some questions

[Rob Healey]

Warm up the 'thrower Katie!

Enter Soapbox mode:

In article <1991Jun13.132128.21224 at micromuse.co.uk> dj at micromuse.co.uk (D. J. Walker-Morgan) writes:
>The Byte review, after my experiences with the A3000Ux has a hollow ring...
>The SVR4 is *NOT* as well put together as other SVR4's, the X11 seems to
>be based on AT&T's distribution and is X11R3... and for the money you pay
>for the basic machine here in the UK, you can acquire higher specification
>NeXTs, Macs, 486's and some SPARC systems. Basically, that Byte review
>was well, rubbish. The A3000UX has to be bought with a ULowell card (the
>A2024 monitor I don't regard as an alternative) and monitor.
>
	WHERE did you see a better put together version of R4 than the
	Amiga in the same price class?!?! I've used every 386 version
	of R4 currently out and they are all WORSE than 1.1 Amiga UNIX.

	By the way, NO 386 R4 user edition has been released. ALL the
	386 R4's I've seen are DEVELOPER releases and for good reason,
	a normal user wouldn't stand a chance in hell getting them to
	work right.
	
	1.1 UNIX took 15 minutes from the boxes being
	dropped on the floor of my cube till it was set up and running
	full networking, mail, remote news and compiling the PD apps
	I had waiting for it. The closest a 386 version has come is
	5 hours with knowledge of how R4 and its predicessors, BSD and R3,
	are put together.
	
	NO WAY is there an easier system to set up in a UNIX networking
	environment. I've personally set up or help set up Suns, NeXT's,
	IBM RT & 6000's, DECstations, VAXstations, Multiprocessor UNIX and VMS.
	NOWHERE have I seen a system go in as fast as my 3000, especially a
	system that doesn't match ANY of the systems currently on the network.
	The only prep I had to do was assign a name and IP address for the box
	and get a thinnet cable for it.

	I would call 1.1 a stable Developers release and 2.0 a user
	release which should be available MONTHS before any Intel R4.

	For every major and minor problem on 1.1 I can point to multiple
	problems on 4.0.2+ on 386 platforms. Hell, the symbolic debuggers
	on some Intel R4's don't even work properly.

	I got news for you bub, except for Dell, who I hear borrowed heavily
	from Mr. Roell's PD version of X11, R4's ALL use the AT&T R3
	X and Open Look code. The REAL fun is that the code didn't even work
	on non-AT&T equipment. C= had to develop X11R4 without the benifit
	of 9 months of PD porting already done for them...

	NexT, Mac and SPARC are NOT R4's and so any comparison between them
	and R4 is irrelevant because they are different, albeit similar, OS's.

	I concede the price point. UX's are too expensive. To be
	REALLY competitive a UXD, 8M/200M/ether/1950/SCSI-tape, should be
	priced in the low $7k range LIST. If C= marketed for high volume/
	low price then this is what we'd be paying. You can get a 33Mhz 386
	based R4 system for < $7k. I leave the details as an exercise
	to the reader... The shrude buyer might even be able to get a
	486 EISA system for around $7500.00, I came close but had to cheat
	with discounts given by one of the distributors used at work... The end
	point here is that UX's cost to much for the limited amount of
	software that is out there. Now, if they ran 123, a trendy database and
	Word Perfect the current asking price might be more in line...

>Goodness knows. The A3000Ux I had was a base configuration with 8Mb of
>memory and no video card. I had a price from Commodore of 5000 UK pounds.
>I coughed and spluttered and looked up SVR4 on 386/486's (Cheaper) and 
>NeXT's (nicer for many folks, and at now you can get Motif 1.1 and X11R4 for
>it) and then put the A3000Ux way down my shopping list...
>
	WHERE did you find an Amiga WITHOUT a builtin video system? It
	WASN'T an Amiga if you did. As I mentioned above, 386/486 R4 is
	still shakey and hostile toward an end user. 1.1 Amiga UNIX
	just works for an end user although you have to compile the
	apps you want to use on it.
	
	By the way, HOW MUCH do you pay for the Motif and X11R4 on the NeXT?
	I KNOW NeXT doesn't provide them; "X is braindead" - quote from you
	know who...

>>Simply the smartest choice for a Unix workstation for the money.
>You must use different money.... There's plenty of better Unix workstations
>at plenty better prices...
>
	YUP! I use American dollars. As far as better workstations
	that depends on how you define better.

	1) 386/486 - Lot's of hardware that doesn't work with other
		     hardware and a developer's version of R4 that's
		     MUCH worse than 1.1 UNIX and WAAAAAY worse than
		     2.0 UNIX will be. Cheeper, but, You get what you
		     pay for in many ways.

	2) Sun - Add up ALL the costs for a non-University person and
		 add in the maintainance contract 'cause Sun hardware,
		 especially monitors, aren't as reliable as Sun would
		 like us to think. YOW! Those apps are a tad pricy...

