Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!uupsi!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!
jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!jjfeiler
From: jjfei...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (John Jay Feiler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: A3000UX info from COMDEX
Message-ID: <1990Nov26.211046.14725@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 90 21:10:46 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 26
Posted: Mon Nov 26 22:10:46 1990
I was at COMDEX on wednesday, a week and a half or so ago, but have been away
from me newsfeed since just after that, so I'm only just now posting about
what I saw and heard.
From the official glossy flyer I got from the commodore booth:
2 systems available NOW to developers and educational purchasers.
3000UX-100, and the 3000UX-200.
UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. Full man pages.
3000UX-100: 4MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 100MB Quantum HD 19ms access.
3000UX-200: 8MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 200MB " " " " "
Word of mouth from the CBM rep. I talked to:
Price of $3999 for the 3000UX-100, $4999 for the -200, the 3000UX-200
also includes an ethernet board bundled with. Bundles also include
the 1950 monitor. These prices were confirmed by my local dealer.
Official commercial release at UNIFORUM (feb???)
A2410 video card out in 1Q91. (probably)
I also asked about CDTV. He said release in about 2Q91, and a CD-ROM drive
for the Amiga line will be released at the same time.
John Feiler
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!uupsi!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!
gatech!uflorida!mathlab!Math.UFL.EDU!adin
From: a...@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: A3000UX competition
Keywords: Unix A3000 A3000UX NeXT
Message-ID: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>
Date: 30 Nov 90 19:54:07 GMT
Sender: r...@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU
Reply-To: a...@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs)
Organization: University of Florida Dept of Mathematics
Lines: 111
Posted: Fri Nov 30 20:54:07 1990
>>UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look. Full man pages.
>>3000UX-100: 4MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 100MB Quantum HD 19ms access.
>>3000UX-200: 8MB fast scram, 1MB chip, 2UNIX SVR4 license, X-Windows, Open Look.
>>Full man pages.
>>Price of $3999 for the 3000UX-100, $4999 for the -200, the 3000UX-200
>>also includes an ethernet board bundled with. Bundles also include
>>the 1950 monitor. These prices were confirmed by my local dealer.
>>Official commercial release at UNIFORUM (feb???)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The local Unix & NeXT Guru's reply to my forward him the previous msg.--
(Brian is the local Guru, Randy is the local sysadmin.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Brian Bartholomew <b...@math.ufl.edu>
To: Adin Burroughs <a...@math.ufl.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 10:55:06 EST
Hmmm. Ballpark competitive, maybe. Here are some comments about
the competition you are facing:
Commodore offering:
I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is
supposed to be signifigantly better.
If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of
it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT
distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time
porting it.
I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra.
At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the
networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. SCO
did this shit with the XENIX on the PC's, too.
4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's
are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry
about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just
how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here?
What kind of monitor is that? How big is it? Can it compete in
resolution with a Sun? A NeXT? I would prefer high-res mono to
low-res color, as that allows me much more text on the screen.
Anything less than 300 meg is too small, add $500 for a bigger drive.
Price: $4,999 + $500 = $5,499. Are there educations discounts to cut
this any?
NeXT offering:
8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better
video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled
software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for
bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why
would you want to?
Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied.
Sun offering:
SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today.
You've seen it and worked with it. It is probably faster than either
of the other platforms. $3,500 for unit + complete SunOS. Add $750
for drive. Get X from Randy.
Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts
applied.
-----
Brian's opinionated conclusion:
I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and
Ardent's too. I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a
workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet. Try one more
time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS. In another
iteration, this will be a reasonable package for someone who wants
Amiga backward-compatibility bad enough to pay for it. DO YOU really
want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga
things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That
is the choice I am making with my PC. I am keeping my PC, but getting
a separate workstation. NOT getting a 386 or 486 PC.
Brian
-Adin
Any answers? Comments?
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| .Sig 1.1 under construction..... U of F, Gainesville, FL |
| a...@math.ufl.edu |
| a...@beach.cis.ufl.edu |
| Iceman@maple%decnet.circa.ufl.edu |
| 'Tis better to have loved and |
| lost than to have never loved at all........ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!huebner
From: hueb...@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Keywords: Unix A3000 A3000UX NeXT
Message-ID: <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Date: 30 Nov 90 22:37:49 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>
Sender: n...@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: hueb...@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner)
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation
Lines: 151
Posted: Fri Nov 30 23:37:49 1990
I've remained stoic about this continually invading thread by my patience
is wearing thin. My analyst suggested a scathing reply would cleanse
my psyche :)
In article <4...@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, a...@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin
Burroughs) writes:
|> The local Unix & NeXT Guru's reply to my forward him the previous msg.--
|> (Brian is the local Guru, Randy is the local sysadmin.)
Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek"
|> Hmmm. Ballpark competitive, maybe. Here are some comments about
|> the competition you are facing:
|>
|>
|> Commodore offering:
|>
|> I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is
|> supposed to be signifigantly better.
Not to mention Standard. I mean, the whole idea behind SVR4 is to bring
the AT&T and BSD deviations back together. It is really the only option,
I feel.
|> If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of
|> it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT
|> distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time
|> porting it.
Of course, since Open Look is leading the pack in terms of available
applications, I don't think this would be too wise.
|> I would worry about a vendor that called the full man pages an extra.
|> At that rate, the C compiler (and the text processing tools, and the
|> networking software, and the networking hardware) is an extra. SCO
|> did this shit with the XENIX on the PC's, too.
I don't know what this means. Every A3000UX setup I've seen or have
seen "advertised" includes these things. I think they're just trying
to be specific about what is included. They way MS-DOS platforms are
being sold these day (ie: no parallel port, etc) it pays to be specific!
|> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's
|> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry
|> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just
|> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here?
Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the
user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best
price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay
more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100)
Also the A3000 has a fast hard disk (especially when compared to the
dreaded floptical drive) which make an excellent swap space. (Does the
A3000UX use DMA? I'm not sure of this one)
|>
|> What kind of monitor is that? How big is it? Can it compete in
|> resolution with a Sun? A NeXT? I would prefer high-res mono to
|> low-res color, as that allows me much more text on the screen.
Recent specs released regarding this A2410 would certainly indicate
that it can compete. 1024 x 1024 x 256 is definitely workstation quality.
Granted, this is at additonal cost (Better multisync monitor + card price)
but I expect it to be less expensive than the NeXT color option. Of course
hires mono is available from both Commodore and some other company (Viking?)
Not sure how Unix/X support these, but it would seem logical the the
Commodore product at least was fully supported.
|> Anything less than 300 meg is too small, add $500 for a bigger drive.
If you sink another $500 into the 200 Meg price you would have about
400-500 Meg online. Who needs this much? Maybe a developer but....
|> Price: $4,999 + $500 = $5,499. Are there educations discounts to cut
|> this any?
Don't know yet. Commodore has offered Edu discounts on everything else.
I'm not sure if $4,999 is correct price or not. Commdore won't say and
no one know where Byte got their numbers (except Byte)
|>
|> NeXT offering:
|>
|> 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better
|> video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled
|> software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for
What so special about the bundled software? Half of it is PD or developer-
oriented stuff (so is every NeXT buyer a NeXT developer?) and the other
stuff is only useful to maybe 10% of people who use computers (Mathematica
is strictly for math mutants, sorry). Improv sounds nice, but do I really
need a NeXT to run a spreadsheet? And to get that, I have to plop down good
money within 1 month. I certainly won't see my machine until 1991.
Does NeXT still include the on-line dictionary and encyclopedia? I always
thought this was sort of "filler" - to make it look like the NeXT had gobs
of software, throw in some really BIG databases.
|> bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why
|> would you want to?
Because X is a supported standard and there are about 3 times as many
Open Look applications as NeXT (source - Application Watch from
PC Week Mag)
|> Brian's opinionated conclusion:
|>
|> I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and
|> Ardent's too. I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a
|> workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet. Try one more
|> time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS. In another
|> iteration, this will be a reasonable package for someone who wants
|> Amiga backward-compatibility bad enough to pay for it. DO YOU really
|> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga
|> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That
I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to
offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video
areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore.
|> is the choice I am making with my PC. I am keeping my PC, but getting
|> a separate workstation. NOT getting a 386 or 486 PC.
Equally opinionated reply:
Your arguments of non-BSDness and Broken-up OS completely fall apart. I
It sounds like (re:Unix SVR4) that you are criticizing a system you haven't
even seen in operation yet. Also, I
haven't heard of any A3000UX system sold or desribed that didn't include
the entire SVR4 stuff including man pages and gnu stuff (and it has "hack") :)
Their 4 Megabyte entry level system is great for people who don't need
that much memory to begin with.
I also like that the Amiga can run standard Unix binaries. However, I had
heard next user have had good luck in converting a.out to MACH, so perhaps
this doesn't detract from the NeXT. It certainly doesn't help!
But mainly, I've been waiting too long for the Amiga to start getting the kind
of good software and support that finally seems to be arriving. I certainly
don't want to jump ship now. The NeXT has very few NeXT-specific applications
available and I don't think this will be improving too quickly. It sounds
as if all the third-party support gained up to this point was purchased
rather than earned.
Oh well, enough of this. I can now put this thread in my kill file with
a clear conscience.
----
Robert Huebner hueb...@aerospace.aero.org
The Aerospace Corporation, Computer Security Dept.
"Take it to alt.religion.computers!"
