jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (12/22/88)
I wonder... Does Steve Jobs have any plans to open up the NeXT box by distributing the source code for NeXT's release of Mach? Or the 4.3 BSD layer? This leads us into the question of licencing and who will be able to see/modify the source code... Will it one day be possible to port GNU OS to the NeXT? I distrust any machine that I can't get into the guts of and fix (note the current problems sites are having with Sun OS). Which leads to the question of.... What sort of support is or will be available for the NeXT? So-called "depot" maintenance? Full service contracts? What sort of mechanisms will be used to maintain hardware and software? Hardware support might be board-level replacements on NeXT thanks to their automated factory. When will colour be available and in what form? Will I be able to just plug a colour card into an already existing b&w NeXT computer? How upgradable is NeXT? I don't want to buy a new NeXT every other year. Will NeXT one day support an analog to digital sound card with the same resolution that NeXT is able to generate? A DSP-based card of some kind. generating high-wuality sound is fine but I also want to sample sounds of high quality. -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 "The only thing more useless than a Faberge' egg is a coffee table picture book about Faberge' eggs"
verber@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark A. Verber) (12/23/88)
In articlejtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) writes: > >Does Steve Jobs have any plans to open up the NeXT box by distributing >the source code for NeXT's release of Mach? Or the 4.3 BSD layer? >This leads us into the question of licencing and who will be able to >see/modify the source code... I have been told that NeXT will not be distributing source. The current story is if you want any kind of source get a copy of Mach from CMU. (Yes, this is like getting BSD 4.3 for a machine running SunOS). I think this is silly, but that is the current story. >Will it one day be possible to port GNU OS to the NeXT? I distrust >any machine that I can't get into the guts of and fix (note the >current problems sites are having with Sun OS). Which leads to the >question of.... All the details needed to port an OS to the NeXT box are there. In fact some friends of mine are about to start porting their OS to the NeXT box. The only problem is having GNU to port. Are you planning on getting GNU done? There are a lot of applications now, but the GNU kernel is far from being done. > >What sort of support is or will be available for the NeXT? So-called >"depot" maintenance? Maintaince will be board swaps. I have no idea what NeXT long-term plans are. At universities the campus service orginization (who do PCs, Macs, etc) will be setup to do board swaps etc, but NeXT has done something good, they intended the NeXT box to be *user* servicable! When you get more memory, another disk drive, etc. you don't need to take it to a service center or face voiding your warranty. >When will colour be available and in what form? I wish I knew. I am sure some companies are working on frame-buffers that plug into the NeXT NuBus right now. That would take very little work. I can easily see someone dropping a board with a Transputer (or other engine) and video out on to a NeXT board. As far as a color monitor that is native on the machine, who knows. >Will NeXT one day support an analog to digital sound card with the >same resolution that NeXT is able to generate? A DSP-based card of >some kind. generating high-wuality sound is fine but I also want to >sample sounds of high quality. > Once again I don't know if NeXT might do some kind of fancy sampling system. As you know the standard mike jack only supports 8K sampling. On the other hand there is direct access to the DSP via a port on the back, so .... Mark A. Verber Ohio State Univ.
kean@mist.cs.orst.edu (Kean Stump) (12/23/88)
Pixar is currently working on a color display/frame buffer/graphics engine
for the NeXT. No availability info yet, but it will be good (Renderman,
image processing stuff in hardware!)
kean
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Oregon State University Kean Stump
Department of Computer Science kean@cs.orst.edu
Corvallis, Oregon {tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs!kean
"OSU CS isn't my employer, so don't take me seriously"
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