	3) Mac - A/UX? Get real. This is the most pathetic excuse, 2.0,
		 for a UNIX that I have seen in my life. Hardware is
		 even pricer than Amiga! You can run all that Mac
		 software though.

	4) NeXT - Hmmm, B&W NeXTStep and Mach. Lot's of fun porting
		  involved with NeXT OS. All sorts of gottchas. Not
		  as easy as R4. Add more for color hardware,
		  then more for X11 and Motif/OL. Not QUITE as cheep
		  as one would believe, unless you're a University
		  type, but that's cheating as far as I'm concerned.
		  Hmmm, Mr. slab doesn't appear to be quite as
		  expandable as I thought either.

      Gee, all these certainly DO look "better" don't they?! They also
      leave me flat out of luck if I want to run some of the useful
      AmigaDOS software I already have. If C= gets off it's keister
      and has Soft-PC ported then I can run my PeeWee stuff too.

>That said, it is somehow what I expected to come from Commodore as their
>Unix box. Previous incarnations of Amix have appeared to be more "matched"
>to the machine, but that work seems to have been discarded....
>
	Out with the old, in with the new I say. I'd rather have R4 than
	R3 UNIX. I think you'll find 2.0 UNIX a much better fit than 1.1.

>I'm waiting for version 2.0 of Commodore's SVR4 to see if they fix it
>up a bit better.... I found it very slow, even to the point of embaressing...
>(I don't expect to have to go downstairs for a cup of coffee while
>waiting for an Xterm to come up)....
>
	SLOW?! Try a 25Mhz 386 with cache running 4.0.2, X and some useful
	work! THAT'S slow! I know, my workstation at work is a 25Mhz 386
	4.0.2+ system running Roell's faster X and my UXD at home is
	ALOT faster. I've tuned the bejezus out of the R4 at work and still
	can't get it to run faster than my UXD. I've got 9M of 32 bit
	cached memory in the Compaq and a 18ms drive so I'd say the hardware
	is pretty even.

	From what I've heard from the Virginia guys, 2.0 alpha was faster
	than 1.1 and there was a sound device too. X11R4 will be in 2.0
	and THAT should fix the X problems along with having a leaner
	window manager like twm. (twm can be fetched from MIT sources if C=
	doesn't provide it)

	To summarize this response:

	1) ALL the costs, $$$ and time, have to be added up. The Intel
	   boxes at work are a big pain in the keister on a continuing
	   basis. Mac, Sun and NeXT have their costs and disadvantages
	   when you look at EVERYTHING and not just sales liturature.
	   R4 isn't as mature as the other OS's. Intel R4 is only now
	   getting a stable DEVELOPERS version. Amiga UNIX will have a
	   stable end user version of R4 in 2 or less months if you
	   believe C= RSN stuff, even if it slips Amiga UNIX will have
	   a user friendly version of R4 long before 386 R4.

	2) The UX's have two main problems: C= marketing and C= sales.
	   Pricing is out of line for what you get by ~1.9k. The UX
	   line is application starved, it NEEDS Soft-PC, 123, DataBase and
	   Word Perfect in order to sell units. Technical superiority won't do
	   it.
	   
	   C= HAS to provide these apps if they want to stay in the UNIX biz,
	   NeXT and 386/486 will wipe them out if they don't. I hope the C= tech
	   guys will point this out to sales and marketing if they haven't
	   already.

	   Why do I have an Amiga UXD instead of a 486 system, which I
	   could have gotten for less, or a NeXT, which would have cost
	   a bit more, or a Sun IPC which would have cost ALOT more?

	   1) I wanted a machine whose hardware was built from the ground
	      up for MultiMedia purposes.
	      
	      The NeXT sorta has this but it's running a goofy OS that I
	      personally don't like. I worked with a cube for quite a while in
	      school and even ran a PD X on it.

	   2) I wanted System V Release 4 and a Motorola based arch. I
	      HATE Intel braindead architecture with a passion. R4's
	      on the Intel arch. are still ALOT worse than Amiga UNIX.

	   3) I've wanted an Amiga since I saw the August 1985 issue
	      of BYTE. Amiga + UNIX finally made it irresistable.


	The rumor mill seems to indicate that 2.0 WILL fix most of
	the glaring and annoying problems of 1.1 and add useful
	functionality. I think I bought the right hardware, now I'll
	just have to be a little patient till C= catches up with the
	software that pushes the machine to its limits.

	I see a 3000UX sitting at a tradeshow taunting it's rivals
	by speaking in multiple languages, playing stereo music and
	awesome 2410 graphics all AT THE SAME TIME, under UNIX and
	NOT loading the UX down heavily. I see this happening in
	< a year. There also could be CD-ROM applications too. The
	hardware exists, the software has to be worked on. I don't see
	any other system doing ALL of this, at the same time, under UNIX
	within the next year.

End of soapbox.

		-Rob