Mail_Daemon@MIT-CSR (02/10/83)
Date: 9 Feb 1983 2218-EST
From: Mel Pleasant <WORKS at RUTGERS>
Subject: WORKS Digest V3 #3
Sender: PLEASANT@RUTGERS
To: WorkS: ;
Reply-To: WORKS at RUTGERS
Works Digest Wednesday, 9 February 1983 Volume 3 : Issue 3
Today's Topics:
Information Systems - Ariel,
Overviews - Apple's Lisa (3 msgs)
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Return-path: <mike@brl-bmd>
Date: 5 Feb 83 4:10:31 EST (Sat)
From: Mike Muuss <mike@Brl-Bmd.ARPA>
To: Steven Gutfreund <gutfreund%umass-coins@Udel-Relay.ARPA>,
Mike@Brl-Bmd.ARPA
Subject: WORLD-KEY
....and central computer (Honeywell)....
At the recent USENIX conference at San Diego, R.C. Haight and D.B.
Knudsen of Bell Laboratories (ucbvax!allegra!bwkna!haight@Berkeley)
gave a presentation titled "ARIEL: An Experimental UNIX-based
Interactive Video Information System".
The computers were standard DEC VAXen, running (what else) UNIX.
They actually had one set up, and gave a live demo as part of their
talk.
**Most impressive**
To tickle your fancy, I herein reproduce the abstract of their talk.
Too bad I am unable to reproduce the "video palindrome" which is the
Ariel "idle pattern" -- falling though a TouchTone (TM) keyboard
forever...
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The major components of the Ariel system are
*) A color video monitor,
*) An associated touch-screen input device,
*) Computer-controlled video disk players,
*) Video overlay graphics devices,
*) Overall UNIX-based computer control
Ariel was developed especially for the new Disney World EPCOT
Center, where it is known as the World Key Information System
(WKIS).
To interact with the system, an EPCOT guest merely touches the
"touch to begin" message displayed on the video screen. From that
point the "script" provides video and voice instructions to permit
the guest to find the information he or she required. The two audio
channels on the video disk permit interaction in either English or
Spanish. The special video overlay capability permits entry of
up-to-date information ("Todays Events", etc).
The Ariel terminals have been in service since October 1, 982 and
have proved to be both an effective information source and
"attractions" in their own right.
The Ariel software includes:
*) Routines which provide an interface to the Ariel hardware --
videodisks, touch bezel controllers, video switches, graphical
overlay generator, telephone -- all accessed via direct RS232
connections. (The touch input device had an unexpected effect on
the design of software tools).
*) Shell level utility commands which use the interface routines to
do some simple task with one or two devices, e.g., play a videodisk
sequence or a tune, or generate a map of touch-sensitive screen
areas.
*) A yacc-based script compiler, compiling a new language oriented
toward control of the ARiel devices. (Script is our term for the the
instructions which specify which video sequences to play, which
graphics to display, and what to do when the screen is touched at a
particular place).
*) A corresponding interpreter, which includes the compiler output
and some auxiliary files as shared program text.
*) High-level control programs which are used if the application
includes access to attendants and/or multi-machine coordination.
These handle interprocess and intermachine communications.
*) The usual diagnostic routines, logdata reduction programs, etc.
As we expected, using UNIX as a base allowed us to develop a complex
system on time with a small number of people.
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Return-path: <dmw@cmu-cs-vlsi>
Date: Friday, 4 February 1983 09:31:20 EST
From: Hank.Walker@CMU-CS-VLSI
To: works@rutgers
Subject: the Lisa computer
I went to a talk by Steve Jobs and Larry Tesler of Apple on the Lisa
computer. I was quite favorably impressed, much more so than I had
expected. Apple has sunk 50 megabucks into quite a nice machine.
The basic hardware is a standard keyboard, 1-button mouse (of their
own design), 6MHz 68000 CPU, 1Mbyte memory with parity (no ECC),
5Mbyte Winchester, and dual 860K minifloppies. It also has little
things like a clock/calendar, speaker with tone generator, and dual
serial ports. The display is BW 364 lines by 720 dots on a 12 inch
diagonal screen. Refresh rate of 60Hz. The screen was surprisingly
sharp considering it is only 1/3 the resolution of a PERQ screen.
