A3000UX competition
Adin Burroughs
>>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 <ad...@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 |
| ad...@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........ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert E. Huebner
is wearing thin. My analyst suggested a scathing reply would cleanse
my psyche :)
In article <4...@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, ad...@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 hue...@aerospace.aero.org
The Aerospace Corporation, Computer Security Dept.
"Take it to alt.religion.computers!"
----
J. Eric Townsend
Your friend is not too up on UN*X issues, so you might want to pass
this along to him.
In article <4...@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> ad...@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes:
> From: Brian Bartholomew <b...@math.ufl.edu>
>> I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to Sys V again, but R4 is
>> supposed to be signifigantly better.
S5R4 is S5R3 + BSD + other stuff... Very different than S5R3
>> about a UNIX vendor that tried to sell me a 4 Meg workstation. Just
If you stay out of X, 4Mb is plenty for J. Random User. I used a 3.5Mb
UN*X box for a couple of years w/o ever running into any major problems,
except lack of disk space. :-)
>> how bad is the performance? What CPU/clock-speed are we talking here?
'030 at 25Mhz. '040 RSN (1Q91 is a rumor I heard)
>> bigger drive to put bundle on. Yes, you can get X for it, but why
>> would you want to?
So you can use the wide selection of already written X code out there.
>> SLC. The standard archetecture for net-written software today.
The 3000UX should run anything the SLC does, unless the code uses
SunTools for its windowing.
>> Price: $3,000 + $750 = $3,750. This is with all applicable discounts
>> applied.
If you need fast integer, cheap unix, and nothing else, get this. (Floating
point is not too bad, actually, about .75MFLOPS.)
>> I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and
S5R4 is a superset of BSD. Get a clue.
--
J. Eric Townsend Internet: j...@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU
Systems Manager - University of Houston Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120
EastEnders list: east...@karazm.math.uh.edu
"This meme's for you..." --me
Gerry Lachac
> To: Adin Burroughs <ad...@math.ufl.edu>
> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 10:55:06 EST
>
>
> 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
Depends on what world you are viewing UNIX from. In the "REAL" world
(read "business") there is only one choice, AT&T System V. BSD only
has really only inroads in the university world, no small potatoes
either.
If you've been to the last two years of Uniforums and UNIXExpo's, you
would have seen that the business ($$$) UNIX market is System V. Even
SunOS is moving away from a BSD-based kernel to an AT&T System V
Release 4 - based kernel.
An Amiga 3000 Unix box can make a significant impact in the business
world. The educational market is another story...
Larry Phillips
>>>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???)
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> supposed to be signifigantly better.
Depending on what vendor is being spoken of, there may not be much choice soon.
Sun, for one, will be fuly SysVR4 in the next major release, as are many other
vendors. Even DEC is going that way, regardless of their affiliation with the
90 megabuck smokebomb (OSF).
> 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.
Huh? OpenLook is a spec for a graphic user interface, while X is a transport
mechanism for communication between applications and a display. X is included
in the CBM offering. Of couse you can replace OpenLook with virtually anything
you want for the GUI.
> 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.
Who said they call full man pages an extra? If the above inclusion is complete,
it does not say that they are extra. If it is not complete, and something about
them being extra is said, then I would say that CBM has been misquoted. There
has never been any doubt that the man pages were included.
The CBM distribution is VERY complete, and no shoddy tricks are pulled by
leaving out such things as compilersand text processing tools.
> 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?
If it runs in 4 meg, there is absolutely nothing wrong with offering it in that
configuration. Many folks prefer it that way, so that they can use third party
memory, or perhaps memory they have already. Perhaps a user can afford only the
minimal configuration and plans to expand later. Isn't it better to have the
choice? Do you worry about a Unix vendor that offers a workstation without
hard disk? Of course not.
I won't even dignify the negatively loaded question 'just how slow is it?',
except to say that if you are going to compare it to a NeXT, why would you
care? Clock speed is 25 MHz.
> 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.
Don't know about the NeXT, but it does not match the resolution of a Sun. On
the other hand, it is a low cost monitor, and offers all the resolution that a
standard Amiga does (the machine _is_ a standard Amiga, but happens to have
Unix installed), and thus provides colour. For higher resolution, there is a
4-grey-scale monitor available.
> 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?
The size of the disk to make it useful is purely a function of the amount of
stuff on it and the intended use. 100 meg is usable. 200 is better, and VERY
usable. 300 is better still, and so on up. Point is, it's the same with the
RAM; it gives you the choice of going for the minimum and adding your own stuff
to it.
Let's leave it at $4999, giving you 200 megs of disk, 8 megs of RAM, and a very
usable configuratin.
>
> 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?
Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure
couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with.
> Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied.
Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational
discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid.
> 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.
Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in
expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the
other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with
attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price,
so the comparison is again invalid.
> I fault the Commodore for non-BSDness, but then again I fault HP's and
> Ardent's too.
Try it. BSDness is in there, a lot of it. That's what SysVR4 is all about; it
is the merged SysV and BSD. You may be pleasantly surprised. BSD 'pureness' on
Suns is coming to and end too.
> I personally wouldn't go back to it. Commodore as a
> workstation vendor gets a vote of "no confidence...yet.
That's a fair comment. There are a number of issues that have yet to be
explored, such as support, to cite one example.
> Try one more time" for their strategies of 4 Meg and broken-up OS.
Broken up? Please point out how it is 'broken up'.
> 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?
Well, I do. I have two Suns and two Amigas. I will be getting Unix for the
A3000 I already have. While I think of it, I might point out that the 3000UX is
nothing more than a particular configuration of standard Amiga products. When I
install Unix, I will probably dedicate about 200 megs of HD for it, leaving the
other 200 for Amiga stuff. The tape drives can both be used for either OS.
> 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.
Well, _that_ I can understand! I won't be getting a '386 or '486 machine
either. :-)
-larry
--
The only things to survive a nuclear war will be cockroaches and IBM PCs.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| // Larry Phillips |
| \X/ lphi...@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips |
| COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703...@compuserve.com |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Doug
>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.
He do?
>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.
No, he is right. Open Look is now what Sun wants you to use.
>> 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?
No, I'd rather see the memory as an option. The a3000 can be configured
many ways to suit your needs (budget). Of course, I'd like to see them
given away :)
>> 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.
Amazing. A 12meg machine with an optical drive faster than a disk drive really
did that? He is refering to ZorroIII bus specs. I don't think anyone would
use a floptical for swap space either, but he is refering to the 4 megs here.
>> 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)
Well, sounds nice (apart from no bus). We won't know what the a3000ux really
means until the release. There is no point getting religous on it. Commodore
(I am sure) is taking into consideration the other CISC workstations. Also,
non-educational pricing is very important. There is an increasing business
market for unix (sysV4 will be VERY popular).
>> 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.
Sounds real nice. Again, no one really knows what C= will bundle with it
until it is out the door.
>> |> 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.
I like it too. And I also like Open Look. So I can have both (and a
memory or disk upgrade helps both worlds:) a pool of resources). Byte did
mention that the A3000ux outperformed the NeXT. They forgot to mention
which NeXT, though. Having Amiga software such as AmigaVision and Imagine
will become invaluable soon.
>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.
Plenty for AmigaDos:) Also discussed earlier. Chill out.
>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.
My gut feeling is that an A3000 with an 040 option will really hit home
(talk about a link between personal computer and workstation)
>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.
I had a demo of the NeXT, I liked it. I ended up buying an A3000 for
various reasons. Byte thought the Amiga very competitive. If C= has
brains (and suddenly they do, I mean they beat EVERYONE to sysv4 (except
Sun Im not sure of), stuck a 1000*800*4 mode in the chip set (isnt that
new?) and have somewhere in that closet a new graphics board. If they
play the "bundled software" and "disk space" game right they will earn
what they have wanted for years. SO wise to stop chasing DOS compatiblilty
and grab unix.
1991 sounds like a wild ride. CTDV? SYSV4? TOASTER? AMIGAVISION? DISNEY?
OS2? ECS? Hang on!
--
---------------------------------//-------------------------------------
Doug Dyer Clemson University // "Splunge!" - MP
dd...@hubcap.clemson.edu \\ //
-----------------------------\X/----------------------------------------
varun mitroo
> 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
Thad P Floryan
I had a demo of the NeXT, I liked it. I ended up buying an A3000 for
various reasons. Byte thought the Amiga very competitive. If C= has
brains (and suddenly they do, I mean they beat EVERYONE to sysv4
(except Sun Im not sure of), stuck a 1000*800*4 mode in the chip set
(isnt that ...
