SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (06/29/88)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the July 1988 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
A 32-bit 20 MHz Apple II.
Bill Mensch at Western Design Center in Mesa, Arizona where
the 65C02 and 65C816 microprocessors were designed takes
"Apple II Forever," seriously. He is working on a chip for
a new generation Apple II. The W65C832 features a 32-bit
instruction set and an internal math coprocessor.
Prototypes of the 65832 in an 8 MHz version should be
available by the end of next year with production quantities
available in early 1990. Mensch says Western eventually
will produce a 20 MHz version that will compare favorably
with the Motorola 68020 processor and 68881 math coprocessor
in today's Mac II. - Open Apple June
Apple II Compatible Super Computer.
Another chip under development at Western Design is the
W65C265 which squeezes the equivalent of a 65816, math
coprocessor, two serial ports, a real-time clock, eight
timers, a token-passing local area network link and a high
performance interface for parallel processing into a single
chip. The 65C265 is designed to be used for parallel
processing, and Bill Mensch at Western says he expects
initial computers based on the chip to compare favorably
with Apollo minicomputers but at a much lower price.
Mensch's dream is to apply gallium arsenide technology
(Vaporware, May 1985) to produce speeds competitive with
today's Cray parallel computers while remaining software
compatible with the Apple II (would you like to try "Super
Breakout" on that?). - Open Apple June
IIgs Clone.
Video Technologies which imports the Laser 128 Apple II
clone into the U.S. is said to be preparing to market a IIgs
clone. Whether it will also be a laptop design is not yet
known. Meanwhile, Apple may soon release a "new" //c which
actually is only an old //c with a 3.5 inch internal drive
and a faster processor. - InCider July
NeXt: The Continuing Saga.
The introduction date for the new computer from Steve Jobs
has slipped so often it's even giving the term "vaporware" a
bad name. Perhaps the machine should be christened the
Month (as in the "NeXt Month"). The latest delay in the
debut of the black magnesium cubic (hmmmm... a "Black Box")
computer is said to be caused by a slow screen display, in
spite of dedicated video chips. The operating system will
be a Unix variant known as "Mach" (will the "speed of sound"
be fast enough?). Other technical details and prices (still
$4,000 to $9,000) of the 68030 machine were described in
last January's column. - Time 20 June
Open Look's Look.
If the NeXt computer succeeds, expect AT&T to press for the
adoption of Display Postscript for Open Look, the common
user friendly Unix interface announced by AT&T and Sun and
endorsed by Unisys, NCR, Olivetti, and Xerox.
- InfoWorld 13 June
17 MIP Workstation in a Mac II.
Tektronix recently unveiled the first Motorola 88000-based
development card for the Macintosh II. The Tektronix
TL88K-P card runs at 20MHz and provides 17 million
instruction per second, about 10 times the speed of the
68020, according to the company. The card is intended for
developers creating software for the 88000 platform. The
Tektronix card features eight Mbytes of memory, three cache
memory management units, and diagnostic and control
software. The price of a fully configured board is $14,995,
though lower priced configurations will also be available.
- Boston Computer Currents 3 June (forwarded by Tom Metro)
Super Macintosh.
Meanwhile Apple is said to be working with the Motorola
88000 chip set too. The company has built prototypes of a
"Super Macintosh" intended to be a powerful network server.
Apple could bring this machine to market in about a year for
between $15,000 and $20,000. - InfoWorld 30 May
A 20 MHz 80386 Laptop.
U.S. Micro Engineering of Boulder, Colorado is launching a
line of laptops that includes a 20 MHz 80386 model that
supports up to 300 Mbytes of hard disk. The standard $5,995
version will weigh 15 pounds when equipped with 2 Mbytes of
RAM, a 50 Mbyte hard disk, and a 640 by 480 dot backlit
supertwist LCD. - InfoWorld 6 June
The Macintosh III as a Laptop?
Apple's R&D gnomes are reported to have built a 15 pound
Macintosh laptop around a Motorola 68030 and a super-quick
20 Mbyte hard drive. The display is an active matrix
screen. The company could decide to market the machine as
early as next January, perhaps; well, maybe.
- PC Week 31 May
What Happened to the A/Ux Applications?
When Unix for the Macintosh II was released in February,
Apple promised easy movement of applications from the
standard Mac operating system. However, only Informix which
makes the Wingz office automation program reports little
difficulty moving their Macintosh application to A/Ux.
Microsoft has reported that none of it's applications -
Word, Works, Excel - will run under A/Ux without extensive
modification. - PC Week 14 June
Will It Be Known as "Gosh?"
