gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (02/07/84)
If I was going to college I'd love to have a portable word processing type system which I could write papers on, use as a very smart terminal into my University computer network, and could plug in to the laser printer down the hall in the dorm for high quality output (if I couldn't afford the cheap dot matrix printer or share it with my roommate). While it wouldn't be my machine of choice for developing a large programming system, still, I got an awful lot of work done on a 1MHz Apple ][ with 40x20 char screen, 8K "hi res" mode, upper case keyboard, 80K floppy, and 300 baud modem. I have no doubt that big and little 3rd party types can come up with compilers, debuggers, modem and lan networking, CAI, disks, color, accounting, amazing sound & video games, videotex, BSR interfaces, Usenets, and suchlike. Look what they -- we -- did on that godawful 6502 and stop doubting; at University prices this thing is cheaper than a retail Apple ][! It won't run Unix, but that's not the requirement. What it does provide can't be duplicated at its price -- an excellent user interface and fast communications to machines that provide what it can't. Supposing that bigger disks, printers, and such are run off the 1MB serial port, a well-defined remote procedure call protocol could let them use it as a simple hardware expansion port, a network interface, or both at once. How can it tell if its "Read N bytes at offset X" command was executed by a local disk or a remote server? Anybody want to bet how long before they have a portable (battery) version? My guess: as soon as they can junk the CRT for a volume produced flat panel. Makes your TRS-100 look like a four function calculator; Dynabook here we come!
seaburg@uiucdcs.UUCP (seaburg ) (02/12/84)
#R:sun:-44300:uiucdcs:10400109:000:119 uiucdcs!seaburg Feb 10 11:35:00 1984 "...and could plug in to the laser printer down the hall in the dorm..." Oh really?!?! What school might this be?!?