paul@oddjob.UUCP (Paul Schinder) (04/17/85)
A friend and I are thinking of buying micro computers for home use, and were wondering if anyone could point us to machines that would meet our needs. Ideally, the micro would have 1. good floating point capabilities (for scientific program development and possibly some actual running; a Fortran 77 compiler is essential), 2. good graphics capabilities (ideally, Tektronix 4014 emulation) with software to make hardcopies on an attached printer as well, 3. good communications software, so that transferring files between the available mainframes and the micro is easy (it would be best if the program(s) needed on the mainframe was widely available or easy to write, since the mainframes in question could range from VAX to CRAY X-MP), 4. a good local editor, the more emacs-like, the better. A dream machine would be an IBM PC/AT with 20Mb hard disk, math coprocessor, and Xenix, but that is out of our price range of ~ $3K (people associated with the University get a substantial discount on a wide range of micros, so this limit is equivalent to about $5K retail). It has boiled down to three general possibilities: 1. Forget the floating point and local program development capabilities and buy a cheap (Commodore class) computer which does the communications and graphics; it would be used mainly as a smart terminal with local hardcopy capabilities. Wait a few years to get a "real computer". 2. Get a 512K Macintosh. I understand that Fortran compilers are now available, but haven't heard much about how good they are (are they Fortran 77 standard?). The great advantages of the Macintosh are that there is a large amount of free software offered by the comp center here, that it is reasonably portable, and that there are a great many 128K and 512K Macs around campus, so advice is readily available. MacTerminal or kermit and VersaTerm take care of the communications and Tektronix emulation. From what I've read on the net, however, it seems that it's hard to actually program the thing, and the floating point capabilities may be too weak. We fear that this option may actually turn out to be a very expensive smart terminal, rather than a "real computer", and so are hesitant to go out and get one. 3. Buy a "real computer". Strain and spend a little bit more and get something which can be built into the dream machine (the lowest cost IBM PC/AT and a cheap printer, for instance). The HP Integrated Personal Computer is a very intriguing option (featuring our favorite operating system), but what kind of compilers are available for it and how are the communications and graphics? Any comments or recommendations about micros would be greatly appreciated. I'd rather not hear comments like "you should be programming in Pascal or C or ...". I'm very fluent in C and Fortran, and in my opinion Fortran is a much better language for scientific programming. Fortran is also available on every scientific computer; other languages are not. Please respond by e-mail; if there is sufficient interest, I will post a summary to the net. Thanks very much. -- Paul Schinder Astronomy and Astrophysics Center University of Chicago uucp: ..!ihnp4!oddjob!paul