Please explain how you claim that C= "... beat EVERYONE to sysv4 .." when it's
not even clear you KNOW what SVR4 is all about (let alone "spell" it properly).
As the elected President of the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group, I "try"
to get vendors to display, explain and show-off their SV wares.
We've had some interesting demos, but none from Commodore. But we have had
some 386- and 486-based SVR4 showings. SVR4 is NOT as scarce as you would
lead people to believe.
Fer crissakes, I can go over to TOWER RECORDS AND BOOKS and buy the complete
set of SVR4 manuals for either the generic port or the '386/'486 version.
And the COMPUTER LITERACY bookstores in Silicon Valley have been touting the
complete set of SVR4 docs for awhile.
Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery,
Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports)
.
Check your facts.
Now, before the fires start flaming: I *NEVER* miss an opportunity to "plug"
the fact that CBM does have an SVR4 port in the works and that it's been shown
in the AT&T booths at several UNIX tradeshows! :-)
And at the last Users' Group meeting I read aloud the net posting regarding
the CBM SVR4 Developer System at $4,995.
You shoulda heard the "OOOOOHS!" and "AHHHHHHS!" when I stated THAT price;
let's just hope the "final" price to the end-user doesn't show yet another
lack of market sensitivity and awareness on CBM's part.
CBM is more than welcome to demo the system at any of our meetings or in our
booths at the 1991 West Coast Computer Faire, the 1991 DB-EXPO, etc etc etc
Contact me via email at the address (below). I'd need at *LEAST* 30 days'
advance notice to assure adequate coverage in the local press, other journals,
and flyers posted at local Silicon Valley/Bay Area universities and colleges.
Thad Floryan [ th...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
Tom Limoncelli
> 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.
The way AT&T licenses UNIX, the MAN pages, the C Compiler, the DWB,
the UUCP and other networking software *ARE* all extra.
Just because Sun has always included them all with SunOS doesn't mean
that they aren't extras. All the world is not Sun. 1/2 :-)
Besides, C-A is calling it an extra... but one that they throw in for
free. If you consider the business UNIX systems that they are trying
to compete with, it's very special that they throw them in at all.
In AT&T's non-research (i.e. corporate) offices, they often don't even
purchase the MAN pages. In the business environment it's just too
much disk space. This is how it was last summer when I did an
internship with them. (Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for AT&T).
-Tom
--
tlim...@drew.edu Tom Limoncelli "Flash! Flash! I love you!
tlim...@drew.bitnet +1 201 408 5389 ...but we only have fourteen
tlim...@drew.uucp lim...@pilot.njin.net hours to save the earth!"
Kent Paul Dolan
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.
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Thomas Cleland
>Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery,
>Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports)
>
BYTE, Dec. 1990, pg. 136: "Although many UNIX licensees are
well along in completing this task [of porting the new UNIX
source codes to their machines], it appears that Commodore will
be the first to complete it."
This supports the conventional wisdom that CBM is first (or
nearly first) in SVR4 Unix release. How does this jibe with
the availability of Intel Unix SVR4 systems that you mention
above? Am I missing something? Are these SVR4's released?
What is BYTE referring to?
Thom Cleland
tcle...@ucsd.edu
.
--
----
Thom Cleland "It is easier
tcle...@ucsd.edu to get forgiveness
Amiga User's Group at UCSD than permission"
Thomas Cleland
>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
tcle...@ucsd.edu
jal...@cc.helsinki.fi
> In <4...@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU>, ad...@Math.UFL.EDU (Adin Burroughs) writes:
>
> Let's leave it at $4999, giving you 200 megs of disk, 8 megs of RAM, and a very
> usable configuratin.
>>
>> 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?
>
> Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure
> couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with.
Maybe you haven't seen NeXTstep 2.0 running on a 68040 NeXTstation.
>
>> Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied.
>
> Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational
> discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid.
Well, please tell the educ. prices, then.
>
>> 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.
>
> Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in
> expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the
> other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with
> attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price,
> so the comparison is again invalid.
WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to
be even faster than a SparcStation 1+.
Note: When comparing the A3000UX and the NeXTstation you should remember
that the latter has a 68040 and a motorola DSP. The latter doesn't have
color in it's cheapest configuration, though.
Jouni
J|rgen Holmberg
[stuff deleted to save bandwidth]
>
>Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery,
>Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Just for the record, there are NO commercially available SVR4 systems until
SVR4 specs. are completely solid. Much may happen yet.
Jorgen
--
*******************************************************************************
email dvl...@cs.umu.se - other ways to communicate are a waste of time.
Everything I say is always true, just apply it to the right reality.
"Credo, quia absurdum est."
Kevin Weller
....
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.
....
Thad Floryan [ th...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well said! I for one can't afford to set aside the memory, disk
space, and CPU power for the resource-hog that is X. My group can
have quite a few more things going at once without X than with it, a
much more cost-effective practice for those that don't need
*everything* in bit-mapped graphics. It seems that, at least for now,
character-based windowing is the key to true portability.
-- Kev
--
Kevin L. Weller /-------+--------------------\
internet: n02...@tamuts.tamu.edu | aTm | GIG 'EM, AGGIES! |
CIS: 73327,1447 \-------+--------------------/
Thad P Floryan
in <1990Dec2.1...@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).
Dan Bernstein
> 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
jal...@cc.helsinki.fi
>>
> 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.
Thad P Floryan
>Other than a few postings here to the net re: pricing and anticipated delivery
,
>Commodore does NOT have a commercially-available SVR4 system.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>There are several other vendors who DO (have commercially available SVR4 ports
)
>
!OK. Once and for all, tell me...
!
!BYTE, Dec. 1990, pg. 136: "Although many UNIX licensees are
!well along in completing this task [of porting the new UNIX
!source codes to their machines], it appears that Commodore will
!be the first to complete it."
!
!This supports the conventional wisdom that CBM is first (or
!nearly first) in SVR4 Unix release. How does this jibe with
!the availability of Intel Unix SVR4 systems that you mention
!above? Am I missing something? Are these SVR4's released?
!What is BYTE referring to?
It appears that CBM will be the FIRST to market a 680x0-based SVR4 UNIX; as
I've said for quite some time, the CBM offering has been demo'd in AT&T
booths at UNIX tradeshows for some time.
However, two months ago during the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group
meeting, I invited Tyan Computer Corp. (612 N. Mary Avenue; Sunnyvale CA;
408/720-1200) to show their '486 SVR4 box with X11R4, and they brought two
machines: a 25 MHz '386 and a 25 MHz '486 both running SVR4 and X11R4 in
full color. Very Impressive. And they also supplied the "door prizes" for
that evening which included a COMPLETE set of SVR4 docs. The reason I invited
Tyan was due to their ads in the San Jose Mercury News SELLING these systems,
today.
Since then, I've received email from several other vendors whose '486 SVR4
ports are already available for sale as of August and September 1990.
And I'm personally aware of at least one other vendor presently "doing" an
SVR4 port for a 68040-platform (they demo'd an SVR3.2 version of their
68040-based hardware at the same AT&T Users' Group meeting two months ago).
Again, CBM's system will "probably" be the first commercially available SVR4
on a 680x0-based platform, but NOT the first SVR4 "out there".
I cannot speak for BYTE, and I dropped my subscription years ago due to their
editorial prejudices. And until CBM officially releases their SVR4 I'm sure
you won't see it available at your local Amiga dealer.
As of TODAY, Monday, 3-Dec-1990, there are NO commercially-available SVR4
ports on a 680x0-based platform; there ARE some beta-version and "developer"
systems from, among others, CBM.
Thad P Floryan
Just for the record, there are NO commercially available SVR4 systems
until SVR4 specs. are completely solid. Much may happen yet.
Precisely. That's why, I suspect, the recently-posted info about the SVR4
development system from CBM comes with 1-year of "free" updates: to accomodate
any changes.
But, as I've already posted, the official AT&T SVR4 documentation set is
available from numerous sources, such as TOWER RECORDS and Computer Literacy,
and the SVID, Issue 3 (for SVR4), has been available for some time.
Also, copies of "APPLICATION OPERATING ENVIRONMENT, AT&T UNIX System V
Release 4.0, Migration Guide for System V Developers" have been available
for quite some time (see below); the price from AT&T is "something like"
$5.13 (I suspect that's their actual production cost). The enclosed material
is from one of my postings to comp.sys.att, unix-pc.general and comp.unix.misc.
And for those who've asked, I am NOT employed by AT&T; the information below
is presented solely for its technical content.
