, "pure" SVR2 programs do NOT work under
A/UX 2.0 (even with the "-ZS" so-called compatibility option to cc).
Why? Consider that A/UX is based on SVR2 (circa 1982) and BSD4.2 (circa 1982)
along with some Unisoft and Apple "enhancements", and you end up with a
hodge-podge that's neither SV nor BSD, and is quite prone to the equivalent
of guru'ing. And all that after 3 years and some 40 people at Apple working
on A/UX. Sheesh.
Now consider that Commodore is coming out with SVR4 which has been shown in
the AT&T booths at various UNIX trade shows. Yes, SVR4, more than 7 major
releases BEYOND the crap that Apple is offering.
I don't want to hear any flames. I've been using the A/UX 2.0 (the 2.0.1 won't
be out until next year, and includes some "great" bug fixes like finally the
1988 ksh, etc.) and I'm not impressed. And several people on the A/UX de-
velopment team have asked me (paraphrased) (and also posted to comp.unix.aux):
"If you didn't want the MacOS, why'd you get A/UX?"
Say again? :-) That only supported my contention (also posted to the same
comp.unix.aux) that A/UX is a marketing ploy by Apple to get Macs into the
government sector since the MacOS doesn't multitask.
If you want to see real UNIX, wait for the SVR4 on the Amiga and don't gripe.
You can also attend (free) the AT&T Silicon Valley UNIX Users' Group (which
I run) meeting next week (Oct. 24) at which will be:
Tyan Computer of Sunnyvale showing off their 80486 with SVR4 and
X11R4, and
UNISYS/NCG of San Jose showing off their 68040 with SVR4 (actually a
CTIX kernel derived from AT&T (which, by the way, still runs all the
goodies from the 3B1)) and X11R4.
The AT&T meeting notice is in the San Jose Mercury News Oct. 21 edition, and
is also posted to the pertinent Usenet newsgroups. I would like to have had
the Amiga SVR4 also demo'd there at AT&T but I don't/didn't know whom to
contact about arranging that. Sigh.
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]joseph@valnet.UUCP (Joseph P. Hillenburg) (10/20/90)
But remember, A/UX sucks. It's not fully up to AT&T specs. (From what I've seen from A/UX) I tried compiling GNU-Emacs on one once and the dang thing had a core dump! -Joseph Hillenburg UUCP: ...iuvax!valnet!joseph ARPA: valnet!joseph@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu INET: joseph@valnet.UUCP