----
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!uupsi!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!
sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!flounder.cis.ohio-state.edu!mitroo
From: mit...@flounder.cis.ohio-state.edu (varun mitroo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Keywords: Unix A3000 A3000UX NeXT
Message-ID: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 1 Dec 90 21:42:53 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Sender: n...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: varun mitroo <mit...@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 133
Posted: Sat Dec 1 22:42:53 1990
In a previous article, Robert Huebner writes a series of idiotic comments:
> Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek"
He sound like a geek himself.
> |> If you don't like Open Look (from what I have seen Randy show me of
> |> it, I don't much), you can replace it with parts of the MIT
> |> distribution. You can get X stuff from Randy, but you will spend time
> |> porting it.
> Of course, since Open Look is leading the pack in terms of available
> applications, I don't think this would be too wise.
Of course. I am writing this on a SPARCstation SLC - one of hundreds here
at OSU that are set up with X-Windows or NeWS. All the instructional
computer science classes are using X-Windows, including the graphics classes.
Of course, since we are not using Open Look, we are all hopelessly trailing
the pack, as Mr. Huebner wisely states. Of course.
> |> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's
> |> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry
> |> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just
> |> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here?
> Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the
> user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best
> price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay
> more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100)
4 megs is obviously not enough. Naturally, everybody is going to want to
go through the trouble of getting mail-order memory. Why doesn't Commodore
just sell it with enough memory without putting a mark-up on the memory?
> Also the A3000 has a fast hard disk (especially when compared to the
> dreaded floptical drive) which make an excellent swap space. (Does the
What does he have against NeXT? Almost nobody uses a NeXT optical drive for
swap space. They all have hard drives. The optical drive is not slow, esp.
when compared to a floppy. Running a NeXT with only an optical drive is
very possible. I have a cube with 12megs ram and only optical, and I have
far better performance than my Amiga with 2 floppies.
> Recent specs released regarding this A2410 would certainly indicate
> that it can compete. 1024 x 1024 x 256 is definitely workstation quality.
> Granted, this is at additonal cost (Better multisync monitor + card price)
> but I expect it to be less expensive than the NeXT color option. Of course
Again, what does he have against NeXT? You can get a NeXTstation color with
68040, 12 megs RAM, 105 meg hard drive, 16" sony color monitor for $5700 edu.
(due in early 1991). If amiga is selling their cheapest '030 Unix system for
$4000, how can you possibly get a ~$2000 color monitor (such as the one with
NeXT) and the A2410 card and still be cheaper? (Amiga has 8 megs RAM less and
no ethernet)
> |> 8 Meg + 105 Meg NeXTStation. You've heard me yap about it. Better
> |> video than either of these (resolution-wise). 200 Megs of bundled
> |> software that neither of these can touch. $3,500. Add $750 for
> What so special about the bundled software? Half of it is PD or developer-
> oriented stuff (so is every NeXT buyer a NeXT developer?) and the other
The bundled software includes a word processor, mathematica, a librarian
program, a good text editor, a dictionary, a thesaurus, an excellent
programming environment (Interface Builder), and lots of really interesting
developer software such as a ray tracer. A complete version of Tex, emacs,
vi, etc. is also included. Version 1.0 also includes lisp and a database
program (Sybase) that is unbundled in 2.0.
> stuff is only useful to maybe 10% of people who use computers (Mathematica
> is strictly for math mutants, sorry). Improv sounds nice, but do I really
> need a NeXT to run a spreadsheet? And to get that, I have to plop down good
> money within 1 month. I certainly won't see my machine until 1991.
> Does NeXT still include the on-line dictionary and encyclopedia? I always
> thought this was sort of "filler" - to make it look like the NeXT had gobs
> of software, throw in some really BIG databases.
What's Mr. Huebner's problem? Mathematica is really incredible (it takes some
time to understand it, though). They are using Mathematica on macintoshes
in the math department here. He probably is going to rave about Maple when
it's released for the Amiga. Having the dictionary always available is very
useful. The librarian program can access any kind of database. In addition
to having the unix man pages and the NeXT manuals, NeXT also includes the
entire works of Sheakespeare. If you can, try using a NeXT. See how quickly
it finds the word "gleek" in every Shakespeare work. This is more an example
of what can be done with the librarian program than actually of much use.
But imagine what could be done if law books or medical references were used.
Including Shakespeare is an extra with the software - you can remove it if
you want (I did with mine).
> |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga
> |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That
- That's what I'm doing -
> I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to
> offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video
> areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore.
Mr. Huebner obviously has no need to run unix. He likes AmigaDos, and is
sore that when Commodore is trying to market the amiga as a unix machine,
it is outmatched by workstations such as SUNs and NeXTs in terms of price
and performance.
> Their 4 Megabyte entry level system is great for people who don't need
> that much memory to begin with.
This point had already been discussed by Mr. Huebner earlier. 4 megs is not
enough to run X-Windows. Of course, Mr. Huebner has no need for X-windows
and he won't have a need for more than 4 megs. More than enough for AmigaDos,
though.
> But mainly, I've been waiting too long for the Amiga to start getting the kind
> of good software and support that finally seems to be arriving. I certainly
> don't want to jump ship now. The NeXT has very few NeXT-specific applications
> available and I don't think this will be improving too quickly. It sounds
> as if all the third-party support gained up to this point was purchased
> rather than earned.
This is Mr. Huebner's problem, and it's one that is understandable. It has
been far too long overdue that the Amiga get the respect that is due. Amiga
users can get very defensive and childish about their computers because of
this.
Mr Huebner, Try being objective. Suns are very good computers. They are fast,
networkable, and are good at running windowed unix. The NeXT is similar,
but not as fast, and it is geared more towards a personal computer market.
There are impressive claims about the new NeXTstations, but that remains to
be seen.
Before making claims about computers, try sitting down at one and really
seeing what can be done with it. Sit down with Improv on a NeXT. I think
you might be impressed - I was. When Amiga officially releases a unix
amiga, we'll see. Maybe commodore has something in store to match the strong
bids from other companies in the very competitive workstation market. I hope
so.
Varun Mitroo
mit...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!hagbard!eru!bloom-beacon!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!
apple!usc!wuarchive!rex!ames!vsi1!zorch!xanthian
From: xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Keywords: think c.s.a.advocacy!
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 2 Dec 90 15:36:12 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com>
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 36
Posted: Sun Dec 2 16:36:12 1990
1) We've seen a lot of SYSV4 versus BSD bashing here. Can anybody
actually say with some authority what you give away in going from BSD to
SYSV4, rather than just the known-to-be-false statement that SYSV4 is a
superset of BSD? What will be the effect at the user/developer interface
level?
2) _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent that
AT&T finally had to bow to the inevitable (as the workstation market
"all" went BSD) and mutate SYSV4 into a BSD clone to be marketable, was
the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences to
the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of free
user community programming effort could be brought to bear on improving
BSD through several extremely impressive upgrades while AT&T fell
further and further behind.
Now that AT&T has wrested control of the future of Unix back from the
user community, are we going to see the same dreary game of
home-mortgage-sized source licence fees and vendor-only code
improvements retarding the future of Unix, or has the lesson of open
software systems finally been learned, so that cost-of-media source code
licenses and ready adoption/sharing of user written OS improvements will
keep the future of Unix bright?
3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user
community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore
learned the BSD lesson yet?
4) BSD's other great advantage was _hundreds_ of utilities, compilers,
whatnot bundled with the (cheap, cheap, cheap) OS. Are we getting the
"real" Unix with AmigaUX, or just a stripped down file server and a
chance to bleed to death $100 at a time buying the utilities that make
everyday BSD use the most productive software development environment in
existance?
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanth...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanth...@well.sf.ca.us>
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!sdcc6!sdbio2!cleland
From: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Keywords: Unix A3000 A3000UX NeXT
Message-ID: <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 09:18:52 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: n...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Reply-To: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 73
Posted: Mon Dec 3 10:18:52 1990
Nntp-Posting-Host: sdbio2.ucsd.edu
In article <86...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> varun mitroo <mit...@cis.ohio-state.edu>
writes:
>In a previous article, Robert Huebner writes a series of idiotic comments:
>
>> Of course, we all know "NeXT Guru" is synonymous with "Computer Geek"
>
>He sound like a geek himself.
>
Spare us...
>> |> 4 Meg of core is a rediculous on a workstation now, just as the 3/50's
>> |> are. However, you can get cheap third-party memory. I would worry
>> |> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just
>> |> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here?
>> Commodore's philosophy has always been to sell the minimum and let the
>> user upgraade. I'd rather purchase it with 4Meg so I can get the best
>> price on the memory. If the memory comes installed you're sure to pay
>> more than market value (look at the recent debate re:A3000-25/50 and 25/100)
>
>4 megs is obviously not enough. Naturally, everybody is going to want to
>go through the trouble of getting mail-order memory. Why doesn't Commodore
>just sell it with enough memory without putting a mark-up on the memory?
>
This argument is too ridiculous. I'm sure that whomever you buy
your Amiga 3000UX from will be happy to put as much memory in it
as you like.
>
>> |> want it that bad? Instead of (a) keeping your Amiga to do Amiga
>> |> things, and (b) getting a workstation to do workstation things? That
> - That's what I'm doing -
>> I wouldn't call it backward compatability. I think AmigaDOS has more to
>> offer than most UNIX/X applications. Especially in graphics and video
>> areas. A machine that only runs X-Windows/UNIX would be a real bore.
>
>Mr. Huebner obviously has no need to run unix. He likes AmigaDos, and is
>sore that when Commodore is trying to market the amiga as a unix machine,
>it is outmatched by workstations such as SUNs and NeXTs in terms of price
>and performance.
>
Actually, the 3000UX outperforms NeXTs running the same chip.