Thad Floryan [ th...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
-------------------- begin enclosed material --------------------
I continue to receive numerous inquiries concerning SVR4 and its impact on
existing software and applications. In case this hasn't been mentioned before,
I'd like to point interested parties to an EXCELLENT document from AT&T:
APPLICATION OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
AT&T UNIX System V Release 4.0
Migration Guide for System V Developers
From its page 1-1:
``The purpose [...of this document...] is to provide migration data to help
you determine how your existing UNIX system application source code will be
affected by the enhancements and changes provided by UNIX System V Release
4.0 (SVR4.0). The migration data are presented in migration tables, which
indicate how UNIX System V interfaces have evolved from SVR2.0 to SVR4.0.
For those interfaces whose functionality has been enhanced or changed, this
guide provides a description of those changes.
[...]
This guide is written for advanced users and programmers, such as Independent
Software Vendors (ISVs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs), who need migration
information for porting applications to SVR4.0
[...]
To derive maximum benefit from the information presented in this guide, you
should be thoroughly familiar with the UNIX system, particularly user commands,
system calls, and subroutines. In addition, you should be familiar with C
programming constructs.
''
To say the least, this document is a "MUST HAVE." It's about 200 pages, spiral
bound, and is accompanied by the latest AT&T MIGRATION TOOL software version
1.01 on two floppy disks, one for 3B2 (MC01-1491-X) and the other for 6386.
Chapter 2 has the migration tables, detailing ALL the differences and migration
between SVR2.0 to SVR2.1 to SVR3.0 to SVR3.1 to SVR3.2 to SVR4.0.
The document is described as:
SELECT CODE# 350-306
AOE AT&T UNIX SYS. V
REL 4.0 MIGRATION GD/
SYSTEM V DEVELOPERS
Page 1-7 has "How to Order Documents" (for this, and the other SysV refs) per:
- Within the continental United States, call 1 (800) 432-6600
- Outside the continental United States
Phone call 001 1 (317) 352-8556
FAX call 001 1 (317) 352-8484, or
call 001 1 (317) 352-8628.
Telex call 5101009077
- In Europe, order books from AT&T UNIX Europe Ltd. by calling
+44 1 567 7711 ("+" represents the international dialing code)
- In Canada, call 1 (800) 255-1242
Thad Floryan [ th...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
-------------------- end enclosed material --------------------
Michael S Figg
>
> Depends on what world you are viewing UNIX from. In the "REAL" world
> (read "business") there is only one choice, AT&T System V. BSD only
> has really only inroads in the university world, no small potatoes
> either.
Universities aren't the only ones using BSD. The government also has a large
BSD base, and with AT&T System V itself moving towards BSD it seems like BSD
is moving towards being the 'main' road, not an inroad, in the UNIX world.
--
-------- o A herd of bagels | Michael Figg DSAC-FSD
| | -- oo o o escaping from a deli. | DLA Systems Automation Center
| | -- ooo oo Looking for Lox in | Cols, Ohio mf...@dsac.dla.mil
-------- o o all the wrong places | CIS: 73777,360
Sean Cunningham
Even though the NeXTStation will outperform an A3000UX from the box, their
still both "unavailable."
You can't get a NeXTStation until NeXT gets the '040s it needs, and the
A3000UX isn't supposed to be released until after January's showing in Dallas
(Uniforum).
Hasn't NeXT said something like February or later for shipment? I'd be
willing to bet that at least one of the '040s for the A3000 will be available
by then...there you'd have the same speed, roughly the same cost, color, and a
more standard version of Unix. What was it they guy in Byte said? The most
complete version? :')
Sean
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham
ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!se...@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810
INET: se...@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________
// | * All opinions expressed herein |
HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS |
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Thad P Floryan
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 (ro...@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> th...@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. :-)
Larry Phillips
>In article <23...@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>, lphi...@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes:
>> Maybe you want speed? I don't know how fast X would be on the NeXT, but it sure
>> couldn't be any slower than the display postscript it comes with.
>
>Maybe you haven't seen NeXTstep 2.0 running on a 68040 NeXTstation.
No I haven't. Is it out yet? When it is, let's compare with the 68040 version
of the 3000 running Unix, shall we, when CBM brings it out, of course.
>>> Price: $3,500 + $750 = $4,250. All applicable discounts applied.
>>
>> Yes.. all applicable discounts applied. CBM has both developer and educational
>> discount programs in place, so the comparison is not even close to being valid.
>
>Well, please tell the educ. prices, then.
Don't know them.. sorry.
>>> 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.
>>
>> Yes, the SLC is faster than either of the other two. It is also very limited in
>> expansion. You cannot make it colour. Max memory is less than either of the
>> other two, and for hard disk, you are talking about external units only, with
>> attendant cases/power supplies. Again, all applicable discounts for the price,
>> so the comparison is again invalid.
>
>WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to
>be even faster than a SparcStation 1+.
I'd have to see that to believe it.
>Note: When comparing the A3000UX and the NeXTstation you should remember
>that the latter has a 68040 and a motorola DSP. The latter doesn't have
>color in it's cheapest configuration, though.
I agree. Let us know when it appears.
Larry Phillips
>
>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.
While 14 character file names are annoying, the SysVism that I got bitten by
not too long ago was the 1 second resolution on file dates. Seems the SPARCs
are getting fast enough for that to make a difference.
Kent Paul Dolan
> [...]
> {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. ;-)
Robert I. Eachus
You can't get a NeXTStation until NeXT gets the '040s it needs, and the
A3000UX isn't supposed to be released until after January's showing
in Dallas (Uniforum).
Why wait 'til Uniforum? As I understand it, if you want a 3000UX
now, Commodore will sell it to you as development/extended beta test
system. I don't think you can get a software only version yet to run
on a 2000 w/accelerator board. Commodore does a pretty good job of
having things stable when they are finally released, and not doing the
formal announcement until a product is ready to ship. This often
means an extended limited release/beta test period. (Maybe we will
get AmigaDOS 2.0 for Christmas? Please!!!!)
Also there seems to be a defensive attitude about wait til the
68040 Amigas get here... I saw a system with a GVP 50 MHz 68030,
Video Toaster, multiple monitors, etc. over a month ago. A customer
system, not a dealer demo. Ran a couple of (integer) benchmarks
faster than the NeXT 040 demo machine. I guess it depends on which
machine you see first, after playing with the Toaster, I almost fell
asleep at the NeXT demo. If NeXT thinks that it is capable of running
in the same league they had better think again. :-)
(Flame Retardant) The Amiga system I saw was not cheap, in fact
it may have been more expensive than a 68040 NeXT with a color board
and monitor, but boy was it nice!
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
Ralph Seguin
>In article <60...@crash.cts.com> se...@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes:
> Also there seems to be a defensive attitude about wait til the
>68040 Amigas get here... I saw a system with a GVP 50 MHz 68030,
>Video Toaster, multiple monitors, etc. over a month ago. A customer
>system, not a dealer demo. Ran a couple of (integer) benchmarks
>faster than the NeXT 040 demo machine. I guess it depends on which
Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030. I'd like
to see the benchmarks and results you used. What benchmarks did you use? Also,
please do not use pitiful benchmarks like dhrystones. Does anybody in the
Amiga community have SPECmarks for them? I'd love to see what they are.
I love the Amiga just as much as the next guy, but please do not post clearly
false results. I will dig up some benchmark code from somewhere and run it
on an 040 NeXT and then on a 50 MHz 030 Amiga and we'll see what we get.
See ya, Ralph
Ralph Seguin gilg...@dip.eecs.umich.edu
536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilg...@caen.engin.umich.edu
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
Young-Kyu Yoo
>both still "unavailable."
The NeXTs are shipping (as of a week ago). True, if you order one now, you
may have to wait until February to get one. But for those of us with
foresight to have gotten on the list a couple of months ago, we're eagerly
awaiting an early Christmas present.
Dan Bernstein
> 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
Karl Heuer
>In article <36...@cup.portal.com> th...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>
>BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert:
>il. Line delete: dl.
Dan, are you really talking about the curses library, or the termcap library?
In SysV, these features are available at the curses level.
(I also happen to think curses was done poorly from the start, and about 3/4
of it should be removed, but that's another issue.)
Karl W. Z. Heuer (ka...@ima.isc.com or uunet!ima!karl), The Walking Lint
(Followups to alt.religion.computers only.)
Thomas Cleland
>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.
Steve Rehrauer
>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) rehr...@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
Larry Phillips
>In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cle...@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.
