worms-emh1.army.mil>@adm.BRL.MIL (12/07/88)
I am considering the purchase of a UN*X mini called NeXT. It runs a BSD4.3 compatable OS known as Mach. Does anyone have any experiance either with the machine or the Mach OS? If so, any recommendations, remarks, observations, etc. would be appreciated. W. D. 'Cal' Calhoun 32nd Support Command (AD), Worms, FRG
jrll@Portia.Stanford.EDU (john ralls) (12/08/88)
In article <17735@adm.BRL.MIL> worms-emh1.army.mil>@adm.BRL.MIL writes: >I am considering the purchase of a UN*X mini called NeXT. It runs a BSD4.3 >compatable OS known as Mach. Does anyone have any experiance either with the >machine or the Mach OS? If so, any recommendations, remarks, observations, >etc. would be appreciated. First, you're not likely to get a NeXT. Their plan is to sell only to selected Universities, and the Army doesn't qualify. They _may_ have a commercial version out in a year or two; Jobs has been evasive about that so far. Too bad, it seems from press accounts to be a nice box. Second, unless one of the Beta testers sees this, no one will be able to relate any real experience, since NeXT won't ship until spring. Why don't you get a Sun? John
dandb@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Dean Rubine) (12/08/88)
worms-emh1.army.mil>@adm.BRL.MIL (W. D. 'Cal' Calhoun) writes: >I am considering the purchase of a UN*X mini called NeXT. It runs a BSD4.3 >compatable OS known as Mach. Does anyone have any experiance either with the >machine or the Mach OS? If so, any recommendations, remarks, observations, >etc. would be appreciated. Assuming you're serious, Cal, here's the scoop: NeXT, Inc. is Steve Jobs' attempt to do it again (Jobs was a cofounder of a successful computer company named "Apple"). The machine has just been announced, and is supposed to go on sale to EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS and DEVELOPERS ONLY sometime real soon. The machine is rather impressive (to say the least) and you can expect that it will eventually go on sale to the public at large, probably after the manufacturing ramps up and some additional software gets written. Don't expect to be able to buy one in the 1980s. Mach is an operating system developed here at Carnegie Mellon. It is 4.3BSD compatible, and boasts many features not available from vanilla 4.3, including sparse address spaces, multiple threads of control in a single process, message based interprocess-communication, hi-tech shared memory, and a whole lot more. The reason I (and maybe others on the net) didn't know whether or not to take your request for information seriously is that all we've heard about for the last couple of years has been how great the NeXT machine is going to be (and that it's behind schedule again :-). Lately, with the release and all, the hype has been deafening. It's hard to believe someone on the net has managed to escape the NeXT publicity blitz, but I guess it's possible. By the way, there was this computer virus recently (actually a worm) that you might not have heard about...;-) Hope this helps. -- ARPA: Dean.Rubine@CS.CMU.EDU UUCP: ...!seismo!k.gp.cs.cmu.edu!dandb PHONE: 412-268-2613 [ Free if you call from work] US MAIL: Computer Science Dept / Carnegie Mellon U / Pittsburgh PA 15213 DISCLAIMER: My employer wishes I would stop posting and do some work. -- ARPA: Dean.Rubine@CS.CMU.EDU UUCP: ...!seismo!k.gp.cs.cmu.edu!dandb PHONE: 412-268-2613 [ Free if you call from work] US MAIL: Computer Science Dept / Carnegie Mellon U / Pittsburgh PA 15213 DISCLAIMER: My employer wishes I would stop posting and do some work. --