I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas
run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the
near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated
GUI. I have never seen Open Look to compare it to NeXTStep,
though as a workstation GUI I doubt it puts so much effort into
visual impressiveness as NeXTStep. If it's an improvement over
SunView it'll be pretty good.
I have to agree that one ought to use workstations to do
workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine
workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced
(quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT,
outclassed by high-end SPARCstations.
I do like the selection of software that comes with
NeXTstations. I would worry a bit that more software might be
slow in coming, as NeXT more or less purchased most of those
ports. The company is innovative enough that I doubt that this
will be a crippling problem, however.
>
> Varun Mitroo
> mit...@cis.ohio-state.edu
Thom Cleland
tclel...@ucsd.edu
--
----
Thom Cleland "It is easier
tclel...@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness
Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!hercules!
fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!thad
From: t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <36488@cup.portal.com>
Date: 3 Dec 90 07:17:08 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 95
Posted: Mon Dec 3 08:17:08 1990
xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
in <1990Dec2.153612.28...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> writes:
[...]
{numerous comments praising BSD and condemning SysV}
And his comment:
_The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was
the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences
to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of
free user community programming effort ...
That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am from the
"school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, and I've had mixed
emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some time.
One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real"
world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable
features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()"
at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work
the same at site nematode.com.
One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to
restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific
features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and
feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use.
As UNIX is becoming "essentially" a standard, it MUST conform to the other
vendors' ports. This follows the reasoning behind the Application Binary
Interface (the UNIX "shrink wrap software" compatibilty) formulated by very
seasoned and capable persons.
Everything I've wanted in SysV is in SVR4, and it appears that everything
from 4.3BSD is in there too: file systems, networking, etc etc etc.
Kent continues:
3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user
community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore
learned the BSD lesson yet?
So? Programs I've written which worked under pre-1.0 AmigaDOS are still
working under the latest OS. What's your point?
And finally, he says:
... the utilities that make everyday BSD use the most productive
software development environment in existance?
Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc? I just had to buy a source
license from Aspen Scientific for their "curses" package (SVR3.2 compatible)
just so my programs WOULD have the same "look and feel" under BSD, A/UX, and
VAX/VMS as they do under SysV; the BSD, A/UX and VAX/VMS curses are garbage,
plain and simple. I've thrashed THIS issue out in comp.sys.att, comp.unix.*,
and several other newsgroups. Guy Harris' only comment about my postings and
other info concerned A/UX (and if you don't know who Guy Harris is, then you
don't know your UNIX history; you can look him up at either auspex!guy or in
"The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System").
And don't talk to me about X; all my application needed was tiled and over-
lapping pop-up fancy-line-border windows, menus and "forms" along with various
text and character video attributes (and now color) and cursor-key, mouse and
keypad user input WITHOUT the overhead of X, especially since most "real world"
business customers do NOT have X-terminals and may be calling in at 2400 to
9600 baud on serial lines. The application couldn't be done under BSD without
writing my OWN graphics library (or buying the Aspen one), since BSD doesn't
provide those features BUT SVR3 and SVR4 do.
Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system, and are
just parroting the statements of others without having had the opportunity
to form your OWN opinions. This is not meant as an insult or an attack, just
an observation based on your comments.
For MANY years I thought *ALL* UNIX systems were garbage because I was
listening to others whose opinions I respected ... until I had the opportunity
to buy my own system and actually LEARN what UNIX is all about (all versions);
I now own, personally, 7 UNIX boxes and have many others available to me
because it wasn't until I could SEE and USE UNIX that I realized how really
good it is for the type of things I and my clients need to do. And that's why
I also formed the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group: to help spread "The
WORD!" :-)
My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character filename
limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with SVR4 you just bring
up the BSD FFS and no sweat.
If you want some SVR4 systems to play with, there are several opportunities
available besides the one listed in the net-posting re: A3000 UNIX; many of
them are '486-based, but some 68040-based ones should be available VERY soon
(assuming I haven't been fed some marketing hype).
Thad Floryan [ t...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!wuarchive!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 90 00:05:07 GMT
References: <36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 20
Posted: Tue Dec 4 01:05:07 1990
In article <36...@cup.portal.com> t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
> Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
> MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
> Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
> line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc?
Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue.
BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert:
il. Line delete: dl. There's no color support, but there also aren't two
color terminals in a thousand. And you can pretty much standardize the
name for a new feature by calling up Berkeley and asking for it.
> Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system,
I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a
nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed
BSD failings.
---Dan
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!news.funet.fi!hydra!hylka!jalkio
From: jal...@cc.helsinki.fi
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi>
Date: 4 Dec 90 01:04:28 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 38
Posted: Tue Dec 4 02:04:28 1990
In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>>
> Actually, the 3000UX outperforms NeXTs running the same chip.
How interesting. So is the 3000UX even out yet? I suppose it will have a
68030. Well, ALL the NeXTs currently in production have the 68040. And
the old NeXT's are being upgraded. And the NeXTstations and the new
Cubes are out now (you have to wait a bit until you get the machine
though, due to 68040 processor delays). And I think we have been
comparing the 300UX to the NeXTstation.
> I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas
> run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the
> near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated
"Stantard UNIX"?!?!? There are 2 main camps on Unix. The other is BSD
and the other AT&T. Both are quite common. Well, NeXT has adopted a
special branch of BSD - Mach - but it is because Mach is the fastest
version (especially for I/O) around (as far as I know) and it can handle
multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think
that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong.
> workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine
> workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced
> (quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT,
> outclassed by high-end SPARCstations.
I still don't get how you can say that 3000UX is comparable to NeXT. It
is same as comparing a 486 to a 386 (or even worse since NeXT has the
DSP). Only thing that IS comparable in these two machines is the price.
Jouni Alkio
- I had about $3000 to spend
- I looked at A3000 and Atari TT
- And 386/486
- And MAC IIsi
- ... but I will get a NeXT.
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!portal!
cup.portal.com!thad
From: t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <36537@cup.portal.com>
Date: 4 Dec 90 12:22:45 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 155
Posted: Tue Dec 4 13:22:45 1990
In <24221:Dec400:05:0...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan
Bernstein) writes some comments which I'll address in a moment. But first I
assert this is neither the TIME (too late) nor the PLACE (wrong newsgroup) for
OS wars (and how DID this thread get cross-posted to alt.religion.computers?)
so I'll be brief and hopefully succinct, and try to keep this interesting.
First a background summary to put the remainder of this post into perspective:
In October I discovered a severe deficiency with BSD curses compared to SysV's
curses, and I instigated much discussion in comp.sys.att, unix-pc.general,
comp.unix.questions, comp.unix.programmer, and comp.unix.aux in this regards.
I followed up ALL the leads, read ALL the docs, and discovered a lot. Among
the material I studied are included the sources of the latest 4.3BSD "Tahoe"
curses library, 4.3BSD termcap, the pertinent SVR3 books (SVR3.2 Programmer's
Reference Manual and SVR3.2 Programmer's Guide, Vol. II), the O'Reilly books
("termcap & terminfo" (Sept.1990 edition) and "Programming with curses"), and
a large number of other curses-related documents, and even email with Berny
Goodheart (r...@tndsyd.oz.au (0000-Berny Goodheart(0000))) who's the author of
the JUST-published "UNIX CURSES EXPLAINED", Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0 13 931957 3.
I've checked the AT&T Toolchest, and was finally referred to Vaughn Vernon of
Aspen Scientific for a source license to their SVR3.2-compatible "curses" due
to the deficiencies of BSD curses. I even keep the BSD curses' source online
so I can check and verify comments I make in these regards:
CLI6> ls -l sys6b:*bsd4.3*
----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:08:30 90 45303 libcurses-bsd4.3.tar.Z
----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:11:49 223 112593 window-bsd4.3.tar.Z
Dirs:0 Files:2 Blocks:313 Bytes:157896
Now for Dan's response to my post:
>In article <36...@cup.portal.com> t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>> Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
>> MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
>> Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
>> line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc?
>
>Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue.
>
>BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert:
>il. Line delete: dl. There's no color support, but there also aren't two
>color terminals in a thousand. And you can pretty much standardize the
>name for a new feature by calling up Berkeley and asking for it.
>
>> Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system,
>
>I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a
>nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed
>BSD failings.
At first I was going to dismiss Dan's comments as just some more BSD-babble
parroting the BSD party line opinions and conveniently omitting any fact, BUT
I've seen this same kind of BSD-response sooo often I've been wondering "Why?"
for over 4 years.
To date, I have never seen any compelling facts that support the contention
"BSD is better than SysV". (Bear with me, see below)
And please limit any comments to the kernel, system libraries, and "devices";
EVERYTHING else is just a program(s) which can be ported to any system of
one's choosing as I did to put the BSD networking software on most my SysV
systems because I was unhappy with the stock WIN 3B/TCP stuff.
Regarding termcap, ALL the SysV-like ports to which I have access support BOTH
termcap and terminfo (and the corresponding libraries) for "compatibility"
reasons (this includes stuff from AT&T, HP, and others).
I stated the SysV 14-char filename limit has been a hassle, but SVR4 solves
that problem. Networking, sockets, BSD FFS, etc all exist in SVR4. What's
left that I'm not seeing? Dunno (at least from the application level).
Dan's comment: "And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature
by calling up Berkeley and asking for it." SHEESH! That's just the nature of
the PROBLEM with which I opened my original post! Government and business
clients will NOT tolerate eleventy-seven different "versions". AT&T's high
license fees are designed to prevent "random", non-standard hacks which create
a plethora of "proprietary" features at (only) some sites; the goal is to
have, from a business point of view, a stable platform upon which one can run
the $$$ software one buys, and ONLY with that stability will UNIX become more
accepted and widespread.