DEC _IS_ embracing SVR4, according to a blurb I read in a Unix mag about a
month or two ago. Caused quite a chucle around our office.
jal...@cc.helsinki.fi
>
> 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.
I think that you should only compare products that are:
AVAILABLE and IN ABOUT THE SAME PRICE RANGE
I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists.
And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040
NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is
nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a
forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.)
Jouni
Joe Ilacqua
<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 ...."
At this point with 4.4BSD on its way with many new and
interesting features, I think the debate will go on. And given the
facts that, (if all goes according to plan) 4.4BSD will be freely
availble in source form, and that it runs on the 386, 4.4BSD may be
the death of SYSV.
->Spike
--
The World - Public Access Unix - +1 617-739-9753 24hrs {3,12,24,96,192}00bps
Thomas Cleland
>be even faster than a SparcStation 1+.
>
beat out many SPARC chips was just overzealous Amiga crowing.
To hear it confirmed via another (though perhaps equivalent)
source cheers me. There's future in CISC after all (especially
if we get some parallel-capable platforms built).
So the 68040 Amiga 3x00UX series will be SPARC peers, not little
brothers... ditto NeXT.
>
> Jouni
J|rgen Holmberg
>In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cle...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>> In article <4136.2...@cc.helsinki.fi> jal...@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>>
>> 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.
>
>I think that you should only compare products that are:
>
>AVAILABLE and IN ABOUT THE SAME PRICE RANGE
>
>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists.
What bout this then. Compare an A3000 with an accelerator card to a Next.
The A3000 is available now. It has a huge software base ( not vaporware
like most sw for the Next ). The OS takes only 2 megs of harddisk space.
The environment is fast, multitasking and user-friendly.
>
>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040
>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is
>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a
>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.)
>
> Jouni
The Next is a good machine but since you want comparison I will give it to you.
Acorn Archimedes A3000. The machine is right up there with the Next and the
Amiga 3000 in performance. The machine is cheaper than any of them ( around
$3000 without discount ). There is NO software base but you don't care, right?
Doug
>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists.
>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040
>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is
>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a
>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.)
Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing)
1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.)
Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?)
2) The A3000 is more than a UNIX box. It has a LOT secial about it.
3) Someone mentioned somewhere to expect great software for the NeXT due
to minimal mem. configurations for the machine 8 megs (the developers
could expect a lot of memory, disk space too). Well, we are talking
about OpenLook->X software applications, not AmigaOS (which is maturing
at a wonderful rate :).
Well, I'll take a 3000. PS to amigans: ftp the turrican demo on hubcap
or abcfd. REAL GOOD.
Oh well, send all flames and "incorrect spellings :)" -> comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
--
---------------------------------//-------------------------------------
Doug Dyer Clemson University // "Splunge!" - MP
dd...@hubcap.clemson.edu \\ //
-----------------------------\X/----------------------------------------
varun mitroo
>asleep at the NeXT demo. If NeXT thinks that it is capable of running
>in the same league they had better think again. :-)
This is exactly the point that many people have missed. There is no way that
the NeXT can compare hardware or software-wise with the amiga in terms of
video. You can run a NewTek Demo Reel on a stock 500 and not be able to on
a NeXT. The two computers are different machines for different tasks. NeXT
is releasing a high end graphics board with 32 bits/pixel and an i860 processor
in 1991 (with 8 bits alpha). It also includes a JPEG compression chip. This
board sounds amazing for video work, but there will still be a long time before
software is made to fully utilize it. The amiga is a far better choice for
this.
>
> Robert I. Eachus
Varun Mitroo
mit...@cis.ohio-state.edu
jal...@cc.helsinki.fi
> jal...@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>
>>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists.
>
>>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040
>>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is
>>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a
>>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.)
>
> Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing)
>
> 1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.)
> Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?)
Gee. I think that the suggested retail price of NeXTStation is $4995.
The educ. price is about $3200. This includes 8MB RAM, 105MB HD,
Megapixel display, etc.
I would really like to know if that $4000 is the EDUCATIONAL or RETAIL
price for A3000UX. If it is educational, I wonder what is the point in
paying nearly $1000 more for a system with 68030 instead of 68040 and
without DSP. I also doubt the Amiga system comes with as good display
than the NeXTs.
Even if there was a 68040 Amiga for about $3000 educational, I would
still choose NeXT - because of DSP and the wonderful development environment.
Jouni
Robert I. Eachus
Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030.
I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What
benchmarks did you use? Also, please do not use pitiful benchmarks
like dhrystones. Does anybody in the Amiga community have
SPECmarks for them? I'd love to see what they are. I love the
Amiga just as much as the next guy, but please do not post clearly
false results. I will dig up some benchmark code from somewhere
and run it on an 040 NeXT and then on a 50 MHz 030 Amiga and we'll
see what we get.
(FLAME ON!!!!)
Come on Ralph, get your head on straight. If I were running
dhrystones out of on chip cache, I would expect the 25MHz 68040 to be
50% faster than the 50MHz 68040. BUT I WAS BENCHMARKING SYSTEMS.
Using "real" application code that required lots of memory accesses,
in this case on a 1 Mbyte array. I like this particular program as a
benchmark because 1) it is small (about 2K source lines), 2) it is
very insensitive to compiler optimization, and 3) it has a good
balance between integer operations, branching code, and memory
references. The various Mac2's, including the 2fx, and the NeXT get
dragged down by poor bus speeds. I wanted to check how good the GVP
card was under stress. (Answer, good but expensive.)
If you do lots of floating point operations the 040 will blow the
68882 and most RSIC chipsets away. BUT I WAS TALKING ABOUT INTEGER
PERFORMANCE AND SAID SO. Different people use machines for different
things. Typically, I need to benchmark for integer and byte
manipulation operations, since the systems I deal are either used for
discrete event simulation and message processing or have attached
signal processors. (The Video Toaster is one hell of a signal
processor, but not the kind I usually get asked about. :-)
Last but not least: Don't insult Dhrystone, particularly Dhrystone
2.1. It is a very good and well designed benchmark. Just don't
believe anything vendors tell you about Dhrystone numbers. When I was
benchmarking a (name deleted to avoid singling out one of the guilty)
in the manufacturers demo facility, I got a Dhrystone figure less than
one third of what their marketing literature quoted. I got ahold of
their performance person in the manufacturing plant, and told him my
figure. I then "guessed" at 5 of the ways they had cheated to get the
quoted number but that left me about 25% short. He told me that the
marketing number used a timing package that excluded all system calls
and part of the procedure call overhead! Yeech.
It used to be, when the SPECmark first came out, the numbers were
trustworty. I've recently seen some quoted numbers which were worse
that Dhrystones.
I've personally done thorough benchmarking jobs on over thirty
systems. (And quick and dirty benchmarking of lots of others.) If you
don't do your own benchmarking, and know all the gotchas, almost every
marketdroid will try to pull considerable wool over your eyes.
Commodore is one of the few that don't. (But then again they don't need
to: The manual for my 2630 card: "...the A2630 may deliver a 400%
- 600% speed increase in most integer based operations." The lowest
improvement I have measured was 5.36x a base A2000 with FAST memory,
the highest 10.7x. Great show Dave Haynie.)
(Flame off.)
I guess that got it out of my system. It's just that it seems
all to often some procurement officer believes the marketdriods
claims, and then I (or someone else) gets called in to study the
"problem" with the software. It would be nice if the purchasers
believed the reports of the people they hired to evaluate the systems
instead of the vendors claims.
Loren Rittle
Actually not as preposterous as one NeXTer might think:
(the facts as I see them :-)
With identical memory sub-systems, Motorola has claimed that
an '040 will run about 3-4 times faster than a like '030 system
clocked at the same speed running the code, running under the
same operating system! Sounds good to me, let's start here.
1) GVP's memory sub-system (on the A3001 card at least) is better
than the orignal NeXT cube's memory sub-system. (I can and will
send proof, if needed) Maybe NeXT improved the memory sub-system
in the new design, who knows. In any event, GVP's was only slightly
better, so I won't worry about it. :-) I'll give the NeXT the
benifit of the doubt.
2) 040@25MHz vs. 030@50MHz, according to the above if these systems
were running the same code under the same OS, we could expect the
'040 system to be about 1.5 to 2 times faster. (Based upon seeing
that CPU bound programs really do run twice as fast on GVP 030@50MHz
vs GVP 030@25MHz)
3) Ah, now the wild-card, the OS! UNIX, even NeXT Mach has quite
a bit of overhead even when just running normal user processes.
