fuller@ecs.UUCP (08/08/83)
DEC finally managed to get us a PRO-350 after months of delay. After fooling around with it for a couple of weeks I have come to the conclusion that it is as bad as everyone says it is. I have been a DEC admirer for a long time, and it's painful to see them foul up this badly. The keyboard is atrocious. It shares the bad features of the IBM PC keyboard, and has a few additional problems of its own. The ESC, BS, and Break keys are placed in the top row where function keys are located in most rational keyboards. The thing that looks like a BS and is placed where BS is ordinarily placed is the DELETE (rubout) key, which is fine for DEC OS's but is a pain for Unix or IBM OS's. The return key is oddly shaped and hard for me to find (I use a VT100 ordinarily). There is also an annoying keyclick which apparently can't be turned off. The CRT display is ok. I have had minor problems with intensity and contrast settings -- the display is either too dim or you see the diagonal lines and gray shading in the background. The 132 column mode is almost unusable for my eyes. The small size of the display is convenient. I wish the keyboard were as compact. The "System Unit" is huge! The floor stand is a necessity. But using the floor stand the cables supplied are too short to put the screen/keyboard in a convenient place. (I keep them on a typing stand, as I do my terminal, and like to move it around to minimize glare, etc.) The fan is loud for an office environment. When we took the cover off I was impressed with the design of the card cage, motherboard, etc. This part of the hardware is as good as I would have expected from DEC. But there is not much room for expansion, and I think third parties are going to have trouble building plugins for it. The hard disk is small (5 megs) and slow. The floppies I suppose are ok. I don't have much basis for comparison but they seem fairly capacious (400 kbytes) and seem rather fast. I have read about some quirks that I have not experienced. Overall I have nothing much to add to what has already been said. The Operating System (P/OS) is the pits. P/OS must stand for Piece Of @#$%! I quickly tired of the menus. It takes forever to do anything. The editor supplied is much worse than EDT and can't even begin to compare with Emacs. Basic is primitive. I downloaded a program from VMS, and found to my amazement that the Pro Basic had all sorts of problems with it. Multiple statements per line must be done in the most rigorous fashion. Variable names are more restrictive. Functions are different. Etc, ad nauseum. The Terminal Emulator works pretty well, although I did have problems with dropped characters on half duplex systems (TSO) at 9600 baud. I'm not really surprized at that and don't hold it against them. Documentation: Over the years DEC documentation has gotten much better. But this time I think they went off the deep end. The manuals are obviously written for the complete idiot, and as a result read a bit like a comic book. I can sit through 3 or 4 pages of most anything, but this loosely organized and patronizing verbiage is too much for me. All in all this machine is a loser. I think DEC has made some serious and irremedial errors with it. I have a hard time imagining what can be done with it that can't be done better and more economically with other PC's on the market. Bill Fuller N.C. Educational Computing Service ...mcnc!tucc!ecs!fuller P.S. We have just received Venix, a version of Unix for the Pro 350 from VentureCom Corp. The current version is not complete, but represents a good beginning. I intend to use it instead of P/OS. When I have the time I will prepare a review for the network. Perhaps with Unix the Pro 350 will be more satisfactory, though heaven knows what can be done about that keyboard.
MCMANIS@usc-eclc@sri-unix.UUCP (08/10/83)
From: Chuck McManis <MCMANIS@usc-eclc> For changing parameters to the PRO 350 hit the SET-UP key when you are looking at the main menu. This will allow you to change any of a number of features as well as set the time. --Chuck -------