Dan's OWN examples belie his arguments, and illustrates the PROBLEM with BSD
(the random user hacks not generally found with SysV). To wit:
He states: "BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line
insert: >il. Line delete: dl."
Maybe on *HIS* "BSD" system, but not on mine. For example: right out of the
4.3BSD curses' source code, in tty_cr.c, we find the pattern strings:
namp = "ambsdadbeohchzinmimsncnsosulxbxnxtxsxx";
namp = "albcbtcdceclcmcrcsdcdldmdoedeik0k1k2k3k4k5k6k7k8k9hoicimip\
kdkekhklkrkskullmandnlpcrcscsesfsosrtatetiucueupusvbvsveALDLUPDOLERI";
and from 4.3BSD's curses.h we find (supporting the above):
extern bool AM, BS, CA, DA, DB, EO, HC, HZ, IN, MI, MS, NC, NS, OS, UL,
XB, XN, XT, XS, XX;
extern char *AL, *BC, *BT, *CD, *CE, *CL, *CM, *CR, *CS, *DC, *DL,
*DM, *DO, *ED, *EI, *K0, *K1, *K2, *K3, *K4, *K5, *K6,
*K7, *K8, *K9, *HO, *IC, *IM, *IP, *KD, *KE, *KH, *KL,
*KR, *KS, *KU, *LL, *MA, *ND, *NL, *RC, *SC, *SE, *SF,
*SO, *SR, *TA, *TE, *TI, *UC, *UE, *UP, *US, *VB, *VS,
*VE, *AL_PARM, *DL_PARM, *UP_PARM, *DOWN_PARM,
*LEFT_PARM, *RIGHT_PARM;
And in the 4.3BSD docs we find:
alternate char set: not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on
page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo"
region scrolling: "cs" to set the region line range, and "sf", "sr", "SF"
and "SR" to manipulate the region
line insert: "AL" (not Dan's "il" (not in the source))
line delete: "DL" and "dl" (which differ; not just Dan's "dl")
color: not in 4.3BSD
Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted
to that available with SysV. Even AT&T conceded the realities of the "real
world" by supporting DEC's "vt100" mode and alternate character sets for SVR3
curses; due to sheer numbers of vt100-like terminals out there it's become a
de facto standard and cannot be ignored.
As for "There's no color support, but there also aren't two color terminals in
a thousand.", that's a suprising comment to make in a newsgroup where one can
read about many Amiga-hosted terminal emulators. :-)
In "my" world, clients do NOT have X-terminals but they will have monochrome
and color VT100-like, VT240, and other ASCII-graphic devices for which a
SVR3.2 curses is perfectly suited. These clients are the BigGuys who process
your checks, medical records, tax returns, military procurement, and &tc.
They're switching to UNIX for its networking, interconnectivity and other neat
features including stability and freedom from proprietary operating system
"gotchas" as new hardware is necessarily acquired.
I would NEVER denigrate the fine, taxpayer-supported R&D work done at UCB and
at many other places. The BSD networking HAS become the standard. But those
are application-level enhancements for the most part, and even AT&T had to
concede some of the neat goodies of BSD by putting them in SVR4, making them
part of the new standard. Those concessions DIDN'T imply that SysV was a
deficient unusable OS, and many of the BSD-isms and SysV-isms can co-exist on
the same system. I prefer ready availability of sources, but I also have to
look beyond the Ivory Tower to the Real World because that's where my clients
and I operate.
I'm getting long-winded again, but I'm hoping some of these discussions are
proving useful/interesting. At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any
continued discussions of BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I
felt a documented response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments
were a "... complete travesty of the truth ...."
You be the judge. :-)
Thad Floryan [ t...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!
usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!vsi1!zorch!xanthian
From: xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <1990Dec4.110045.13335@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 4 Dec 90 11:00:45 GMT
References: <36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com>
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 133
Posted: Tue Dec 4 12:00:45 1990
t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
> xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> [...]
> {numerous comments praising BSD and condemning SysV}
>And his comment:
> _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was
> the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences
> to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of
> free user community programming effort ...
>That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am from the
>"school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur, and I've had mixed
>emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some time.
>One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real"
>world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable
>features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()"
>at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work
>the same at site nematode.com.
Umm. Thad. All those workstations that let AT&T know they had to
incorporate BSD in SYSV or go out of the computer business weren't
running SYSV, they were running BSD clones. And not because it was
cheaper. You had to pay a BSD license on top of a SYSV license. The
workstation manufacturers didn't pick BSD because it was impossible to
find a standard release; they picked it because it worked better for
their customers doing those customers' applications. BSD's open source
policy meant that user developed software could be ported among
platforms, which meant their customers saw a much more cost effective,
leading edge capability combined hardware and software platform. The
marketplace saw SYSV as junk, and the AT&T platforms running it did so
poorly in the market, AT&T did massive layoffs for the first time in
their history, to make up for the losses.
>One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to
>restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific
>features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and
>feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use.
Gee, I just saw it as corporate greed, bureacratic stupidity, development
incompetence, idea infertility, and hostility to their customer base.
>As UNIX is becoming "essentially" a standard, it MUST conform to the other
>vendors' ports. This follows the reasoning behind the Application Binary
>Interface (the UNIX "shrink wrap software" compatibilty) formulated by very
>seasoned and capable persons.
Naturally, that's why there are two intensely hostile GUI groups -- to make
sure all the platforms conform. That's why POSIX blessed the idiotic 14
character file name limit into the forseeable future. Trust me, nobody's
doing anything out of sweetness and light. AT&T was watching their market
share vanish, and read the handwriting on the wall.
>Everything I've wanted in SysV is in SVR4, and it appears that everything
>from 4.3BSD is in there too: file systems, networking, etc etc etc.
I'm happy for you. Every time I've been stuck on a SYSV system, I felt like
I was trying to work with my hands tied behind my back.
>Kent continues:
> 3) Tripos would have been out of AmigaDOS two years ago if the user
> community had been allowed to participate in the process. Has Commodore
> learned the BSD lesson yet?
>So? Programs I've written which worked under pre-1.0 AmigaDOS are still
>working under the latest OS. What's your point?
That all the third party code is a god-awful mess of BPTR's, casts, and other
idiocy, from trying to conform to Tripos, and that all that could have been
gone long before the OS finally settled out if the free labor had been used.
Where's the win in having software development retarded, and the number of
commercial programs decreased, by forcing the developers to try to learn two
ways of thinking at once? The added complexity of Tripos has probably cut
the available software by 1/3 (wild ass guess).
>And finally, he says:
>
> ... the utilities that make everyday BSD use the most productive
> software development environment in existance?
>Bushwa! As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
>MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
>Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
>line insert/delete, color support, etc etc etc?
I don't do curses programming; pretty interfaces deserve graphics support,
and _any_ curses is an inadequate hack. Nevertheless, BSD curses completely
supports the applications I've seen use it. The methods may be different,
but the results on the screen are the same.
>And don't talk to me about X;
OK, I won't, but in my field, if you can't do it, you're unemployed, as I
am.
>Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system,
Bingo! Could it be that's why I asked for a comparision to find out how
much of BSD I'd be losing? Any gains are gravy.
> and are just parroting the statements of others without having had the
> opportunity to form your OWN opinions.
My opinions of SYSV have been formed on SYSV, but not the newer releases.
The ones I've worked on were just half a step above being a direct insult
to the user. My opinions of open software systems to go along with open
hardware systems are based on common sense and the success of those who
won't take no for an answer and disassemble the code anyway, to find out
just what vendor supplied bug is keeping them from writing the software
miracle that will double hardware sales. BSD is so good that lots of
software houses develop code for completely different machines under BSD
just to have the great _programmers_ development environment available.
I'm under no illusion that _any_ Unix system is friendly to the
non-programming user.
> This is not meant as an insult or an attack, just an observation based
> on your comments.
Taken in that spirit.
>My only REAL gripe with pre-SVR4 systems has been the 14-character filename
>limit ... that has been REALLY a hassle for me. But with SVR4 you just bring
>up the BSD FFS and no sweat.
I rest my case. ;-)
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanth...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanth...@well.sf.ca.us>
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!wuarchive!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <11556:Dec508:53:5890@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 90 08:53:58 GMT
References: <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <36488@cup.portal.com>
<36537@cup.portal.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 39
Posted: Wed Dec 5 09:53:58 1990
In article <36...@cup.portal.com> t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
> Dan's comment: "And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature
> by calling up Berkeley and asking for it." SHEESH! That's just the nature of
> the PROBLEM with which I opened my original post! Government and business
> clients will NOT tolerate eleventy-seven different "versions".
I fail to see your logic. Why does the ability to easily standardize a
feature make for problems? TELNET was originally a MIL-STD protocol, and
it has lots of options. You can pretty much call up the IETF and ask for
another option number. The government uses TELNET all the time. What's
the problem?
> alternate char set: not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on
> page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo"
Perhaps Doug would know when and where as/ae were added.
[ region scrolling is cs, line insert is AL, line delete is DL/dl ]
Sorry for my typos. In any case, the features are there, and they are
used. You stated that BSD doesn't support these features; you are wrong.
> Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted
> to that available with SysV.
What serious deficiency are you talking about? It is impossible for a
program to use color or alternate character sets really well, since
different terminals have different colors and different alternate
characters. Other than that, everything you've claimed missing from BSD
is there.
> At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any
> continued discussions of BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I
> felt a documented response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments
> were a "... complete travesty of the truth ...."