AmigaOS being a multi-tasking OS has overhead also, of course, but
it is on the order of 10% (Yes I have made some measurments myself!),
as compared to 30% to 50% for UNIX (CS friend looked into this out
at ISU when I was an undergrad there.)
Let's not play a number game here, get out the UNIforum papers and look
for yourself.
Add all this up and what do we see:
Yes, an Amiga with 030@50MHz running AmigaOS could compare to a
NeXT 040@25MHz running UNIX. I can't wait for 040 boards for
the Amiga when we will be able to see the 040 really fly.
So see, Ralph, this statement that Sean makes is really not out
of line. In terms of how responsive a system feels, AmigaOS
wins hands down over UNIX (even UNIX running with GUI on a
really big powerful and costly machine). Enjoy your new NeXT
and leave the comments in comp.sys.next please!
Loren
--
``In short, this is the absolute coolest computer device ever invented!''
-Tom Denbo speaking about The VideoToaster by NewTek
``Think about NewTek's VideoToaster! Now think about the Amiga!''
Loren J. Rittle lrg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Loren Rittle
(Note the following is a request for peace, will a respected NeXT
person please quite the NeW NeXT fanatics who are posting messages
like crazy in OTHER newsgroups! I read comp.sys.next, I just don't
want to read about NeXT in comp.sys.* (where * != next))
Both machines use the 680x0, what on earth are we fighting about!
Both are much better than brain dead PC. Both have uses. Enough
is enough!
Get the NeXT crap out of comp.sys.amiga or you will see more
messages in comp.sys.next in one day then you have seen in the last
month, I mean it!
Loren Rittle
deserves to see it all. :-)
First seen in comp.sys.amiga, where else, posted by
-> bos...@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) <-:
>In article <EACHUS.90...@aries.linus.mitre.org> eac...@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>> (Flame Retardant) The Amiga system I saw was not cheap, in fact
>>it may have been more expensive than a 68040 NeXT with a color board
>>and monitor, but boy was it nice!
>>
>>I love that "color board and monitor".
>>
>>The NeXT "color board" is a 16.7 million color system. It uses a
>>33 MHz intel 80860 processor and has a dedicated JPEG compression processor.
>You can put up to 32 mb of ram on the NeXTdimension. Resolution is 1120x832.
>
>- Vareck Bostrom
>bos...@mist.cs.orst.edu
Yes, the NeXTdimension does look cute (I'm not sure that is the color
board he was talking about though, I'm *sure* you know that there is
also a NeXTslab with color.) OK, for starters the Amiga is a nice
system. And, of course, the NeXT with color (and without for some people)
is a nice system. I just don't want to read about it in comp.sys.amiga
AT LEAST CHANGE TO BLASTED SUBJECT LINE TO INCLUDE NeXT, next, Next or
neXT so *my* kill file will get it, thanks. See below for why *I* don't
care about high-end NeXT color systems. (look in my .sig)
Loren J. Rittle
(ps, I now think that it would be more than OK to crosspost replies
to all NeXT related messages that appear in comp.sys.amiga into
comp.sys.next as well as comp.sys.amiga! It is only fair that
all of comp.sys.next should be allowed to enjoy the enlightenment.
At least those that are not clearly marked as such in the subject line.)
Evan James Torrie
>Besides IBM, HP, Hitachi and Groupe Bull have all committed to
>shipping OSF1 based products. Nixdorf, Encore, Intel & Intergraph have
>also announced OSF1 products. (gee, all but the last three are OSF
>founders, and OSF1 is heavily based on the Encore Mach product...)
>Also, watch out for ANDF. If it delivers on it's promises, it'll trump
>ABI, and make shrink-wrap software for OSF platforms easier than
>shrink-wrap softare for MSDOS platforms.
This brings to mind another interesting discussion, namely the
technical superiority of OSF/1 to SVR4.
*** Putting flame suit on ***
In my humble opinion, you can characterise the two opposing Unix
versions as follows:
1. SVR4 - a conglomeration and accumulation of every hacky thing
done to Unix since its inception.
2. OSF/1 - throwing out all the hacky stuff and instead choosing
the technically superior solution to every problem.
Just take a look at the things that OSF have chosen, vs what SVR4
will have... for example, the multiprocessor Mach kernel, the
HP/Apollo networking stuff (vs what many people call "brain-damaged"
NFS), the Application Neutral Distribution Format, etc.
It seems ironic to me that Amiga users (known for rejecting old
existing standards, and instead taking the superior solution) are
touting the greatness of SVR4 (as opposed to Mach, for example, which
forms the basis of OSF/1)...
*** Taking flame suit off ***
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie. Stanford University, Class of 199? tor...@cs.stanford.edu
Today's maxim: All socialists are failed capitalists
Bob Laughlin
>Careful Loren. As a NeXT believer (I use one every day), I feel
>strongly about the machine. But I, like most other comp.sys.next
>subscribers have NEVER condoned the unreasonable and unwanted
>postings of the self appointed NeXT evangalists. My own feeling is
>that these people often present a negative image of NeXT rather than
>the positive one they intend.
I completely agree with this.
As a NeXT and Amiga user (and Amiga owner) I have a lot of
respect for both machines. Unfortunately the quality of input
from the NeXT crowd in this newsgroup borders on infantile
and tends to draw infantile responses from Amiga defenders.
The quality of discussion in comp.sys.next is much higher and I
think reflects better on the kind of person attracted to the
NeXT. Unlike some others I feel comp.sys.amiga IS an
appropriate place for discussing the relative merits of both
machines. I'd like to see a higher calibre of discussion is all.
--
Bob Laughlin laug...@cs.sfu.ca
Young-Kyu Yoo
>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.
Very misleading. System V Release 4 is an attempt to make SysV the Unix
standard by giving it the power and completeness of BSD Unix. Meanwhile,
the people behind BSD are working on 4.4BSD, which may very well leave
System V Release 4 in the dust.
There have been two Unix standards in the past: BSD and SysV. BSD is
generally considered the more complete and powerful implementation. SysV
is popular because it has AT&T's backing and is standard on many business
machines. However, it has lacked BSD's completeness, and Release 4 is an
attempt to address this. It remains to be seen how successful this
attempt will be. Meanwhile, BSD marches forward toward 4.4BSD.
At any rate, the NeXT is not a great machine because it is a Unix machine.
It is a great machine because it gives you the power of Unix without making
you deal with Unix directly. A typical NeXT user should never have to
learn vi, grep, ls, or any other Unix command. A typical NeXT user should
have to know nothing about what BSD stands for (Berkeley Standard
Distribution). The equivalent can't be said about the users of X Windows
OpenLook (the GUI for Amiga's Unix).
Vareck Bostrom
>In article <14...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, cle...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>multi-processors (this was a wise move, me thinks). Perhaps you think
>that BSD isn't a standard. Well, then you are wrong.
BSD is most certanily a standard. More of a standard, imho, than ATT is.
I hate att unix, r4 might be ok (the docs look like bsd docs), but
r3 sucks major time. SunOS is a weird cross between bsd and att, but it
is far more bsdish than attsysvish.
Mach CANNOT support mulitipul CPU's AT THIS TIME. It is a priority to set
up, and shouldn't be too long now. Once that happens, could you imagine
the NeXTcube with a accellerator? The main cpu a 68040 and 4 other
68040's (symmetric multiprocessing, of course. There would be no "main"
cpu -- imagine that, though). We're talking about a cube that could handle
60+ users!! Geesh, easly 60+ users. As a one user machine, it would be
beautiful..
Mach is really good for I/O, as is the NeXT. Also, the Mach kenal
(kernal , that is) is tiny compared to attr4 kernals, and other bsd
kernals.
- Vareck Bostrom
bos...@mist.cs.orst.edu
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++ Vareck Bostrom ++
++ bos...@mist.cs.orst.edu ++
++ bostrov%st...@cs.uoregon.edu ++
++ ++
++ All this signifigance ++
++ what does it mean? ++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sean Cunningham
I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this
does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good.
I'm more concerned about when, and for how much, I'll be able to buy Amiga
UNIX for my A3000. I'll definately have to get another HD (only have 50MB),
and some more RAM (4MB) before I even consider it though.
Sean
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham
ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!se...@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810
INET: se...@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________
// | * All opinions expressed herein |
HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS |
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Helmut Neumann
you can only get the advantages of the 040 with an adequate RAM-Design
and if you can use the new Cache-Modes (delayed write back etc.) correctly.
OS 1.3 and 2.0 can not correctly use these new Modes, so the advantage will only
be seen under a new OS like Unix and if you add additional RAM to the 040-Board.
