frankk@cwi.nl (Frank Kuiper) (03/24/91)
In the Februari issue of "SunExpert" is an article "Let the Buyer beware". On page 64 is a picture of the Britelite laptop from RDI/TriGem Corp. On page 70 there is some more information. This machine supposedly is an SunOS laptop, with MSDOS and Mac OS emulations available. The price of US$ 10,800 is not nothing for an 8-48 Mb main memory, 240Mb on board disk, 12.5 MIPS machine. We are interested in this machine, specially because it offers both MSDOS and Mac OS emulations. Is there anyone who can tell me more about it? Reliabillity, features/performance of the emulations? I know the machine might not actually be for sale at this moment (the article mentions the second quarter of 91), so I'm willing to take any info people can offer me: rumours, "supposedly"'s, everyhting. I'll summarize what I receive. [[Ed's Note: We are also interested in this - even though it's weak as far as the processor speeds go, the possibility of having all three platforms run in one box would make it a very nice machine. I have all the information they would provide me and it looks somewhat interesting. performance wise. MacOS is done through software emulation which probably means it wouldn't be real racy in that mode. There isn't a whole lot of information on the MSDOS emulation mode [:(]. Also, evidentally it is RDI's corporate policy not to ship evaluation models, and it's our corporate policy not to buy without evaluating which is a problem :( :(. I'd also welcome any information from someone who has actually seen one of these running. -bdg]] Frank Kuiper . ___ Internet: frankk@cwi.nl _][__| |
mark@east.sunworld.com (Mark Cappel) (03/28/91)
In article <2117@brchh104.bnr.ca> frankk@cwi.nl (Frank Kuiper) writes: <stuff deleted > >This machine supposedly is an SunOS laptop, with MSDOS and Mac OS >emulations available. The price of US$ 10,800 is not nothing for an 8-48 >Mb main memory, 240Mb on board disk, 12.5 MIPS machine. > >We are interested in this machine, specially because it offers both MSDOS >and Mac OS emulations. Is there anyone who can tell me more about it? >Reliabillity, features/performance of the emulations? An editor at SunWorld has been promised a review unit, Real Soon Now. As soon as we get our grubby mitts on one we will put it through SunWorld's lab. I actually touched one at Uniforum in Dallas this winter. In outward dimensions and design, it looked much like the old Toshiba T3200 luggable PC. The LCD screen is sharp, though seemed a bit sluggish as compared to a conventional CRT. Most of the BriteLite's weight is due to the hard drives. An optional battery pack, which might make a dandy club if you frequent bad neighborhoods, adds even more weight. The Macintosh emulator was running at the show. I saw a single Mac application (I believe it was Excel or WingZ) run on the Britelite. "Companion," as the emulator goes by, can access the floppy disk and can read and write native Mac files. I dragged several files to and from the floppy just as one would on a Mac. Companion bombed once while I was closing the afformentioned spreadsheet, so not all of the bugs were out two months ago. I did not see the PC emulator in action. The RDI people claim BriteLite uses an authentic SPARCstation IPC motherboard. The Trigem look-alike uses a motherboard of Trigem's design. This is not meant to be shameless plug (I do have *some* shame :-), but a comprehensive review is planned for the BriteLite. In the meantime, I hope these impressions from a tradeshow help. Mark Cappel 80 Elm St. Senior Editor Peterborough, NH 03458 SunWorld (nee SunTech Journal) voice (603) 924-0100 mark@east.sunworld.com fax (603) 924-9384
rodney@solar.card.inpu.oz.au (Rodney Campbell) (03/28/91)
frankk@cwi.nl (Frank Kuiper) writes: >In the Februari issue of "SunExpert" is an article "Let the Buyer beware". >On page 64 is a picture of the Britelite laptop from RDI/TriGem Corp. >This machine supposedly is an SunOS laptop, with MSDOS and Mac OS >emulations available. The price of US$ 10,800 is not nothing for an 8-48 >Mb main memory, 240Mb on board disk, 12.5 MIPS machine. I have a few brochures here about this machine which seems to be an IPC motherboard in a laptop case. Heres a bit of the blurb: OS - SunOS4.1, SunView Processor - IU-LSI RDIIU-25, 25MHz - FPU-RDIFPU-25, 25MHz Performance - 15Mips, 1.6 MFLOPS, 10 Specmarks Memory - 8-32 MB DRAM with parity, 60ns, 4 or 1 MB SIMMS Media - Floppy: 3.5", autosensing 720K or 1.44MB, 16ms Hard: 120MB, 28ms, 1.6 MB/sec, SCSI-2 Display - Backlit, supertwist LCD, +/- 35 degree viewing angle, 1152x900 pixels Keyboard - Sun4 compatible I/O - Two SBus, Ethernet AUI, Two serial RS232 8pin mini DIN, SCSI-2, External Video, Mouse 8 PIN DIN Other - digitized sound through built in speaker Dimensions - H 91mm, W 300mm, L 400mm, Weight 6.15KG (incl nicad battery) There are two machines actually a 12 MIP version and a 15 MIP version (funny that). Colour is supposed to be forthcoming and is available for the 15 MIP version. If anyone has one of these suckers and can comment on its usefulness I would also like to know about it as we may be intereseted in getting some. It seems disk space (120MEG) is the biggest problem as this is nowhere near enough to be useful here. Rodney Campbell - Telecom Aust |MHSnet: rodney@solar.card.inpu.oz.au Network Services Unit |Snail : 8th Floor, 91 York Street, Sydney 2000. Customer Applications Research | or PO Box A226, Sydney South 2000, Australia. & Development |Phone : +61 (0)2 364 3346 Fax: +61 2 262 3813
bauman@shell.com (E. G. Bauman) (05/10/91)
We just tried one out last Friday. A local salesman brought one over to our center, but would not loan it out to us for a few days (sigh). As a Sun, it's pretty decent. It ran Sunview and Openwindows. It took a bit getting used to the smaller screen. The Mac emulation was astonishing to see. I would never have anticipated seeing Mac emulation on a Sun ever. We loaded up the Mac with our own benchmark. Namely, letting the computer play itself at Strategic Conquest. It's about the same speed as a Mac SE. The only problem we could detect is that the sound doesn't work in the Mac window (makes SC kind of dull to play). An inconvenience is that the floppy only reads the high density Mac floppies in the Mac window (1.4 MB?). Trying a standard 800KB floppy in the Mac window was unsuccessful. You can resize the Mac window to a variety of sizes while in the Finder. Some are bigger than the screen. The actual emulator window appears as a sunview window which will work in Sunview and in Openwindows. The Mac filesystem is contained in a single file, a la the C: file in DOS Windows. No accessing SunOS directories as Mac disks. This can make moving files around a little difficult. Mouse tracking is marginal whether in the Mac emulator or just in Openwindows. You see mouse shadows follow the mouse arrow. Getting the mouse to cross the boundaries of the Mac emulator window was sometimes difficult. Didn't try out the PC emulation. I just assumed it was SoftPC. What we're really interested in is RDI's Mac emulation for desktop sparcs. We've been told about the product, but the salesman told us that it was still unavailable. The salesman told me these machines were being purchased at an oil company in Houston (not Shell) where it is very difficult to get Macs, but easy to buy Suns, for their Mac emulator alone. A $12,000 Mac SE... Makes one wonder about the sense behind corporate strategies sometimes. Evan G. Bauman - Combustion/Reaction Engineering Shell Development Company - Westhollow Research Center PO Box 1380; Houston, TX 77251-1380 bauman@shell.com (713)-493-8937