They implement virtual memory by having procedures go through a jump
table and trap if non-resident. Data must be resident and is slow
swapping in. User has control over this. Virtual memory size is
now 16Mbytes. The performance limit is the Winchester. Graphics
for text was a little slow, and sometimes pretty slow for figures.
It is done in assembly code while the rest in Pascal. No special
graphics hardware.
The software is the impressive part. The demo that they gave, and
the brochure emphasize the office software. A visicalc, graph
drawing package, word processor, drawing package, PERT chart system,
and mailing list system form the basis of this. All run through a
standard interface with windowing and mouse usage. Basically a new
and improved version of the software you find on Altos and the Xerox
Star.
A development environment for Pascal/Cobol/Basic/Smalltalk is
available with its own editor, debugger, etc. Also Xenix and CPM
environments and a terminal emulator (VT52/VT100/3270). A new
language Clascal will come out. It is Pascal with Classes a la
Simula.
Random information: Smalltalk is very slow. Only one button on the
mouse makes it easy to learn but sometimes need too hands. The
mouse design seems more reliable than the Xerox mice, but not as
good as an optical mouse. The keyboard is thick and key feel is
crummy. There is no key labeled as the control key, but the shift
lock key can be used as one.
In the future they will have a 1 megabit/sec Ethernet-like network
with a node cost below $500. They will then provide mail, print
servers, etc.
Currently there is little software locking for multi-tasking.
Instead the programmer inserts explicit statements when he reaches
an idle state (waiting for input) so that another process can take
over). This will change in the future.
About half of the Winchester is taken by the system software. No
color graphics this year. Backplane specs and OS interface specs
will be published to encourage 3rd parties. Not all of OS will be
visible. They don't have floating-point.
They plan on sticking with future generations of the 68000 and
whatever peripherals Motorola puts out.
They will start implementing on-site field service as well as the
existing carry-in service. Has built-in diagnostics and diagnostics
floppy. Easily disassembled hardware. No remote diagnosis.
The dot matrix horizontal resolution is 1/2 that of Dover/9700.
The list price is $10000 plus software costs.
Apple's emphasis is on the office and making the system usable
within 30 minutes for a novice user. I did notice that the
marketing guy demoing it did have some difficulties selecting
windows and occasionally needed pointers from the software guy.
The whole project ran around 3.5 years and 250 man-years for
software.
One unique feature of the document processing is that documents have
an intended target printing device. If you want to print on another
device, Lisa will do the best it can, but will warn if something is
bogus (italics on a Daisywheel lacking them).
I think that their basic purpose was to try to get CMU to take some
Lisas as interim ITC machines and see that there was a growth path
to nice machines in the future. Considering that they sent out a
whole boatload of people along with the company president and
several machines and fancy demo means that they consider it
important.
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Return-path: <LEAVITT@USC-ISI>
Date: 5 Feb 1983 1027-PST
Subject: Re: WORKS Digest V3 #2 - Lisa
From: Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>
Quick query on Lisa: I have seen material that says that it comes
with a hard disk, and elsewhere that the Profile is an option. This
sounds like a contradiction to me. Does anyone have the information
reliably? Many thanks.
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Return-path: <SILVERBERG@SRI-CSL>
Date: 7 Feb 1983 0924-PST
From: Brad A. Silverberg <SILVERBERG at SRI-CSL>
Subject: re: lisa ram
Lisa comes with 1 megabyte RAM. Also included in the $10k price is
a 5-MB hard disk ("Profile"), two 871KB floppies, a mouse (that
tracks on any surface, including glass!), all currently available
applications (LisaList, LisaWrite, LisaGraph, LisaDraw, LisaCalc,
and LisaProject, with LisaTerminal to be available later), 364 x 720
60hz non-interlaced display, 2 serial ports (SCC), 1 parallel port,
and 3 expansion slots.
Brad Silverberg
Apple Computer
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End of WorkS Digest
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