Apple plans a new operating system for the IIgs called GS OS
for release in the Fall. The GS OS environment will permit
the IIgs to read text files in both Macintosh and MS-DOS 3.5
inch disk formats. Otherwise GS OS will be ProDOS
compatible, but it will permit "naming" devices such as hard
drives and RAM disks instead of referring to them by "slot
and drive" or "pathname." - InCider June and July
MS-DOS 3.3 Clone.
Remember Digital Research, marketers of the CP/M and Gem
operating systems? DRI recently announced DR-DOS, a single
user operating system, which will be fully compatible with
MS-DOS 3.3 and adds some extensions such as the ability to
assign passwords to files and subdirectories. DRI plans to
"aggressively price" DR-DOS to PC-clone manufacturers.
DR-DOS will be available on ROM chips which will be
especially convenient for diskless LAN workstations and
laptop computers. - PC Week 14 June
DOS After Dark.
Microsoft and IBM are seriously contemplating a PC-DOS
version of the Presentation Manager called DOS PM. The
product would be essentially Windows code but would look
like the Presentation Manager. - InfoWorld 13 June
What Happens to AppleTalk?
Apple vice president Jean Louis Gassee is quoted as saying
that Apple will support the Macintosh running as a client
workstation under Microsoft's OS/2 LAN manager for an IBM
token ring network. However, Gassee did not elaborate on
how or when this would happen, and other Apple officials
have no comment on the subject. - InfoWorld 30 May
OS/2-386.
Market pressure for a 32-bit, 80386 based version of OS/2 is
increasing, but Microsoft doesn't expect to release a
programmer's tool kit to developers before mid-1989. End
user release isn't expected until sometime in 1990. A
32-bit OS/2 will support "virtual machines" allowing several
DOS applications to run simultaneously. - PC Week 14 June
But Who Gets the "Look and Feel?"
Screenplay Systems will soon release to developers "The
Macintosh Compatibility Package" (MCP) which will allow
software written in C for the Mac to be easily converted to
run under MS-DOS with the same look and performance. The
compatibility package provides screen handling and other
routines that allow the ported code to be run on a PC.
Programs written in C for MS-DOS also can be converted to
run on a Macintosh with equal ease.
- InfoWorld 13 June and PC Week 14 June
"Habit" Compatible.
Borland International's new $199.95 word processor, Sprint,
accepts commands and produces files compatible with other
major word processors - Word, Word Star, Word Perfect, and
Multimate. Early copies of the program will ship with the
"Alternate User Interfaces" (AUI's) that translate the
keystrokes of other word processors to Sprint. After a few
months, Borland plans to sell AUI's separately for $99. The
DOS 3.3 version of Sprint should be released about the time
this column appears, an OS/2 version is scheduled for the
third quarter, and a Presentation Manager edition is planned
for next year. - InfoWorld 6 June and PC Week 14 June
The Latest (Perfect) Word.
Analysts are surprised that Microsoft doesn't expect to have
Word 4.0 available for the Macintosh until October.
Although version 4.0 is impressive, users may not want to
wait; both Word Perfect and Fullwrite have been gaining
share in the Macintosh market. Meanwhile, Word Perfect 5.0
for MS-DOS computers uses a new file structure that is
incompatible with Xerox's Ventura and Aldus's Pagemaker.
Both Aldus and Xerox have indicated that future versions of
their desktop publishing packages will support the new file
format, but no release dates have been set. Compaq owners
need a ROM upgrade ($60 unless the computer is still under
warranty) in order to run the latest Word Perfect.
- PC Week 14 June
Lateware.
Ashton Tate now says that often delayed dBase IV definitely
will be out by the end of September (wait and see). In the
meantime, a revised version of Framework has been announced
for the July 31 date that was to have seen the new dBase.
Not to be outdone, shipment dates for Lotus's Agenda and
Modern Jazz also are slipping toward Fall.
- InfoWorld 30 May
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Disclaimer: --- My employer isn't responsible for my mistakes AND vice-versa!
(subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)
ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu Murphy A. Sewall
BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin.
UUCP: {rutgers psuvax1 ucbvax & in Europe - mcvax} Univ. of Connecticut
!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL
"It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington." - Adm Grace Hopperdaveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (07/08/88)
in article <8807020332.AA13396@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) says: > > The W65C832 features a 32-bit instruction set and an internal math coprocessor. > ...Mensch says Western eventually will produce a 20 MHz version that will > compare favorably with the Motorola 68020 processor and 68881 math coprocessor > in today's Mac II. - Open Apple June Until he puts a real 32 bit bus on the thing, don't count on it. The 65C816 chip, at a reasonable speed at least, could give an 8088 a run for it's money, but it's not going to touch a 68000 or 80286 with it's 8 bit data bus. That goes doubly for any 32 bit version of the thing. And to compete with 32 bit machines, he'll need to offer an MMU. -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"