Okay, only a partial travesty of the truth.
---Dan
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!att!
pacbell.com!ucsd!sdcc6!sdbio2!cleland
From: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 90 23:46:54 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi>
Sender: n...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Reply-To: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 74
Posted: Wed Dec 5 00:46:54 1990
Nntp-Posting-Host: sdbio2.ucsd.edu
In article <4136.275af...@cc.helsinki.fi> jal...@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>How interesting. So is the 3000UX even out yet? I suppose it will have a
>68030. Well, ALL the NeXTs currently in production have the 68040. And
>the old NeXT's are being upgraded. And the NeXTstations and the new
>Cubes are out now (you have to wait a bit until you get the machine
>though, due to 68040 processor delays). And I think we have been
>comparing the 300UX to the NeXTstation.
>
>> I suspect Display PostScript has a lot to do with that. Amigas
>> run standard UNIX, if you'll permit me to play person from the
>> near future. NeXTs don't. NeXTs have a phenomenally integrated
>
>"Stantard UNIX"?!?!? There are 2 main camps on Unix. The other is BSD
>and the other AT&T. Both are quite common. Well, NeXT has adopted a
>special branch of BSD - Mach - but it is because Mach is the fastest
>version (especially for I/O) around (as far as I know) and it can handle
>multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think
>that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong.
>
>> workstation things. I also think that the 3000UX will be a fine
>> workstation which will of necessity be competitively priced
>> (quotes vary widely on the release price). Comparable to NeXT,
>> outclassed by high-end SPARCstations.
>
>I still don't get how you can say that 3000UX is comparable to NeXT. It
>is same as comparing a 486 to a 386 (or even worse since NeXT has the
>DSP). Only thing that IS comparable in these two machines is the price.
>
>
Jouni Alkio
For Christ's sake, this is EXASPERATING.
68030 is not 68040. Don't compare platforms running different
chips. It's stupid. The 68040 is finally shipping, both NeXT
and Amiga will have them, the NeXT will probably have them
on the motherboards first, fine.
If you're going to buy a Unix box, you should learn a bit of
Unix information. AT&T, BSD, SunOS, and Xenix are uniting
into one Unix, the new *INDUSTRY STANDARD*, called System V
Release 4. It will be administered by an organization called
Unix International, which has many members. AT&T will be taking
care of some development, I presume, in concert with Berkeley
etc. X Windows and Open Look are a part of this standard.
This is the standard being adhered to by Amiga, by Sun, by AT&T,
and by most everybody. BSD will continue to run on machines
that aren't upgraded, but as an independent development
environment for Unix is to be no more.
IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this
standard. Workstation vendors are. Commodore is joining them.
That is what I mean by industry standard.
It seems you have posted the exact same arguments before.
Please read the responses you will get before repeating them.
There's nothing wrong with NeXTs, indeed there's a great deal
right with them, very innovative. Based on what I've seen,
I will choose a 3000UX 68030 over a cube and a 3000UX 68040
over a slab. I can wait the extra month or two (actually,
I'll have to wait considerably longer :^) ). Why?
I want to be industry standard for maximum productivity
(given that the standard is adequate, which in this case it is),
and I want to spend my bandwidth on applications other than
redrawing the screen.
I'm glad you like your NeXT. Enjoy it, it's a good machine.
--
----
Thom Cleland "It is easier
tclel...@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness
Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!
apollo!rehrauer
From: rehra...@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <4e6afc49.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 5 Dec 90 17:34:00 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
<4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Sender: r...@apollo.HP.COM
Reply-To: rehra...@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Distribution: na
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 13
In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4]
>standard. Workstation vendors are.
I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are.
As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the
best of my knowledge) isn't. Unless/until OSF and UI merge their
product, there still won't be a single industry standard "Unix",
whatever that means.
--
"The goons are riding motorcycles, but WE'VE | (Steve) rehra...@apollo.hp.com
got a whole big metal car! This will be like | The Apollo Systems Division of
stepping on ants..." -- Freelance Police | Hewlett-Packard
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!auspex!guy
From: g...@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Keywords: think c.s.a.advocacy!
Message-ID: <4735@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 8 Dec 90 20:52:51 GMT
References: <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu> <36449@cup.portal.com>
<1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 45
Posted: Sat Dec 8 21:52:51 1990
>2) _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent that
>AT&T finally had to bow to the inevitable (as the workstation market
>"all" went BSD) and mutate SYSV4 into a BSD clone to be marketable, was
>the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences to
>the user/programmer community,
Well, BSD source licenses required AT&T source licenses, so the cost of
a BSD source license >= the cost of an AT&T source license. Given that
it required a "32V or better" license, those folks with 32V licenses
only paid the price of a 32V license, rather than the price of an S5
license, but I don't think AT&T's sold 32V licenses for a while.
*Commercial* sites didn't get licenses that I'd call "almost free",
although university sites did.
>so that the tremendous resource of free user community programming
>effort could be brought to bear on improving BSD through several
>extremely impressive upgrades while AT&T fell further and further
>behind.
I suspect it can be attributed more to the fact that, when VAXes started
becoming UNIX platforms, the VAX UNIXes from AT&T were far elss
functional - especially for big virtual-memory jobs (the reason why
Berkeley put demand paging into BSD) - than the Berkeley versions. This
"seeded" the VAX UNIX community with BSD - especially those members of
the community more likely to develop software - so that the bulk of the
user-community improvements were for BSD. This may have been somewhat
of a self-sustaining process, helped along by the fact that, for much
the same reason, those workstation vendors who adopted UNIX started with
BSD.
>Now that AT&T has wrested control of the future of Unix back from the
>user community, are we going to see the same dreary game of
>home-mortgage-sized source licence fees and vendor-only code
>improvements retarding the future of Unix,
Not all vendors *now* make all their improvements generally available.
You can't say that's all AT&T's doing.
>or has the lesson of open software systems finally been learned, so
>that cost-of-media source code licenses and ready adoption/sharing
>of user written OS improvements will keep the future of Unix bright?
Perhaps, if 4.4BSD comes out and is mostly or completely AT&T-free, it
will provide an alternative to AT&T UNIXes?
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!bu.edu!shelby!decwrl!world!bzs
From: b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <BZS.90Dec8172930@world.std.com>
Date: 8 Dec 90 22:29:30 GMT
References: <36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com> <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Sender: b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: The World
Lines: 44
Posted: Sat Dec 8 23:29:30 1990
In-Reply-To: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu's message of 4 Dec 90 00:05:07 GMT
From: brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
>I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a
>nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed
>BSD failings.
Hmm, I wonder if you've looked at SYSV curses as it's currently being
distributed (e.g. with Sun/OS.)
It's much better than the old V7 curses library. One major added
feature is *input* support. I can write things like:
switch(getch()) {
case KEY_RIGHT:
do_right_thing();
break;
and all those KEY_RIGHT symbols are mapped properly (e.g. function
keys). They turn them into 0400+code symbols so they're distinguished
from ASCII. It works, they do it right.
There's nothing resembling that in the older curses stuff, and I use
this new feature a lot.
They have a lot more than just cursor keys defined also, you can throw
all sorts of handy codes into your switch statements (KEY_CLEAR,
KEY_PAGEUP and so on), and add ASCII equivalents of course:
case KEY_PAGEUP:
case CTRL('U'): /* whatever */
Attributes (underscore, blinking etc) are also handled much better
now. And, heavens, you can even write a program which reliably uses
box-drawing characters and so forth.
Look at the manual page (I'll send it to you if you like.) I think
you'll quickly see it's impossible to support the view that SYSV
curses is only trivially improved over BSD curses.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | b...@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!lll-winken!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!hsdndev!
cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <4271:Dec1003:29:5790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 03:29:57 GMT
References: <36488@cup.portal.com> <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
<BZS.90Dec8172930@world.std.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 11
Posted: Mon Dec 10 04:29:57 1990
In article <BZS.90Dec8172...@world.std.com> b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
> Look at the manual page (I'll send it to you if you like.) I think
> you'll quickly see it's impossible to support the view that SYSV
> curses is only trivially improved over BSD curses.
I didn't say that. System V curses/terminfo does indeed have lots more
features than BSD curses/termcap. But that System V fanatic was accusing
BSD of missing basic features which have been around for years. Somehow
I don't really care about the infinite pile of frills in System V.
---Dan
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!
utcs.toronto.edu!cks
From: c...@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 21:44:31 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <36488@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Ziebmef home away from home
Lines: 60
Posted: Tue Dec 11 22:44:31 1990
t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
| xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
| _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was
| the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences
| to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of
| free user community programming effort ...
|
| That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am
| from the "school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur,
| and I've had mixed emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some
| time.
|
| One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real"
| world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable
| features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()"
| at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work
| the same at site nematode.com.
Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so
many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make
custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin counts
on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and SGI, not
even for important or critical bugs. A secondary issue is to be able
to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special
'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is
utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a
passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets
instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver,
or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or
similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the
University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make
disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying
SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like
this are surprisingly important to local users).
We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not
because we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or
utilities. Believe me, we'd all like to run stock systems, straight
off the vendor distribution tapes; it'd be significantly less work.
But our users have this liking for working systems and prompt fixes
for the bugs they find, neither of which the vendors we buy from have
been particularly good in supplying.
| One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to
| restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific
| features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and
| feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use.
Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one
defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly
useful one.
[Needless to say, I do not speak officially for the University of
Toronto as a whole or for UTCS.]