Simply adding the 040 to the A3000 only raises the FPU-Performance.
Bye, Helmut.
Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer
DEC _IS_ embracing SVR4, according to a blurb I read in a Unix mag about a
month or two ago. Caused quite a chucle around our office.
Your Unix rag may be wrong. OSF1 is a very nice system indeed (at
least for as little as I've looked at it), and DEC has committed to
it's next major Ultrix release being based on OSF1.
Note that this doesn't mean that DEC won't release a SysVR4 based OS.
After all, we've committed to doing a POSIX-compliant version of VMS.
Besides IBM, HP, Hitachi and Groupe Bull have all committed to
shipping OSF1 based products. Nixdorf, Encore, Intel & Intergraph have
also announced OSF1 products. (gee, all but the last three are OSF
founders, and OSF1 is heavily based on the Encore Mach product...)
Also, watch out for ANDF. If it delivers on it's promises, it'll trump
ABI, and make shrink-wrap software for OSF platforms easier than
shrink-wrap softare for MSDOS platforms.
<mike
--
Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer
Really? I don't think so. Running X on a MIPS magnum or a DEC5100 (with
whatever ontop of it) blows away the ami. Even the 040 ami and the 040
NeXT.
I wouldn't bet on that last one. The the DEC 5100 is a figment of your
imagination (unless you've got an EFT of a new machine that I haven't
heard of, which is unlikely - we get them for IFT before they go EFT).
The currenlty released DECStations are the 2100, the 3100, and the
5000/200 line. These use the R2000 @12MHz, @16MHz, and the R3000
@25MHz, respectively. I use the DS3100 on a daily basis (I'm sitting
in front of it now).
It's a killer machine - no question about that. It's the first Unix
workstation I've run into that could consistently shuffle windows
faster than my Amiga 1000. But it doesn't keep up with my Amiga 3000;
not for graphics, at least.
An '040 equipped Amiga 3000 should easily be 2+ times as fast as a
stock Amiga 3000. The DS5000/200 (sans graphics options) is 70% faster
than the DS3100. The '040 based Amiga should blow it away for
graphics. It's even possible that the '040 based Amiga will have a
faster CPU; I've heard quotes on the '040 up to 25 MIPS, whereas DEC
quotes the DS5000/200 at 24 MIPS (once again, I wouldn't bet on that).
Note that the DS5000/200 can have graphics boards added, the high end
being a high-speed i860 (it's possible I've got the wrong intel chip).
That will almost certainly blow away anything you can put on an Amiga.
On the other hand, I could buy 15-20 A3000/40's for the cost of one,
but you can't parallelize graphics that way.
<mike
--
Vareck Bostrom
> (Flame Retardant) The Amiga system I saw was not cheap, in fact
>it may have been more expensive than a 68040 NeXT with a color board
>and monitor, but boy was it nice!
I love that "color board and monitor".
The NeXT "color board" is a 16.7 million color system. It uses a
33 MHz intel 80860 processor and has a dedicated JPEG compression processor.
You can put up to 32 mb of ram on the NeXTdimension. Resolution is 1120x832.
- Vareck Bostrom
Vareck Bostrom
>
> Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030.
> I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What
Though I do favor the NeXT over the Ami, I must say, that statement is
incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not
in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second,
I have tested a 68030 / 50 MHz (scion.cs.orst.edu, a HP 9000/375 -- reguardless
of what nslookup says) and that gets 20000-22000 dhrys. Yes, the 25mhz
040 is faster than the 50 mhz 030, but BARELY faster. Now, if you
are talking about floating point, you are absoultly correct, the
68040/25 gets between 2.0 and 3.3 MFLOPS, the 68882 at 50 mhz gets
about 0.4 MFLOPS.
Raytraceing on the 040 next seems to be VERY fast, MUCH MUCH faster than
any 030, true. MUCH faster than the ss-1+ (SPARC+Weitek 3170 at 25 MHz)
in fact. And a bit slower than the HP9000/845, and MUCH slower than
an Ardent Titan-3 with vector. (Also MUCH slower than a IBM RS/6000
POWER system, but hey, it runs AIX (puke here) so who cares!?).
Anyway, I can't wait for the 60 MHz 040. Or the 60 MHz POWER, for that
matter. Wouldn't that be interesting, as 20 MHz POWER blasts everything
already. Later.
- Vareck Bostrom
Vareck Bostrom
>3) Ah, now the wild-card, the OS! UNIX, even NeXT Mach has quite
>a bit of overhead even when just running normal user processes.
>AmigaOS being a multi-tasking OS has overhead also, of course, but
>it is on the order of 10% (Yes I have made some measurments myself!),
>as compared to 30% to 50% for UNIX (CS friend looked into this out
Mach is MUCH better than reg. Unix, though a bit worse than AmigaOS. Not
much though. Overhead is somewhere like 15% for Mach.
>
>Add all this up and what do we see:
>Yes, an Amiga with 030@50MHz running AmigaOS could compare to a
>NeXT 040@25MHz running UNIX. I can't wait for 040 boards for
>the Amiga when we will be able to see the 040 really fly.
>So see, Ralph, this statement that Sean makes is really not out
>of line. In terms of how responsive a system feels, AmigaOS
>wins hands down over UNIX (even UNIX running with GUI on a
>really big powerful and costly machine). Enjoy your new NeXT
Really? I don't think so. Running X on a MIPS magnum or a DEC5100 (with
whatever ontop of it) blows away the ami. Even the 040 ami and the 040
NeXT. A POWER/530 will crush the ami and the NeXT, and I mean crush
on the order that a Cray YMP/8 will crush a HP9000/220. Admittidly,
I havent seen any good games for the POWER. (or the cray, for that matter).
Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer
Just take a look at the things that OSF have chosen, vs what SVR4
will have... for example, the multiprocessor Mach kernel, the
HP/Apollo networking stuff (vs what many people call "brain-damaged"
NFS), the Application Neutral Distribution Format, etc.
Actually, most of the spiffyness in OSF1 (that's the way it's spelled
on OSFs literature) isn't from Mach, it's from somewhere else. For
instance, the multi-threaded kernel is from Encore (based on Mach,
though). It uses Posix threads instead of the Mach version. The
dynamic loader is from OSF. Ditto for the user-mode stream modules and
(I think) the user-mode memory managers.
Of course, Mach makes all this possible in a reasonable manner. I
don't even want to think of trying to do most of this in a
conventional Unix kernel.
It seems ironic to me that Amiga users (known for rejecting old
existing standards, and instead taking the superior solution) are
touting the greatness of SVR4 (as opposed to Mach, for example, which
forms the basis of OSF/1)...
It's even more ironic when you consider a list of really nice features
of AmigaDOS: shared libraries; user-mode mountable (and dismountable)
device drivers; the ability for applications to put hooks in the input
stream; a message passing kernel. Lightweight tasks in a shared
address space; runtime reconfiguration of just about everything.
OSF1 has all those things. VR4 may have one, but it's not required to
meet the SVID. If the NeXT moves to OSF1, it'll also have all those
things.
Of course, it'll _still_ look like Unix. But you can't have it all.
<mike
--
Raoul Rodriguez
O.K... TO settle this price/performance thing, I went down to the local
campus computer store (where they sell NeXT machines) to get a first
hand look at the machine, and also to get the prices... And, this is
what I found...
There are currently 4 diffrent NeXT setups... and all 4 setups come with
two diffrent Hard Drives, 105 or 340 (with the 105 you don't get a lot
of software, but with 340 you get a bunch). The prices in "("'s are the
educational prices, the plain prices are the retail price. The dealer
wasn't sure on the last three cube setups... so they have a "+" after
them...
1) The NeXTStation (The Slab) (Greyscale)
- 105 HD $4,995 ($3,328) (Don't forget to add tax)
- 340 HD $7,995 ($5,052)
2) The NextStation with color (up to 4032)
- 105 HD $7,995 ($5,774)
- 340 HD $9,995 ($7,941)
3) The Cube (Greyscale)
- 105 HD $7,995 ($5,774)
- 340 HD $10,000+ ($8,302)
4) The Cube w/color (16.7 million (32 bit))
- 105 HD $15,000+ ($10,194)
- 340 HD $17,000+ ($12,722)
The NeXTStation (Slab) is made to be unexpanded, there are no slots.
The Cube however has three slots. The greyscale cube can be upgraded
to color for $2995 for the board, and a 20 inch color monitor will run
and additional $1850.
