second thoughts on buying a 3000UX

[David Wright]

In article <61751 at masscomp.westford.ccur.com> rtc at westford.ccur.com writes:
>
>I'm pretty sure the installation media is a cartridge tape.  Is it a
>quarter inch cartridge (QIC) or their own standard.  They couldn't even
>tell me the price of a tape drive!  Anyone know the density or capacity,
>or the price of the tape drives?
	It is an industry standard QIC 150 meg (DC6150 type). On the 3000UX
I have not found anything that isn't industry standard.
>
>I've heard that additional memory chips must be surface-soldered to 
>the main board.  I've also heard that memory is user upgradable, and that
	Whoever told you this was lying. No C= or Amiga equipment has
ever required soldering of any type.
>expansion boards are available.  What really is the largest amount of
>memory that I can cram into the system?  How much does it cost to get the
>system with 16 Mb or more memory?  They could only tell me the price with 9Mb.
	You will pay about $35-40 per megabyte you wish to add. The maximum
RAM on the motherboard is 18 Meg, and the addressable range is at least 1.7
gigabytes.
>
>1024 X 1024.  Well if I need to get that expansion board, so be it, but
>how much does it cost?  How many of them can be put on a system?
	Why would you want more than one? I have never seen any PC clone
system running more than one VGA card, and in fact, I believe there might be
a conflict with more than one VGA card in the system.
>
>Does the SCSI implementation allow for connecting and using:
>	- scanners
	Yes
>	- fixed-block tapes
	Yes
>	- other tapes
	Yes
>	- disks (native scsi, or adaptec, OMTI, or other bridge boards)
	Yes
>	- CD-ROM's and other removable optical disks
	Yes.
	And any other device that is available for the SCSI bus or for which
there exists a <non SCSI bus> to SCSI adapter.
>
>Does the system truly come with ethernet?  Does the running system support
>booting X terminals on the network?  Does it support all of the major booting
>protocols?
	Yes, it really does, and with TCP/IP and NFS. About the rest I can't
say since we never do that.
>
>Could someone post the output of a recursive "ls" on a system?
>Is there a comprehensive list of what UNIX software comes with it, or at least
>is available to put on it?  I want some sort of database for example.
	It comes with much PD and GNU software, other than that I can't say.
>
>How will third party sotware products be distributed?  (see tape drive question
>above!)
	I don't know, considering that I have never received ANY Unix software
on anything other than floppy disks in the SCO/Interactive 386 world. I
would not think that C+ would distribute it any differently.


			Dave


Newsgroups: comp.unix.amiga
Subject: Re: second thoughts on buying a 3000UX
References: <61751 at masscomp.westford.ccur.com>
Distribution: world
Organization: Prism Computer Applications

In article <61751 at masscomp.westford.ccur.com> rtc at westford.ccur.com writes:
>
>I'm pretty sure the installation media is a cartridge tape.  Is it a
>quarter inch cartridge (QIC) or their own standard.  They couldn't even
>tell me the price of a tape drive!  Anyone know the density or capacity,
>or the price of the tape drives?
	It is an industry standard QIC 150 meg (DC6150 type). On the 3000UX
I have not found anything that isn't industry standard.
>
>I've heard that additional memory chips must be surface-soldered to 
>the main board.  I've also heard that memory is user upgradable, and that
	Whoever told you this was lying. No C= or Amiga equipment has
ever required soldering of any type.
>expansion boards are available.  What really is the largest amount of
>memory that I can cram into the system?  How much does it cost to get the
>system with 16 Mb or more memory?  They could only tell me the price with 9Mb.
	You will pay about $35-40 per megabyte you wish to add. The maximum
RAM on the motherboard is 18 Meg, and the addressable range is at least 1.7
gigabytes.
>
>1024 X 1024.  Well if I need to get that expansion board, so be it, but
>how much does it cost?  How many of them can be put on a system?
	Why would you want more than one? I have never seen any PC clone
system running more than one VGA card, and in fact, I believe there might be
a conflict with more than one VGA card in the system.
>
>Does the SCSI implementation allow for connecting and using:
>	- scanners
	Yes
>	- fixed-block tapes
	Yes
>	- other tapes
	Yes
>	- disks (native scsi, or adaptec, OMTI, or other bridge boards)
	Yes
>	- CD-ROM's and other removable optical disks
	Yes.
	And any other device that is available for the SCSI bus or for which
there exists a <non SCSI bus> to SCSI adapter.
>
>Does the system truly come with ethernet?  Does the running system support
>booting X terminals on the network?  Does it support all of the major booting
>protocols?
	Yes, it really does, and with TCP/IP and NFS. About the rest I can't
say since we never do that.
>
>Could someone post the output of a recursive "ls" on a system?
>Is there a comprehensive list of what UNIX software comes with it, or at least
>is available to put on it?  I want some sort of database for example.
	It comes with much PD and GNU software, other than that I can't say.
>
>How will third party sotware products be distributed?  (see tape drive question
>above!)
	I don't know, considering that I have never received ANY Unix software
on anything other than floppy disks in the SCO/Interactive 386 world. I
would not think that C+ would distribute it any differently.

	I have found that the C= implementation of SVR4 to be one of the better
releases of Unix on ANY machine (I normally use SCO Unix 3.2.2), and you
certainly get your money's worth on the included software. If you were to
buy everything from SCO you would spend almost as much on the software as
the entire 3000UX package. Add up TCP/IP (the development package too),
NFS (the development package too, which SCO doesn't even support), X
(development package too), the development system (with both the AT&T
compilers and the GNU compiler (SCO only gives you the cruddy MS compiler)),
the text proccessing system, full man pages, etc. etc. If you take a look
at how much the basic 3000 costs (less Unix) you will see just how
inexpensive all this software really is if you buy it as a package. Maybe
about the price of SCO Unix alone.


			Dave