--
"If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a
job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings,
we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch
to gardening, paper folding, or something." - C. Philip Wood
c...@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu ...!{utgpu,utzoo,watmath}!utgpu!cks
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cbmvax!martin
From: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <16482@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 12 Dec 90 16:18:43 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 70
Posted: Wed Dec 12 17:18:43 1990
In article <1990Dec11.164431....@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
c...@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writes:
>t...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>| xanth...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
>| _The_ thing that made BSD so much better than its AT&T parent ... was
>| the ready availability of _almost free_, _full_ source code licences
>| to the user/programmer community, so that the tremendous resource of
>| free user community programming effort ...
>|
>| That's the VERY problem SVR4 prevents. Now hear me out. I, too, am
>| from the "school" where ready availability of sources was de rigeur,
>| and I've had mixed emotions on the SysV sources issue for quite some
>| time.
>|
>| One of the very reasons UNIX was NOT being as readily accepted in the "real"
>| world was due to all the hundreds of customized "hacks" and non-portable
>| features at each of 100's or 1000's of sites. If one used feature "foo()"
>| at site bar.edu, that feature was NOT guaranteed to be available or work
>| the same at site nematode.com.
>
> Despite what vendor propaganda would have you believe, the reason so
>many production sites want OS source code is not so that we can make
>custom hacks but so that we can fix bugs. No smart system admin counts
>on timely bugfixes from major vendors like SUN and DEC and SGI, not
>even for important or critical bugs.
Generally, only large companies or universities have system
administrators who are able to fix bugs in the Unix kernel. Does this
mean that small and medium size companies cannot use Unix? Do Sun,
DEC and SGI ship software with critical bugs and fail to fix them?
Would you buy an OS that was so buggy that the sources were included
so you could fix it yourself? No wonder the business world has been
avoiding Unix.
>A secondary issue is to be able
>to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special
>'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is
>utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a
>passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets
>instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver,
>or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or
>similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the
>University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make
>disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying
>SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like
>this are surprisingly important to local users).
If you need OS source code to do this, then you bought the wrong OS.
>
> We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not
>because we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or
>utilities. Believe me, we'd all like to run stock systems, straight
>off the vendor distribution tapes; it'd be significantly less work.
>But our users have this liking for working systems and prompt fixes
>for the bugs they find, neither of which the vendors we buy from have
>been particularly good in supplying.
>
>| One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to
>| restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific
>| features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and
>| feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use.
>
> Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one
>defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly
>useful one.
Perhaps the problem is that Berkeley admitted that BSD was broken
and AT&T refused to admit their Unix was broken? Whichever, distributing
sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea
if you are trying to capture the business market.
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!
psuvax1!psuvm!jkt100
From: JKT...@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 90 03:26:05 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
<4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
<4e6afc49.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 21
>>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4]
>>standard. Workstation vendors are.
>
>I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are.
>As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the
>best of my knowledge) isn't.
Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has
adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody
else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"...
:-(
Kurt
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|| Kurt Tappe (215) 363-9485 || With. Without. And who'll ||
|| 184 W. Valley Hill Rd. || deny it's what the fighting's ||
|| Malvern, PA 19355-2214 || all about? - Pink Floyd ||
|| jkt...@psuvm.psu.edu --------------------------------------||
|| jkt...@psuvm.bitnet jkt100%psuvm.bitnet@psuvax1 QLink: KurtTappe ||
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!world!bzs
From: b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <BZS.90Dec12232338@world.std.com>
Date: 13 Dec 90 04:23:38 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
<16482@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Sender: b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: The World
Lines: 76
Posted: Thu Dec 13 05:23:38 1990
In-Reply-To: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com's message of 12 Dec 90 16:18:43 GMT
From: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
>Whichever, distributing
>sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea
>if you are trying to capture the business market.
Hey! Who let the MBA in?
And I suppose you're next going to argue that auto manufacturers
should put their own locks on car hoods to help capture the business
markets?
Look, all OS's have bugs. Many are tolerable. Most are tolerable by
most people. But if you're the site that has to virtually shut down
operations because of a security flaw which doesn't seem to bother
that many other sites (e.g. if it's an internet break-in opportunity,
most customers won't be on the internet) then you're in trouble w/o
the sources.
Beyond that kind of extreme situation there are many shades of gray.
None of this is peculiar to Unix, everything I say could apply to VMS,
AOS/VS etc. Systems with absolutely no security, like DOS or Macs (or
Amigas I assume, but I don't know Amiga/OS), are obviously excluded
from these examples.
I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
when someone can log in.
Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not
have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put
that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which
disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with
some things which are fraught with peril.)
(I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a
logic I agree with, but just an example.)
So you tell the vendor, and the answer is "we don't have too many
customers who want that (they always know exactly what their customers
want, until someone comes in to auction off the furniture), so forget
it".
One compromise I've called for for years is that the sources to
certain critical applications, such as login and password checking
modules, should be supplied as source (certain pieces, like the
encryption stuff, might not, just appear as library calls, but the
mainline logic at any rate.)
If I want to add code to demand longer passwords, or a secondary
password if I think it's a really odd time (or place) for this
particular person to be logging in, why should it be so difficult?
What's the big deal? There probably aren't any big deal trade secrets
in the login sources (in fact, I know Unix' login sources quite well,
they're quite boring and predictable, which is good!)
It's this binary mentality that either you get all the sources, or
none that goads me.
How about a few device driver sources? Some windows applications
(admittedly some vendors do make these available, tho it's usually
just the most trivial cases)? Is this sort of stuff really the family
jewels? Not likely.
Fortunately this situation is changing itself within the Unix
community as almost everything you might want is available as a freely
distributable source equivalent.
I can't help but wonder where the motivation to write all those
free-source clones comes from if there's really no need.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | b...@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!
sdd.hp.com!ucsd!sdcc6!sdbio2!cleland
From: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <14934@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 02:02:31 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
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<4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
<4e6afc49.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Sender: n...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Reply-To: clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 56
Nntp-Posting-Host: sdbio2.ucsd.edu
In article <90346.222605JKT...@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT...@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes:
>>>IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX, and NeXT are not embracing this [SysVR4]
>>>standard. Workstation vendors are.
>>
>>I couldn't resist interjecting: _some_ workstation vendors are.
>>As you note, IBM (RS/6000) isn't. HP/Apollo isn't. DEC (to the
>>best of my knowledge) isn't.
>
>Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has
>adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody
>else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"...
>:-(
>
You speak wisdom, but I think it won't happen this time. The
recognized leader in desktop workstations, Sun, and SPARC clone
makers in the workstation market, not to mention AT&T. I don't
know how fast the academic VAXes and the like will port over.
Ah, sentence fragment... "Sun...et al...-->" are supporting
SVR4. OSF/Motif is a power play by IBM et al, but if I hear
correctly there will be an OSF/Motif clone process which one
can run under SVR4 (old rumor).
I think it's pretty clear that SVR4 doesn't have anything to
worry about in terms of competition from A/UX or AIX. Precious
little from Mach/NeXTStep, though they'll be a factor on NeXTs
and some RISC/6000s. OSF/Motif will be the one to look out for.
But read the MSDOS press that we hate... WIth the same blind
"of course this is the only _real_ operating system" chutzpah
that they use to speak about MS-DOS, they speak of SVR4.
OSF/Motif, for better or worse, is given a token mention and
the same irritating dismissal that Apple and Commodore have
traditionally received at the hands of the MSDOS press.
IF the gossip I hear is true:
OSF/Motif runs with a Mach kernel and has several advantages
over SVR4 in terms of pure performance
these opinions which I restate above are typical of the
mainstream press
DEC and HP/Apollo are making SVR4 OSs as a hedge
... then I think we as AMiga devotees have had the tables turned
on us--supporting ;the mainstream simply because it's the
mainstream. Don't get me wrong--that's important in the
workstation market like it isn't so much in the PC market (esp.
for a smaller vendor like CBM), it's just amusing.
> Kurt
--
// / Thom Cleland / It is easier /
// / tclel...@ucsd.edu / to get forgiveness /
\X/ / ASOCC * Amiga Users' Group at UCSD / than permission... /
\____________________________________\____________________/
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!samsung!rex!wuarchive!udel!mmdf
From: ST402...@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Scott Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <39042@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 03:00:21 GMT
Sender: m...@ee.udel.edu
Lines: 32
Posted: Fri Dec 14 04:00:21 1990
> Barry Shein writes:
> I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
> when someone can log in.
> Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not
> have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put
> that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which
> disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with
> some things which are fraught with peril.)
> (I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a
> logic I agree with, but just an example.)
Try VAX/VMS for one. VMS allows you to have complete control over
when a user is allowed to login. It allows you to divide the week
into primary and secondary days and allows you to set by the hour
when a user can login. It also allows you to set when a user
can dialin, do network logins, run batch jobs, etc ... all independently.
Thus you can have a user be able to dial in only from 8-10 p.m. M-F, but
all day on Sunday. Let them have network access only on weekends, and
allow logins from a terminal server all day long, but batch files can
be run only on saturday night. All this is independently controllable
for each user. How's that for control? Of course VMS has other problems
which we won't go into at the moment but control over login times, I don't
think is one of them.
-- Scott (ST402248@Brownvm)
Stupid .sig file omitted by a sense of taste.
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cbmvax!martin
From: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <16499@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 13 Dec 90 15:49:07 GMT
References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu>
<36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
<36488@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
<16482@cbmvax.commodore.com> <BZS.90Dec12232338@world.std.com>
Reply-To: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 109
Posted: Thu Dec 13 16:49:07 1990
In article <BZS.90Dec12232...@world.std.com> b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>From: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
>>Whichever, distributing
>>sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea
>>if you are trying to capture the business market.