The NeXT family uses the Scsi II interface, so, there are not that many
drives out there, upgrading your storage space is moderatly difficult
because there are only two companies that manufacture SCSI II drives
(Quantum just jumped in, so I didn't include them), and the prices are
high compared to regular SCSI. (I can get those as well)
All and all, I think that the machine to compare to the A3000UX would
be the NeXTStation with color, and that runs at $5774 (educ. disc) for
the 105, but the 3000 comes with a 200 HD... so tack on another $1000
for 100 more megs of hard drive space for the NeXTStation (color), and
the machine that compares to the 3000 actually costs ~$6,500 (educ.disc)
and ~$9,000 retail (on both prices, you still need to add tax)
All and all, I think we need to re evaulate the price/performance
comparison...
Raoul Rodriguez
"People may not believe what you say, but they will always believe
what you do."
Young-Kyu Yoo
post is just to answer a couple of questions an Amiga fan asked:
dd...@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) asks:
>1) What is the end-user's price for the NeXT?
$5000 for the NeXTStation (30% discount to developers and 30-40% to educational
buyers). That's $5000 without a discount.
>3) ... we are talking about OpenLook->X software applications, not AmigaOS
The main body of NeXT applications are NeXTStep applications. NeXTStep is
the GUI and user/programmer environment on the NeXT.
Ralph Seguin
>incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not
>in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second,
Please do not base performance evluations on pathetic benchmarks like
dhrystones. Something like ray-tracing, FFTs, massive matrix inversions,
etc. Things that really accomplish something are a better indicator of speed.
>POWER system, but hey, it runs AIX (puke here) so who cares!?).
Kinda buggy isn't it :)?
>Anyway, I can't wait for the 60 MHz 040. Or the 60 MHz POWER, for that
>matter. Wouldn't that be interesting, as 20 MHz POWER blasts everything
>already. Later.
60 MHz 040? Hmmm... you'll be waiting a long time. They did, after all
just start shipping the 25 MHz. There are also many problems involved
in producing chips with clockrates that high.
Now for the ultimate: A professor here that I did some research for is
currently working on a MIPS R2000 clone with a 4ns clock. For those of
you who don't do inversions too well, a 4 ns clock is a 250 MHz clock.
Make for a peppy DECstation :)
See ya, Ralph
Ralph Seguin gilg...@dip.eecs.umich.edu
536 South Forest Apt. #915 gilg...@caen.engin.umich.edu
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 662-4805
Ralph Seguin
>I havent seen any good games for the POWER. (or the cray, for that matter).
The best game of all time for X machines is Xtank. A must have :)
Runs on a Cray too :)
See ya, Ralph
Ralph Seguin gilg...@dip.eecs.umich.edu
Ethan Solomita
>
>I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this
>does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good.
>
essentially automatic. So basically just think of it as adding
$75 to the cost of the machine.
Yes, ANY developer can buy it, including certified, which
is $50/year.
-- Ethan
Woody Allen on Los Angeles:
"I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only
cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?"
Ralph Seguin
Nonsense. Almost all instructions have been optimized to execute in fewer
cycles. Granted a good 32 bit memory design helps considerably, but you
will DEFINITELY see a good performance increase by just adding an 040.
craig@uunet!bandw
@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren Rittle) writes:
>Get the NeXT crap out of comp.sys.amiga or you will see more
>messages in comp.sys.next in one day then you have seen in
>the last month, I mean it!
Careful Loren. As a NeXT believer (I use one every day), I feel
strongly about the machine. But I, like most other comp.sys.next
subscribers have NEVER condoned the unreasonable and unwanted
postings of the self appointed NeXT evangalists. My own feeling is
that these people often present a negative image of NeXT rather than
the positive one they intend.
What was at first informative for members of other groups became a
barrage that now seems to be running it's course. Please allow it to
die naturally. At worst, make note of the offending authors and try
to settle this via e-mail. What you suggest amounts to a sort of
network terrorism that is a terrific example of the "two wrongs
making a right" principle.
Evan James Torrie
>In article <EACHUS.90...@aries.linus.mitre.org> eac...@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>>In article <1990Dec5.0...@engin.umich.edu> gilg...@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) writes:
>>
>> Preposterous. The 68040 at 25 MHz is MUCH faster than ANY 68030.
>> I'd like to see the benchmarks and results you used. What
>Though I do favor the NeXT over the Ami, I must say, that statement is
>incorrect. The 68040 is NOT "MUCH" faster than ANY 68030, at least not
>in interger performance. The 68040 / 25 gets around 23000 dhrys / second,
>I have tested a 68030 / 50 MHz (scion.cs.orst.edu, a HP 9000/375 -- reguardless
>of what nslookup says) and that gets 20000-22000 dhrys. Yes, the 25mhz
How much of that is due to the difference in compilers?? HP's
compilers are well known for producing very good results on Dhrystone.
Have you tried running Dhrystone on any of HP's 040 machines?
I recall a Motorola employee posting results on comp.arch a while
back which gave around 35000 dhrys/second for an 040 at 25MHz.
Gunda O'Neal ESCO
>I hate to say it but it looks like war... and of course comp.sys.next
>deserves to see it all. :-)
Mind, keeping it there ? ;-]
--
Gunda O'Neal, CATS- EUROPE
AMIGA Developer Support Administration
UUCP: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmehq!gunda
"If you try to please everybody,somebody is not going to like it"
Darin D Sheriff
>In article <12...@hubcap.clemson.edu>, dd...@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug) writes:
>> jal...@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>>
>>>I am not very interested in comparing the 68040 A3000UX until it exists.
>>
>>>And as it seems that 68030 A3000UX is about the same price that 68040
>>>NeXT it is not difficult to decide which one to take (for me!). There is
>>>nothing very special in the A3000UX, after all. (I don't care for a
>>>forthcoming "the only right thing" Unix you were talking about.)
>>
>> Ah, a few things I want to throw in here (there is a lot of re-hashing)
>>
>> 1) What is the end-user price for the NeXT's? (not the devel., ed.)
>> Business will buy the cheapest (hey, its a business, right?)
>
>Gee. I think that the suggested retail price of NeXTStation is $4995.
>The educ. price is about $3200. This includes 8MB RAM, 105MB HD,
>Megapixel display, etc.
>
>I would really like to know if that $4000 is the EDUCATIONAL or RETAIL
>price for A3000UX. If it is educational, I wonder what is the point in
>paying nearly $1000 more for a system with 68030 instead of 68040 and
>without DSP. I also doubt the Amiga system comes with as good display
>than the NeXTs.
>
>Even if there was a 68040 Amiga for about $3000 educational, I would
>still choose NeXT - because of DSP and the wonderful development environment.
>
> Jouni
GRRRRRRR!!!! I thought I got rid of all of you with the kill option.
Kindly move this to the comp.sys.next area. If I wanted to know all there
is about the Next, I would read the appropriate group. (Actually I do but
that is not the point.) I read comp.sys.amiga because I am interested in
news about the amiga not the Next.
--
Darin Sheriff. Just a College student with an Amiga.
"According to the classical laws of Aerodynamics, it is impossible for a
bumblebee to fly." --- DR WHO ---
Disclaimer: Wasn't me.
Guy Harris
>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?
Mike Ford Ditto
>It's even more ironic when you consider a list of really nice features
>device drivers;
I'll have to disagree there. AmigaDOS does NOT have user-mode device
drivers. AmigaDOS does not have user-mode anything. In AmigaDOS,
every byte of code that ever runs runs in the equivalent of kernel
mode, with access to every bit of physical memory and every hardware
register. This is exactly the sort of thing that Mach avoids, making
Mach superior to "traditional" Unix kernels and AmigaDOS in its
entirety.
>OSF1 has all those things. VR4 may have one, but it's not required to
>meet the SVID.
What does that mean? That OS features aren't important unless they're
in the SVID? I don't think any real user gives a flying fart about
the SVID.
Besides, SVR4 has all of "those things" that you mentioned (I'm
stretching a bit on "application-controlled hooks in the input
stream", which sounds like a window-system function, not an O.S. one).
-=] Mike [=-
Dale Gold
> Unlike some others I feel comp.sys.amiga IS an
> appropriate place for discussing the relative merits of both
> machines. I'd like to see a higher calibre of discussion is all.
> --
Since comp.sys.amiga is one of the highest volume newsgroups on the
Net, maybe comp.sys.next would be a more efficient forum for all these
arguments. I'll happily read it there when I've got time to kill.
With the vote for the division of comp.sys.amiga going on, I hope that
you folks who are enjoying this will spare a thought for those of us
who are getting this on our machines at home. It's a waste of our
limited time, resources and family phone lines to have these endless
computer wars transmitted to us every day.
