Amiga 3000UX, X, OpenLook, Motif, Color, A2410, Etc. (somewhat long)

[David Kessner]

In article <EACHUS.91Mar20111051 at aries.mitre.org> eachus at aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>I almost directed followups to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, but what
>the hey...

Yea.  Your not kiddin'...

>   But why delay at all?  I'm sure that if the choice was X11R3 on
>Sys5R4 or X11R4 on Sys5R3 in the same time frame, Commodore made the
>right choice. (The choice may have been exactly that, if I was doing
>the X ports, I would insist on doing one update at a time, and I don't
>think it was possible to do both in the time available.)  It shold be
>easy to upgrade X, and there is every indication that will happen
>soon, but moving from Sys5R3 to Sys5R4 would be no picnic for the
>users.  That seems to be why Commodore decided not to release Sys5R3,
>but to keep it in beta.

My point is:  Would it have been better for C= to wait an extra 6 months to
get a Color X going-- BEFORE releasing Amiga UNIX?  I'm no marketing GURU, but
my gut feeling is that C= will get bad market perception for releasing UNIX and
then UPGRADING it so soon...

>  Please elaborate.  My 386 UNIX box does quite well being a "High
>  performance single tasking computer".  Actually the typical 386/486
>  has two things agenst it: Graphic speed (which can always be solved
>  by a $600 34010 board), and Microsoft.  I/O speeds are not really a
>  problem since only very high-end disk drives get more than 2meg/sec
>  of the 8mhz I/O bus, and since I run mine at 12mhz there is no
>  shortage of bandwidth.  We can solve the Microsoft problem by not
>  using MS-DOS or OS/2...
>
>   The "typical" '386 or '486 system with an AT bus is not designed
>for multiple bus masters, and in particular will allow disk DMA to
>choke off the main CPU.  The Microchannel bus and some of the other
>"top of the line" busses fix this problem.  Note that the problem is
>more one of jerkiness than of throughput...it is very disconcerting if
>keystrokes are not echoed promptly because of background paging, and
>in fact this is more noticable with faster disks and controllers.

Hmmm.  I've never experienced that "jerkiness" that you speak of-- but most
of my work is CPU bound rather than disk bound...  All in all, I like the
386 system (again, minus the VGA X11r3's speed).  We have put three people 
on it without any problems-- with a mix of X-windows, GCC, RN, and VI.  I 
would have tried more, but I ran out of serial ports...

>   Let's see the custom chips are probably the cheapest way for
>Commodore to do video because they already manuafacture them, since
>the chips are designed and in production, there is no cost savings to
>be had by designing them out.  If you want a simple B/W video display,
>get yourself a B/W monitor.  If you want a bigger B/W display, the 3000
>(and the custom chips in it) already support one, and in fact that is
>what Dave Haynie prefers to use.  I don't, but then again you get your
>chioce.  If you would prefer a tower case, well Commodore announced
>the 3000T in Germany last week.

Hmmmm.  If you took out the custom chips, leaving only DMA to "fast ram", 
added a TEXT ONLY display (which is VERY cheap), then the savings would be more
noticeable in cost, and board space (since there isnt a "chip ram" bus).  The 
actual $$$ cost benifit of this is subject to C's price on sand, the phase of
the moon, etc...

I mentioned using a 1-bit-plane X display strictly for COST-- I dont like them
myself.  But you missed (glossed over) my comment saying, "instead relying on
a 34010 board for X-Windows" (somewhat paraphrased).

>   I realize, of course, that is C= ever did this _FOR_IT'S_FIRST_
>   _UNIX_BOX_ that it'd go over about as well as the PS/1 did.  C=
>   needs a larger UNIX market share before it can afford to put up the
>   capital to do this type of thing.
>
>   Why bother?  Commodore can stay in the "personal" market (including
>workstations) which seems quite large enough.  Leave the mainframe
>market (which is rapidly shrinking) to the established players.  I
>think Commodore's strategy is a good one, the workstation vendors are
>climbing upscale, and there is still a large market where 3-8 MIPS is
>more than sufficent (look at all the Sun-3's still being used).  This
>leaves an opening where Commodore can quickly become a large player.
>The provision for upgrading with a 68040 (or 68050 down the road),
>should avoid worries about future upgrades.

It's not that this is a "mainframe"-- but rather a machine trimmed for UNIX
work.  There is nothing to say that it cannot be put in a slim-line case (with
a tower case option, of course :).  

Hmmm.  I remember all those Sun-3 users that were complaining about the speed
of their computers...  Of course, all of them also got spoiled by the 
SPARCStations sitting next to them...

This "lower" market is something to pay atention to, true.  Here, of course, 
C='s competition is the NeXT (yuck), and several SPARC clones-- all of which 
are in the A3000UX's $7000 (non-educational) price tag.  If someone is looking
for a UNIX workstation then they'd buy a SPARC (given it's similar price), but
if they also want the Amiga's abilities (Running with AmigaDOS) then they'd
buy a A3000.

>   I think that there are two factors here.  First, Dhrystone 1.1
>should not be used to benchmark anything.  There are too many
>compilers which literally cheat (calculate incorrect values) on this
>particular program.  Dhrystone 2.1 is much better at measuring
>something other than the cleverness of the compiler writers.  Second,
>the compilers, and the operating system itself, in the first release
>of Amiga Unix worried more (much more) about correctness and reliability
>than speed.

Argh.  Fine!  So mail me the Dhrystone 2.1 code.  Or better yet, the Specmark
program.  I'll test the machines and post the results.  I dont think that it'd
change things much, but I'll entertain the thought...