>
>Hey! Who let the MBA in?
I'm insulted. (I'm not an MBA, but they do sometimes use computers).
>
>And I suppose you're next going to argue that auto manufacturers
>should put their own locks on car hoods to help capture the business
>markets?
>
>Look, all OS's have bugs. Many are tolerable. Most are tolerable by
>most people. But if you're the site that has to virtually shut down
>operations because of a security flaw which doesn't seem to bother
>that many other sites (e.g. if it's an internet break-in opportunity,
>most customers won't be on the internet) then you're in trouble w/o
>the sources.
>
>Beyond that kind of extreme situation there are many shades of gray.
>
>None of this is peculiar to Unix, everything I say could apply to VMS,
>AOS/VS etc. Systems with absolutely no security, like DOS or Macs (or
>Amigas I assume, but I don't know Amiga/OS), are obviously excluded
>from these examples.
>
>I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
>when someone can log in.
>
>Say you have operators with (some) privileges and would rather not
>have them logging in off-shift. Do you know any OS which lets you put
>that kind of logic in? (Oh, under most I can write scripts which
>disable accounts at various times, but I get to monkey around with
>some things which are fraught with peril.)
VMS has that and much more built into it. Some versions of
so-called "Secure" Unix also offer features like this.
>(I assume someone will say "so ask them not to log in off-shift", a
>logic I agree with, but just an example.)
I would agree in an engineering company or a university.
If I was running the MIS department of a fortune 500 company, a bank,
or a government contractor, I would strongly disagree with you.
[...]
>If I want to add code to demand longer passwords, or a secondary
>password if I think it's a really odd time (or place) for this
>particular person to be logging in, why should it be so difficult?
>
>What's the big deal? There probably aren't any big deal trade secrets
>in the login sources (in fact, I know Unix' login sources quite well,
>they're quite boring and predictable, which is good!)
>
>It's this binary mentality that either you get all the sources, or
>none that goads me.
>
>How about a few device driver sources? Some windows applications
>(admittedly some vendors do make these available, tho it's usually
>just the most trivial cases)? Is this sort of stuff really the family
>jewels? Not likely.
I agree with you. Source code for this kind of stuff should be
available to those who are interested.
>
>Fortunately this situation is changing itself within the Unix
>community as almost everything you might want is available as a freely
>distributable source equivalent.
>
>I can't help but wonder where the motivation to write all those
>free-source clones comes from if there's really no need.
>--
> -Barry Shein
>
I agree with you that source code is a really great thing for those of
us who are capable of modifying it. In an academic or engineering
environment, it is a necessity. What I really dislike is people who
design operating systems so poorly that simple reconfigurations
require modifying the sources and recompiling the kernel. OS kernels
should be like color TVs; there are no user-servicable parts inside.
VMS does this fairly well. Even AmigaDOS is way ahead of Unix in
this. Operating systems (IMHO) should be simple, modular and expandable.
In AmigaDOS, filesystems and networking protocols can be dynamically
added or removed from the system. Why can't Unix do this?
The other issue is the suitability of Unix to businesses. Why do
most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not
come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported
and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it?
Too many computer scientists and programmers write systems for their
own world, instead of the real world. Reality is that if your product
requires the user to have sources to configure his system or fix bugs,
then you cannot expect to be taken seriously outside of the academic
environment.
Disclaimer: I don't work for the Unix group here, but I do deal with
BSD sources every day. :^(
Martin Hunt "Windows 3.0 is hot because it's really fun. It has
mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com brought some excitement back into the PC industry"
Commodore-Amiga - Microsoft marketing manager
I wonder who took the excitement out in the first place?
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brns...@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <29400:Dec1405:54:4990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 05:54:49 GMT
References: <16482@cbmvax.commodore.com> <BZS.90Dec12232338@wor
<16499@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 33
In article <16...@cbmvax.commodore.com> mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
writes:
> >I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
> >when someone can log in.
> VMS has that and much more built into it.
Ah, yes, VMS.
VMS, where the equivalent of ``make'' doesn't even come with the system.
VMS, where you can buy an idle daemon for just $695 that UNIX users get
for free off a source group.
VMS, where DEC desperately tries to get its customers to install patches
for security holes that are letting a virus run rampant through nearly
every networked VMS machine in the world.
VMS, where just one vendor has control, and will continue to set
outrageous prices through next century.
Now that's a cost-effective, secure operating system.
> Why do
> most businesses with VAXen run VMS? It's very expensive and does not
> come with any source. Because it's easy to configure, is well supported
> and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it?
Oh, yeah, sure. Anyone who looks at the real statistics from DEC will
observe that Ultrix and UNIX have slowly been eating away at the VMS
market share. Even the most pessimistic projections show VMS with under
half the VAX market by the year 2000. So why do you think this happens?
Because VMS is so cost-effective and superior, right?
---Dan
Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!
wuarchive!mit-eddie!rutgers!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk
From: pet...@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <642@cbmger.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 90 16:37:56 GMT
References: <39042@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Reply-To: pet...@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany
Lines: 23
In article <39...@nigel.ee.udel.edu> ST402...@brownvm.brown.edu
(F. Scott Porter) writes:
>
>> Barry Shein writes:
>
>> I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
>> when someone can log in.
>
>Try VAX/VMS for one. VMS allows you to have complete control over
>when a user is allowed to login. It allows you to divide the week
>into primary and secondary days and allows you to set by the hour
>when a user can login. It also allows you to set when a user
>can dialin, do network logins, run batch jobs, etc ... all independently.
>Thus you can have a user be able to dial in only from 8-10 p.m. M-F, but
>all day on Sunday.
Ok, all this is even available on PCs when you use them in a
Novell NetWare network. And as there is announced also a Novell
software for the Amiga, we probably get this also under normal
AmigaDOS!
--
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions...
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <16630@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 18 Dec 90 15:07:02 GMT
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Reply-To: da...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
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In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> clel...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>In article <90346.222605JKT...@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT...@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes:
>>Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has
>>adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody
>>else adopted it? It sure happened with the IFF "standard"...
>>:-(
That's a bad example, since IFF was created for the Amiga, and made public
domain so that anyone, on or off an Amiga, could use it for free. That doesn't
at all detract from its usefulness on the Amiga, and I'm not all that sure that
having IBM and Apple stand behind it would do that much good, other than
perhaps getting some more interesting FORMs standardized -- they did good at
the beginning with ILBM, 8SVX, SMUS, etc. but still really need to address some
more complex issues, like forms for 2-D and 3-D structured drawings, DTP, etc.
A more obvious one might be the character set. The Amiga uses ISO characters,
but 1/2 the printers out there use Epson or IBM characters, which are a defacto
industry standard which works OK in the US, though perhaps not as well world
wide. And some people even complain about the Amiga keyboards, which are
inspired by the obvious industry standard, the VT100 keyboard, rather than the
drastically inferior (especially to Emacs users) PC-AT keyboard.
>You speak wisdom, but I think it won't happen this time. The
>recognized leader in desktop workstations, Sun, and SPARC clone
>makers in the workstation market, not to mention AT&T. I don't
>know how fast the academic VAXes and the like will port over.
And, of course, there are the PCs. Sure there's Xenix and others on the PCs,
but the real UNIX on most of them is SRV3, so one would expect most PC business
UNIX users to adopt SRV4. Apple uses SRV3, so it's also reasonable to expect
that some day they'll move to SRV4; no one's going to use the Mac OS as a UNIX
GUI unless they're already using the Mac OS (eg, they're already Mac
developers). Even Atari, if they really have a UNIX, would likely adopt SRV4
(so they can run programs for Amiga UNIX most likely). And, of course,
Motorola themselves use AT&T UNIX on their systems.
> // / Thom Cleland / It is easier /
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
{uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy
"I can't drive 55" -Sammy Hagar
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!wuarchive!uunet!
fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!mike_myke_schwartz
From: mike_myke_schwa...@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <37298@cup.portal.com>
Date: 28 Dec 90 00:18:14 GMT
References: <6352@crash.cts.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 35
I have not followed the entire thread of this debate, because it consists
of 112 articles... so please forgive me if I am rehashing old stuff. I did
read the first article about the Amiga as a Unix Workstation, and thought I
might add a few points:
1. Byte magazine reviewed the Amiga as a Unix workstation and gave it
high marks, noting a significant performance benefit over anything
within like 5x the price of the AU3000 ($4000), including and
specifically the NeXt machines.
2. It is unfortunate that a Unix machine demands 12Meg of RAM and
a gigabyte of hard disk to be usable as a workstation. And Unix
may not even have applications that are more worth using than
cheaper machines. Perhaps people should spend time optimizing
Unix so that it would allow more of that 12Meg to be used for
applications instead of for OS overhead.
3. Why not use the Amiga instead of a workstation for "workstation
things"? Is it true that companies like Sun and Silicon Graphics
are looking at the Amiga operating system with a little amazement,
because it is the ONLY REALTIME multitasking operating system of any
major workstation?
4. It is of more interest to me that the good things from Unix are
ported to run under the Amiga environment than to have a Unix
machine with "forward" Amiga compatibility.
5. Where is the video toaster for the Sun?
6. Using AmigaNet hardware/software, the Amiga is a powerful networking
solution that rivals Unix networks.
I must qualify this by saying that with this software, you get
ethernet, plus every workstation can share ANY device (including
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!wuarchive!
uunet!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!mike_myke_schwartz
From: mike_myke_schwa...@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <37299@cup.portal.com>
Date: 28 Dec 90 00:39:39 GMT
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Obviously, my last article was interrupted (by this blasted lousy interface
they have for the portal here).
