bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Davies) (04/12/90)
********************************************************************* Long ago I asked people about ways of getting net access with an Amiga and promised to post a summary. This is it. ..................................................................... 1) Ethan Solomita (es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu) I assume you don't intend on using your Amiga as a terminal, since you want to spend $5,000. I am not all that familiar with the usenet setup, however I know that the release of a Unix Amiga (you can choose to boot it either in Unix or AmigaDos) is imminent, probably by the end of the month. It promises to sport OpenLook, X and the new AT&T system 5 release 4.0. You should probably wait for it. -- -- Ethan ...................................................................... 2) Dale Snell (dales@teksce.sce.tek.com) In article <2366@rodan.acs.syr.edu> you write: |I'm considering the purchase of an Amiga as a personal computer, and |would like to be able to read news and do mail from it. | |I'd appreciate any advice on hardware, software, memory and storage |requirements that anyone might have. | The uucp software is free. AmigaUUCP, v1.03D from Matt Dillon is the latest version. It just came across the net (2 disks full of it), in comp.binaries.amiga and comp.sources.amiga. This is a re-write of the version by William Loftus, et. al., based on B news. I've seen reference to a port of C news also; perhaps on a Fish Disk. (C news would be nice to have. B news is *very* disk intensive; C news is supposedly better by a factor of 10 of more.) With respect to memory, you'll need to expand beyond the one meg that an A2000 comes stock with -- to say nothing of an A500's 512K. The ram boards that I'm aware of all have a minimum of two meg, usually in increments of 2-4-8 meg, though sometimes 2-4-6-8. (The reason for the extra ram is that compress, which is called by rnews, uses great gobs of contiguous memory. Not a problem for Unix, which has virtual memory, but Amigas don't yet have that luxury.) As for mass storage, you're best off with a hard drive. I usually tell people to get a 40 meg drive as a working minimum. You can get away with less, but you'll get cramped awfully fast. (The voice of experience...) It really depends on how much news you want to get. If you're going to set yourself up as a branch node, with leaf sites downstream, you're going to need a *lot* of mass storage. To pass the entire net, with a seven or eight day expire, you'll want at least 100 meg just for your spool partition, on top of the rest of your storage requirements. For example, teksce has a 70 meg news spool partition, and we have a five day expire. (The last I heard, net traffic was approaching four megabytes per *day*! Eek!) On the other hand, if you are just interested in mail, you could probably get away with using a floppy as your spool directory. Note that most SCSI Host Adaptors for the 500, and some for the A2000, have provision for an additional 2 meg on board. | |Ideally I'd like to spend less than $5000 total. | You shouldn't have any problem with that, unless you get an outrageously huge disk drive. (Lessee, what's Imprimis selling 512 Meg SCSI drives for these days? <grin!>) At a (very) rough estimate: an A2000, $1800; Mitsubishi DiamondScan monitor, $550; SupraRAM 2000 memory board w/2 meg, $320; SCSI host adaptor with drive, anywhere from $700 to $1100+. That's roughly $3,370 to $3,770. Oh, and add another $120 for a second floppy, you'll want it. Plus the cost of the modem. I hope I've been of some assistance. --dds p.s. Most of my experience is with the Amiga 2000, since that's what I've got. Most of my friends (that have Amigas) have 2000s. I prefer the 2000 for its easy expandibility. *************************************************************************** I still haven't got one -- I a) don't have the money right now, and b) am kind of waiting to see what the Amiga 3000 is going to be like. Note to : Bull@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au OR com259h@monu1.cc.monash.oz Alias: Gareth Bull, The Opal Dragon This is the stuff I was going to send you. My mailer bounced for both addresses. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Hill Cabal "If there's anything insidious going bwdavies@sunrise.bitnet on in the world, the media is behind bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu it!" -T.J. Teru -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
robin@sabre.austin.ibm.com (Robin D. Wilson/1000000) (04/12/90)
In article <2910@rodan.acs.syr.edu> bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Davies) writes: >| >|Ideally I'd like to spend less than $5000 total. >| > You shouldn't have any problem with that, unless you get an >outrageously huge disk drive. (Lessee, what's Imprimis selling 512 Meg >SCSI drives for these days? <grin!>) At a (very) rough estimate: an >A2000, $1800; Mitsubishi DiamondScan monitor, $550; SupraRAM 2000 >memory board w/2 meg, $320; SCSI host adaptor with drive, anywhere from >$700 to $1100+. That's roughly $3,370 to $3,770. Oh, and add another >$120 for a second floppy, you'll want it. Plus the cost of the modem. Actually, the latest prices I saw were more like: A2000 -- $1300 Mitsu Diamond Scan -- $500 GVP A2000-8 SCSI/MEM W/2Meg -- $525 Maxtor XT-3280 SCSI (This drive is out of date, that's 280 Meg drive -- $799 why it so cheap. Get it from IME*) Second Floppy -- $120 2400 bps Modem -- $120 9600 Modem -- $?? (Depends.. Get one just like the site you are calling or you may live to regret it.) So my total is: -- $3364 And I got a 244 (formatted) SCSI drive! *The 280Meg (244Meg formatted) drives are at: International Materials Exchange, Inc. 1340 Soldiers Field Road Boston, MA 02135 Tel. (617) 254-1700 Fax. (617) 254 0392 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |The views expressed herein, are the sole responsibility of the typist at hand| +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |USNail: UUCP: | |2323 Wells Branch Pkwy., #G107 cs.utexas.edu!romp!ibmchs!auschs\ | |Austin, TX 78728 !sabre.austin.ibm.com!robin | |Home: (512)251-6889 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^<-MUST BE INCLUDED| +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+