Also, you missed the point of my message completely!  I'm saying that the 
Dhrystone numbers differed by SO MUCH that FURTHER INVESTIGATION IS REQUIRED!
And dont give me any "cleverness of the compiler writers" stuff since GCC and
the AT&T compiler were used on both machines with similar results.

If you read the above paragraph closely you will read:  You are correct about
the pitfalls of the benchmarks I ran, but in the context of the "grand scheme
of things" they probably indicate something important.  Further testing is
required before conclusive results are produced.

>   Again this is the "right" decision for the intended market.  The
>speed demons will all buy SPARCstation 2's while dreaming about
>Silicon Graphics.  A customer who would be happy with a 3 MIPS
>machine, won't mind that with the first OS release, the compiler only
>gives him 4 MIPS of performance when number crunching from a 7 MIPS
>box.  However, the excellent throughput of the stuff outside the main
>CPU means that people like me, who hate to wait for a screen update,
>will be very happy.

Again.  If you want a UNIX machine-- buy a _UNIX_ machine.  If you want
a UNIX machine that also runs AmigaDOS (or vis-versa) then the A3000 is it.
My personal opinion is that this is the market for AmigaUNIX and that it will
never penetrate the "UNIX only workstation market" unless they create more
UNIX optimized machine (which would be nice, but I dont think they will).

>   The A3000UX can be upgraded to "workstation performance levels",
>   but then puts it into "workstation prices".  Once your in that
>   range, then the question is, "Why dont we just buy a workstation?"
>
>   Huh? You lost me somewhere.  A suitably equipped Amiga meets any
>definition of a workstation I've ever heard, including some that rule
>out 90% of the workstations in use today.

The term "workstation performance levels" came from something that Dave H said.
I took it to mean "performance similar to the current workstation lineup of 
SPARCS/RISC/etc machines"-- about 3-5 times the performance of the current
A3000UX.  

Therefore, when I said what is quoted above, It was refering to the cost of
adding a 040 board, a 34010 board, a 16-17" monitor, and a few other bells and
whistles.   

Otherwise, in the practical sense of the work, the A3000UX IS a workstation.

>   And as I pointed out above, so has Commodore.  I don't think Dave
>can "announce" things which Commodore has announce only in Europe, but
>I don't work for Commodore.  Note that the 3000T has the same
>motherboard but more slots.

Not bad, I have to see this thing...  I am waiting for the day that Apple comes
out with a Tower Mac.  Now I'm not a Mac fan (they are the ones that ported
UNIX SystemVr2!)  but they know how to make a sharp looking case.  Too bad
they are not black...

>   Again, huh? If you want Ethernet speeds, use Ethernet.  There were
>problems with the AmigaDOS serial port driver which made it tough to
>go 19200 baud, but I believe both that that is fixed, and that the
>multiport serial cards can run 38400 baud with no problem.  Again,
>that's AmigaDOS, but I have never seen the UART's as the limiting
>factor.

I seriously doubt the A3000UX's ability to do 38400 baud, and 19200 is
questionable (this is under UNIX, ya know).  The limiting factor here is
the ability of the OS to grab a character from the UART before the next
character comes in.  If the OS cannot get it in time (ie, intterupt latency)
then that character is lost.  A buffered UART (like the 16550) has a 16 
byte buffer than can capture several characters during the intterupt latency
period.  UNIX can be quite bad about servicing intterupts of this nature.  

In addition, a buffered UART can decrease the overhead in servicing a serial
port-- since it can use one intterupt for every 10 or so ccharacters rather
than an intterupt for each character.  On a 386 system running ONE port at
a sustained 38400 baud (output only, on a normal UART) the system load
would be near 30%.  When a buffered UART is used, the load drops to below 10%.

Keep in mind that 38400 baud is a realistic rate on a UNIX system-- where 
high speed modems are the norm.  Todays 9600 baud modems have V.42bis that
can do 4:1 compression on text-- requiring that you lock the modem's baud rate
at 38400 baud...  Then you throw V.42bis with V.32bis and you have a bigger
nightmare...


>   See above.  I don't think Commodore is trying to crack the
>"current" 10 MPIS+ workstation market with the 3000UX, but to play in
>the field that the current big boys are leaving behind.  In this
>market I suspect that price (as long as it is less than $10000) is
>less of a factor than convenience, support, and the ability to "plug
>and play."  If you look at what Commodore is doing, they seem to think
>so too.

For the A3000UX to go anywhere they need to be cheaper than the current 
lineup of $7000-9000 UNIX Workstations.  Cheaper than $5000 is a good place
to be (please, none of that educational pricing thing).  Unless they can do
that, then they are in the price range of the "10MIPS+ workstation market".
(note: this is based on the $7000 tag on the A3000UXD)

The plug and play ability is not so much of a factor in UNIX.  Since C=
needs to write UNIX drivers for everything.  What doesnt need a driver is
probably also useable on other workstations also.  In addition, there is a
lot of third party workstation "devices" available-- they are just not 
advertised a lot in the mainstream computer magazines.

The bottom line is:  Why should I buy a A3000UX?

	Cost?	Not unless the price goes below $5000 (i'm talking UXD here).

	Proformance?	Not when compard to machines in it's price range 
			(ie. $5000-$9000).

	Availability?	The dealers here in town cant even get a demo!

	Spiffy Features?	It runs AmigaDOS :)

	C= Loyalty?	Perhapse for some folks.

	AT&T Conformance?	Like we are not used to 20 types of UNIX's?


>					Robert I. Eachus

					- David K

-- 
David Kessner - david at kessner.denver.co.us            | do {
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