dente@s2.uucp (Colin Dente) (04/27/89)
Did that title catch your eye? Did you think this was gonna be exciting? Well, what can I say - when my local Sun salesman 'phoned me up to invite me to that, I thought _Hmmmm could be worth a shufty_ (read look in place of shufty for those of you who don't understand English) It turned out that the _event of the decade_ was being staged at the studios of the local TV company, which should have made me suspicious, but, being the trusting sort, I went along, clutching pretty blue and white ticket in hand. Much milling about of other dupes in a darkened TV studio, then.... "Please take your seats" "Ooooh!" thought I "how exciting - the most important computing event of the decade - and I'm going to be there..." WHat happened? Do you really want to know? Oh, all right then... Lights, cameras, action 'n all that jazz.... On comes an actor (yes - an actor - no technical knowledge here...), and Sun start recording a PROMOTIONAL VIDEO!!!!! "Tricked again" think I - "still, might'nt be too bad if they're unveiling some decent new machines, after all, this is 'the most important computing announcement this decade' - they're probably going to show us a lap-top Cray-2 with builtin cold fusion power supply". No... needless to say. What we actually got was (paraphrasing press release...) Sun 3/80 Souped up 3/60 3 Mips 3 1/2" floppy that you can stick MSDOS disk in. 4-16Mbytes core SPARCstation 1 12 Mips Desktop 8-16Megs 3 1/2" floppy S-Bus expansion slots (Sun's very own bus) 3/470 & 3/480 'Deskside' 7 Mips 8-128 Megs 12 VME bus slots up to 5.5 or 14 Gbytes of disk (depending on which one you buy) SPARCstation 330 'Deskside' 16 Mips 8-40 Megs up to 654 Megs of SCSI disk 3x9U + 2x6U VME slots SPARCstation 370 as 330 but: 8-56 Megs up to 5.5Gbyte disk 12x9U VME slots SPARCserver 330 as SPARCstation 330 but: up to 1.3Gbyte SCSI disk 4-36 serial ports SPARCserver 370 as 330 but: 8-56 Megs up to 5.5 Gbytes disk 4-68 serial ports 12x9U VME slots SPARCserver 390 as 330 but: 8-56 Megs up to 32Gbytes IPI disk 4-68 serial ports 16x9U VME slots Oh, and they also mentioned some new graphics hardware which would fit in any Sun3 or 4 (except my 3/110, of course, but they neglected to mention that until I asked them). So - nice sounding machines, certainly. "The most important computing announcement this decade"? - I think not. Come on Sun, if you want to film a promotional video - fine - just don't fool me into thinking you've got something revolutionary to show me, then sit me down and tell me I'm required to clap at the end of it. Still, good food afterwards..... Colin Colin Dente | JANET: dente%s2@uk.ac.man.cs.ux Dept. of Electrical Engineering | ARPA: dente%s2%man.cs.ux@ukacrl.BITNET University of Manchester | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!man.cs.ux!s2!dente England |