hb9zz@bernina.ethz.ch (Marco Zollinger) (05/31/91)
Here in Zurich there has been the anual logic computer show. There have been several new very interesting products to see, in particular a series of new Unix machines in the "popular" class. The first I've seen is the Mac with A/UX 2.1. It isn't yet a SYSV, and there are some compatibility problems, but the BSD and SYSV libraries are included, and the integration of MultiFinder and Unix with X Window 11R4 is really impressive. I find they are really on the good way. I've been there during about 15-20 min, and Dr. Antonov, the Unix Guru there, I think, explained me every detail with enourmous enthusiasm. Althougth I don't have a Mac, and the price of A/UX 2.1 is to high for me (not to speek about the X Win., wich is not bundled with), his presentation was fantastic. The second system I've seen is the Amiga 3000UX. It was also really impressive! The OpenLook interface operated exactly the same way as the Sun's OpenWindows 2.0 we have at school, and the price was really interesting too. The Commodore port of SYSV is the most complete I've seen for this class of machines. It comes with everything, from the networking capabilities to the BSD lib. and util. and OpenLook. The guy there is a student of economical computing at the Univ. ZH (his name is Blatter), and he let me "play" with the machine, showed me an xterm connection with another non Unix Amiga, and so on. At last I came to the Arari boots and I couldn't belive my (x)eyes. The Unix machine was there and there was nobody around it!!! The windowing interface looked great. I went there and tried some commands out in a csh, as the cd, ls, and so on. Then came a man, and with an impolite voice asked me :"kann ich Ihnen helfen?" (can I help you?) and stand in front of me so that I could not see the screen! The message was clear: Take your hands off my machine and get out of here! I asked him some details about the new machine (btw: how can an atari laser work with Unix w/o stopping the processor? I think it is impossible by soft) and his answer were allways very expeditive and short. Absolutely no enthusiasm from his side! The only thing he wanted was that nobody put his finger on thekeyboard! (he maybe was afraid that somebody typed "rm -r /" or something like that). Anyway he stood all the time with his shoulder between me and the screen! His name is Mr. Mester, from Atari Germany. I personnaly find that if they sent some young guy involved in the devloppent of ASV, instead of this dick pig, it would be much better. ( Sorry for title on this bandwidth, but he was really dick and had a face of a pig!) If this is the Atari policy I think I'll buy an Amiga 3000 UX, wich is btw ready and can be bought w/o problems (atari devlopper machine will be out in August!!!). Ok, that's all! I'm sorry to write something like that, 'cause I was really excited at the idea I could see the ASV jewell, but it wasn't what I expected. I hoped that I could write a good description of what I would see, but I didn't see very much... Ciao --- Rick -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Opinion expressed here are mine, and I'm proud of them !!! And don't forget that: "No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't