haque@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Samudra E. Haque) (08/14/88)
Hello, This summer I had a chance to work in Bangladesh as an independent computer consultant for a while and ran into an interesting situation there - pertaining to UNIX, MAC II's and computers in general. If I may I'd like to tell you what's happening over there and I'd like to find out specific information about a couple of questions. Please feel free to contact me via e=mail or otherwise if you can help. SCENARIO: Bangladesh is a country that has just recently "discovered" computer technology. Previously a British colony and then a slave nation to Pakistan, society in that country is old, stuffy and beuracratic (sp?) . While the technology is always welcomed is becoming to be used very heavily, information is at a premium and often viewed with suspicion. It is a "sellers market", if an organisation wants to purchase a (computer) system, then they go out and ask for a bid via tender. Often times the specification is simply "computer system for 16 users". Concepts of operating systems and software and hardware are just not there yet. The organisations selling computers (apple, ibm, dg, icl, etc.) will gladly sell you a computer system that is "just" great for your needs. (sarcasm). ANY problem that you have - their computer system will suffice for it. CP/M, CDOS, S/360, Cobol,BSC are being pushed as the "wave of the future". At this point people like me come into their arena, trying to make some sense out of what the solution might be. As I said before, even my efforts were viewed suspiciously - my clients did not have the knowledge or the expertise to know whether I was shortchanging them. Among other things, I found it very difficult to go up to some big hot shot in the government and say "well, why don't you go UNIX and C and IP/TCP and KERMIT and RS-232".. "Its a world wide standard you know". The answer was (and still is) "but we are not the world are we ? Our needs are necessarily different". I tried to push for UNIX and Ethernet based networking - my experience as a (psuedo) computer services adminstrator (i.e., student job with those responsibilities) have hopefully given me a good insight as to the way the world does and doesn't turn. The competition came from people who pushed IBM PC's as the solution, BSC and Cobol, Macintosh SE's and Laserwriter NTX, Appletalk etc. Maybe they were "appropriate solutions", but what about multiuser and multitasking systems like minicomputers and supermini VAX class machines? Currently people there are "afraid" of purchasing such "large" systems.. maintenance and price considerations are very large considerations. I ended up suggesting to a particular organisation that they choose UNIX as the operating system and that they start of with machines either based on the 80386 chip running XENIX or equiv, or Mac II's with A/UX. QUESTION: Does A/UX support or intend to support multiple users? Does A/UX support the regular complement of terminals and types? How many terminals can be attached to Mac II (with or without boards) What console specifications for Mac II with A/UX? What future plans are there for the Mac II hardware (expansion)? What RDBMS, Spreadsheet and Communication programs have been announced for A/UX (and when are they available). I am interested in INGRES, Lotus look alike Spreadsheets and large capacity disk drives (>1GB ? ). The organisation that I worked for has a 1,000,000 item collection of antiquities that are documented and indexed on paper. There are appproximately three times as much items that are still to be catalogued! thanks very much for your time, -- Samudra E. Haque Computer Science Laboratories, Computer Science Department University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455. (1)-(612)-625-0876 || haque@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu || haque@umn-cs.UUCP
dwb@Apple.COM (David W. Berry) (08/16/88)
In article <6658@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> haque@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Samudra E. Haque) writes: >QUESTION: Does A/UX support or intend to support multiple users? A/UX is a complete SVR2 implementation (we took the tape and started from there. Therefore, yes, it fully supports multiple users and terminals. > Does A/UX support the regular complement of terminals and types? Yup, in addition you can describe nonstandard terminal types yourself using terminfo. > How many terminals can be attached to Mac II (with or without boards) The basic Mac II has 2 serial ports, thus 2 terminals could be added. After that both AST and SuperMac sell 4 port serial boards allowing you to add 4 terminals per board. > What console specifications for Mac II with A/UX? I'm not sure what you're asking. The console is attached to the normal video screen. It's a 34x88 vt100. > > What RDBMS, Spreadsheet and Communication programs have been > announced for A/UX (and when are they available). Some number of existing macintosh programs will run under A/UX without modification. Naturally they only run on the console since they need a video screen, etc. In addition both Ingres and Oracle have announced ports to A/UX. A/UX comes with tip, cu and uucp, in addition to a full suite of TCP/IP play toys (ftp, telnet, rcp, rlogin, remsh, nfs, ...) Opinions: MINE, ALL MINE! (greedy evil chuckle) David W. Berry apple!dwb@sun.com dwb@apple.com 973-5168@408.MaBell