A/UX on new 030 notebooks?

[William Roberts;]

In <64631 at bbn.BBN.COM> jjd at bbn.com (James J Dempsey) writes:

>If Apple were to introduce a 68030 based portable, assuming one
>had a sufficiently large disk (perhaps external), would it be safe for
>one to assume that A/UX would most likely run on such a computer?

It will be illuminating to find out, won't it...
Looking at the recent record of Apple CPUs, software and peripherals, it seems 
that A/UX wasn't important enough to bother supporting it on the existing Mac 
portable, or on the LC, it wasn't important enough to alpha test HyperCard 2.0 
with, it wasn't important enough to bother having the Personal LaserWriter 
work with it (alas, SCSI problems).

Things evidently are changing: the new style Ethernet cards even come with an 
A/UX driver when you don't ask for one. I guess the big question for Apple 
would be "is it worth the extra cost to have an A/UX capable machine?" - who 
is going to buy an Apple portable to run A/UX that wouldn't buy an Apple 
portable which didn't run A?UX? Will the UNIX laptop marketplace be completely 
swamped by the SPARC-based machines?

If it we me, I'd have to say that A/UX on an Apple portable isn't worth 
raising the price for. If there is a low power 68030 which gives decent 
battery life in a small lightweight unit then fine, lets run A/UX on it. If 
the battery life is significantly longer for a 68020 machine then it's a much 
tougher question.
--

% William Roberts                 Internet:  liam at dcs.qmw.ac.uk
% Queen Mary & Westfield College  UUCP:      liam at qmw-dcs.UUCP
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