Just to conclude, what I see in this thread of verbal abuse (er, I mean
discussion), is that NeXT owners are just stuck on NeXT, Mac owners are
stuck on Macs, and Amiga owners are stuck on Amiga. But the facts are:
The Amiga can Run X-windows, open look, Unix, Mac software (using AMAX),
MS-DOS and Amiga software. While Unix is clearly the only hope I can see
for a true standard interface for a wide variety of platforms, it does not
make any platform perform very well (it looks like Unix is only going to
be portable to systems with large RAM and hard disks instead of being
portable to anything anyway). What the other operating systems do provide is
a platform for writing programs that gain the best performance out of the
specific machine. A 4MB 68030 Amiga with 80MB of hard disk should run
multiple applications similar to what you would run on a Unix machine with
much more hard disk and RAM.
I would like to know what Unix really buys for you when you could have the
identical applications and features (like USENET) from a non-unix machine
with better performance.
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!olivea!
orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!ddsw1!karl
From: k...@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Re: A3000UX competition
Summary: Unix buys you a lot.....
Message-ID: <1991Jan01.211455.2825@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 1 Jan 91 21:14:55 GMT
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<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <37299@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: k...@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Macro Computer Solutions, Inc., Wheeling, IL
Lines: 84
In article <37...@cup.portal.com> mike_myke_schwa...@cup.portal.com writes:
>Obviously, my last article was interrupted (by this blasted lousy interface
>they have for the portal here).
>
>Just to conclude, what I see in this thread of verbal abuse (er, I mean
>discussion), is that NeXT owners are just stuck on NeXT, Mac owners are
>stuck on Macs, and Amiga owners are stuck on Amiga. But the facts are:
>
>The Amiga can Run X-windows, open look, Unix, Mac software (using AMAX),
>MS-DOS and Amiga software. While Unix is clearly the only hope I can see
>for a true standard interface for a wide variety of platforms, it does not
>make any platform perform very well (it looks like Unix is only going to
>be portable to systems with large RAM and hard disks instead of being
>portable to anything anyway). What the other operating systems do provide is
>a platform for writing programs that gain the best performance out of the
>specific machine. A 4MB 68030 Amiga with 80MB of hard disk should run
>multiple applications similar to what you would run on a Unix machine with
>much more hard disk and RAM.
Unix runs quite well in 4MB RAM and 80MB fixed disk, IF you have a
reasonable implementation of Unix!
If AmiUnix really requires something like 16MB RAM and a 1GB disk drive,
then it's seriously screwed up. Period.
I ran Unix on a 386 with an 80MB fixed disk and 4MB of RAM for quite some
time, and ran anywhere from 3-5 local jobs and 4 modems on it.. no problem
(except occasionally speed) at all.
The Suns at my office do have 16MB RAM, and a 300MB fixed disk. But we do
development on these! Of that 300MB fixed disk, 100MB is OS, and that's
'cause we load everything there is, including kernel reconfiguration,
drivers for all kinds of diverse and strange devices, etc. You CAN
configure a Sun workstation on about 200MB -- but you won't want to.
The problem with the SUN operating system space-wise is that it (and many
like it, the R3000 MIPS for example) is a RISC processor. That immediately
doubles the size of EVERYTHING the chip executes -- and incresed code size
equals both increased hard disk and RAM space. When you do less work per
instruction, you end up with a (much) larger program.
>I would like to know what Unix really buys for you when you could have the
>identical applications and features (like USENET) from a non-unix machine
>with better performance.
Well, I'm not so certain about the "better performance" issue, but I am
certain of the following:
1) Unix uses and needs real hardware memory protection. GURUs are
impossible on a UNIX machine (save from system kernel bugs!) This
is a MAJOR deal when you're doing development -- rebooting because
you blew it is a major drag! This also means you can do real work
and development on the same machine -- 6-hour program runs are
feasible on such an environment. On the AMI one guru and you get to
start all over!
2) Unix still has one of the best generalized IPC facilities sets that
has come along in operating systems (System 5 now). It CAN be
horrifyingly complex, but there isn't much I can't accomplish with
it. My experience with AmiDOS isn't nearly as complete here,
unfortunately.
3) Flat-address space addressing -- this is a big deal as well.
"You see a 32-bit address space, with all cells alike....." And
virtual memory (that 32-bit space really COULD be 32-bits in size,
given a 4GB disk drive :-)!) Seriously, virtual memory is a major
win, since you can cheaply extend your RAM size (at the cost of LOTS
of performance) in an almost infinite manner. When those overages
are transient (they often are), it's a lifesaver and the performance
costs are negligable. This also allows (easily) for shared text
segments -- which means 5 copies of the same program all reference
the same "pure" program pages!
4) The utilities that come with Unix make it immediately useful to the
purchaser. While this is a market-driven thing, I haven't seen such
a rich "bundled" utility set in ANY other operating system on ANY
platform. This is very significant -- and Commodore could easily
address this with the Amiga line.
--
Karl Denninger (k...@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <17096@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 3 Jan 91 23:53:20 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
<86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <37299@cup.portal.com>
<1991Jan01.211455.2825@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Reply-To: da...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 91
In article <1991Jan01.211455.2...@ddsw1.MCS.COM> k...@ddsw1.MCS.COM
(Karl Denninger) writes:
>In article <37...@cup.portal.com> mike_myke_schwa...@cup.portal.com writes:
>Unix runs quite well in 4MB RAM and 80MB fixed disk, IF you have a
>reasonable implementation of Unix!
>If AmiUnix really requires something like 16MB RAM and a 1GB disk drive,
>then it's seriously screwed up. Period.
It certainly doesn't require that. But keep in mind, the only OS that's
legally UNIX(TM), is a conforming version of SV.4, such as Amiga UNIX. That's
a big puppy, no questions asked. You don't have to launch everything, just
like you don't have to run everything under the SV.3.2 or whatever it is you
run on your PC. But once you get X, NFS, etc. all going, 4 megs ain't quite
what it used to be. If you just want a command line stand-alone UNIX, 4 megs
is probably just dandy. We ran the SV.3.2 version on A2620s with 2 Megs of
RAM -- you wanted four, but two worked.
The two A3000/UNIX bundles they'll be selling are [a] 5MB RAM, 100 MB disk, and
[b] 9MB RAM, 200 MB disk, Ethernet.
>The problem with the SUN operating system space-wise is that it (and many
>like it, the R3000 MIPS for example) is a RISC processor. That immediately
>doubles the size of EVERYTHING the chip executes -- and incresed code size
>equals both increased hard disk and RAM space. When you do less work per
>instruction, you end up with a (much) larger program.
Modern RISC systems hardly result in a 2:1 code expansion. While in some
cases they do less work per instruction, I can't count many CISC processors
that do 3 operand arithmetic operations, while most of the RISC machines do.
You might find a typical RISC system taking 20% more code space, tops. Not
that there aren't systems that eat memory, there certainly are, but the more
common RISCs: MIPS, SPARC, 88k, etc. aren't all that more code space hungry
than 680x0s or 80x86s. MISC machines, on the other hand, look to be extremely
code space hungry.
>2) Unix still has one of the best generalized IPC facilities sets that
> has come along in operating systems (System 5 now). It CAN be
> horrifyingly complex, but there isn't much I can't accomplish with
> it. My experience with AmiDOS isn't nearly as complete here,
> unfortunately.
The Amiga principle here is "fast and simple". At the low level, you have
signals and messages, which rely on shared memory. A signal simply indicates
some agreed-upon event between tasks, a message passes some data between
messages, by reference. UNIX message passing is much slower, and there are
lots of different approaches, especially if you include BSD stuff in under
the UNIX banner. What you get for the preformance price under UNIX is the
ability to cleanly pass data between tasks on different processors, even
across a network, using the same mechanisms used to pass messages between
tasks on the same CPU/Computer. AmigaOS also has a standard inter application
methodology, based on the AREXX language, which is currently missing from UNIX.
>4) The utilities that come with Unix make it immediately useful to the
> purchaser. While this is a market-driven thing, I haven't seen such
> a rich "bundled" utility set in ANY other operating system on ANY
> platform. This is very significant -- and Commodore could easily
> address this with the Amiga line.
The rich set of tools under UNIX comes from its tradition as a development
environment. For years, folks bought UNIX, and relatively little other
software, and used their computer to create new software. And you could pay
a reasonable wad of green for UNIX. And most users were professionals if not
experts, or had easy access to experts on-site.
Most of the other operating systems in use were intended for a much more
commercially active environment, in which all kinds of 3rd party software would
be available and the basic OS should be available for reasonable prices, if not
free with the computer system. The average person would need OS tools to get
around, but this person would not be an expert, would be relatively alone with
the system in a business or home, and wouldn't need a vast array of tools.
Also, the included tools are rarely of the caliber of a dedicated 3rd party
tool, but could easily stifle the growth of good 3rd party replacements if
included. A good example is MacWrite on the Macintosh. Not bad, but not great
world class word processor. Once Apple unbundled it, the Mac WP market
exploded, and now there are all kinds of much better tools available. Large
software companies can afford to specialize in one or two basic tools, and
they'll do it far better than the OS vendor. If the OS vendor doesn't try to
compete, the OS vendor and the 3rd party tool maker can cooperate, and both
benefit. When that happens, the user will ultimately benefit. If the OS
vendor tries to do it all, that vendor will fail, and very likely scare away
the tool makers, who don't want to compete directly with the folks making all
the OS decisions.
>Karl Denninger (k...@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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