Please do us a favour and vote YES for a newsgroup for comparisons/wars.
Cheers, Dale
--
/%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%\
| | You gotta have smelled a lot of |
| dg...@basso.actrix.gen.nz | mule manure before you can sing |
| | like a hillbilly. Hank Williams |
\%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%/
Young-Kyu Yoo
following, I feel compelled to respond>
>The NeXT family uses the Scsi II interface, so, there are not that many
>drives out there
SCSI II is backward compatible with ole-fashioned SCSI with a $49 part from
NeXT. Think of moving from SCSI to SCSI II as moving from the 030 to the 040.
You get backward compatibility and more features and performance (SCSI II
can handle higher data transfer rates, although I don't know if NeXT takes
advantage of this feature).
>All in all, I think that the machine to compare to the Amiga 3000UX would
>be the NeXTstation with color, and that runs at $5574 (educ. disc.) for
>the 105, but the 3000 comes with a 200 HD...so tack on another $1000
>for 100 megs more hard drive space for the NeXTstation Color....
The Amiga 3000UX comes with a 100 MB drive, the 200 MB drive will cost you
extra, as on the NeXT. True, the NeXT doesn't give you color in the
base NeXTStation, but if your primary concern isn't color the NeXT gives
you power and features not found in the Amiga 3000ux for $3000-$3500.
The DSP, the 040 chip, the Megapixel display (the optional color display on
the Amiga 3000ux does not have Megapixel resolution) with a 17" screen,
the bundled software, NeXTStep, et al. By the way, the educational prices
you mention only apply to your school. Each school has its own educational
pricing for the NeXT, the differences arising from school markups, the volume
of machines ordered by the school from NeXT, etc. You can get better deals
than the $3328 NeXTstation available from your school at another school.
There are also worse deals out there.
Barry Shein
From: brn...@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
Sean Reifschneider
> to work with my hands tied behind my back.
> [...]
I'd have to say that's just personal experience. You could get somone that
works on SYSV, and take them to BSD, and they'd probably say the same thing.
When I started working on PCs a year or so ago, I had to use Brief (editor)
until they could get a copy of MKS VI in. I felt like my hands were tied
in brief. Them getting VI for me improved my productivity immensely. Why?
Breif isn't inherantly inferrior to VI (people I work with will argue the
opposite quite strongly). It's just that I've been using VI for the last
5 years as my editor/word processor (with nroff).
Can't wait until I get my 3000UX!
Sean
--
From the desk of Sean Reifschneider. Isn't Amiga UUCP great? Thanks Matt.
uunet.uu.net!ccncsu.colostate.edu!ncuug!miranda!seanr
Dan Bernstein
> 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
Robert E. Huebner
|> I really want this thread to end. But when I see misinformation like the
|> following, I feel compelled to respond>
Gee. Me too!
|>(the optional color display on
|> the Amiga 3000ux does not have Megapixel resolution) with a 17" screen,
The optional card for the Amiga offers 1024X1024 resolution with appropraite
multisync. As for size of the monitor, that up to the user. The neat
thing about the Amiga is that you have a choice of peripherals. You don't
have to buy the NeXT monitor, you can purchase a well established unit like
the NEC 5D or any other you choose. Choice! Expandability.. Well, you get
the idea.
Also, if you really want this thread to end why, in the name of god, did
you post 11 articles on this thread on December 8th alone! From my end, it
seems as if you are accountable for more than 50% of the posts (and
misinformation) on this topic. If you really want the thread to end,
I think you know what to do!
Robert Huebner
hue...@aerospace.aero.org
The Aerospace Corporation
Checkpoint Technologies
>In article <MWM.90De...@fenris.relay.pa.dec.com> m...@fenris.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes:
>>of AmigaDOS: [ ... ] user-mode mountable (and dismountable)
>>device drivers;
>
>I'll have to disagree there. AmigaDOS does NOT have user-mode device
>drivers. AmigaDOS does not have user-mode anything. In AmigaDOS,
>every byte of code that ever runs runs in the equivalent of kernel
>mode, with access to every bit of physical memory and every hardware
Others will disagree with you. IO is done by Exec "tasks" (or ADOS
"processes"), which run with the PSW set to "user mode", not "supervisor
mode". However, I have to essentially agree. IO space is addressable
while in "user mode", and the only other thing the supervisor mode can
do, disable interrupts, can be done easily in user mode by poking the
Paula INTENA register (indeed, this is the system-defined way to control
interrupt delivery).
--
First comes the logo: C H E C K P O I N T T E C H N O L O G I E S / /
\\ / /
Then, the disclaimer: All expressed opinions are, indeed, opinions. \ / o
Now for the witty part: I'm pink, therefore, I'm spam! \/
Sean Cunningham
I'd also like to see this thread end...I'm tired of wading through it to get
at messages of importance.
The Amiga (all of'em) and the NeXT (all of'em) are good, useful systems. Each
has strong points. Each is severely underrated by the "greater" computing
community.
I'd own a NeXT in any of its versions before I'd own a Macintosh...and I think
I'd go back to a c64 before I'd use any platform based on an Intel chip, with
the exception of the i860. But simply put, if I owned ANY other machine
besides an Amiga I couldn't do the things I do everyday, both for enjoyment
and profit.
Sean
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham
ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!se...@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810
INET: se...@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________
// | * All opinions expressed herein |
HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS |
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer
>meet the SVID.
What does that mean? That OS features aren't important unless they're
in the SVID? I don't think any real user gives a flying fart about
the SVID.
Actually, it means that you can't depend on an OS feature (in SVR4)
unless it's in the SVID. After all, someone may not implement it.
Besides, SVR4 has all of "those things" that you mentioned (I'm
stretching a bit on "application-controlled hooks in the input
stream", which sounds like a window-system function, not an O.S. one).
Nope, it's not a window-system function, though it can be used for
that. It can also be used to add protocol layers to a network
connection. Streams gives you the ability to take a data filtering
module and add it to any open connection that support streams. OSF1
lets you do that for modules that weren't compiled into the kernel.
As for SVR4 having all those things, that'd sure surprise me.
let's see:
user-mountable & dismountable file systems: the ability to take a
device driver off of tape, put it on disk, then mount it and use it.
Notice that the system didn't reboot while this was going on. You can
take the driver out if you decide you don't want it, or want to
install a different version for testing.
And SVR4 has a message passing kernel? They threw out the monolithic
monitor that's been the heart of AT&T (and BSD) Unix for the last 20
years?
Posix threads - that's now part of the SVID, so I can depend on them
being on every SVR4 system?
The ability to reconfigure disk devices, the virtual memory manager
(even adding new ones), adding new file system, adding the ability to
load a new type of object file - all while the system is running,
without rebooting it - that's all in SVR4?
And they still call it "System V"????
<mike
--
Dave Haynie
>>WROONG. SLC is much slower than a 68040-NeXT. NeXTstation is supposed to
>>be even faster than a SparcStation 1+.
>Cosmic! I had wondered whether reports that the 68040 would
>beat out many SPARC chips was just overzealous Amiga crowing.
To read the "spec sheets" (actually, manufacturer's hype sheets; the spec
sheets are only rated in nanoseconds), the SLC cranks out 12 MIPS, the 25MHz
68040 itself is capable of up to 20 MIPS (which says absolutely nothing about
how fast a real 68030 computer will go, since the system design determines
how much of the potential can actually be reached), and a 25MHz 68030 kicks
up about 6 MIPS.
However, those are chip numbers and may have little to do with real world
performance. A good model for this is the Personal Workstation review this
month of the IBM PowerStation systems. These little workstations have this
supposedly amazing "America" chipset, IBM's second generation RISC effort,
and at least at the time of their release, set the record for SPECmarks on a
desktop system.
The PW folks seem pretty good at cranking out benchmark numbers; they run CPU,
FPU, and Disk tests, and good ones like SPEC and AIM. They found, for a single
person running a single program, the RS6000s do kick some butt, on both hard
disk (well, it was UNIX, and they compare it to crawlers like PCs and Macs as
well as disk-wise real computers), integer, and floating point. When they run
a multitasking benchmark like AIM, the thing looks more like a really expensive
'386 system. That RISC design, which does get speed from being superscalar,
is extremely sensitive to the software its running. More traditional RISC
architectures, like the SPARC and the 68040 (which will act very much like a
RISC in real benchmarks, I suspect), aren't quite so sensitive, but still only
perform like the marketing folks claim when they have full pipelines and all.
The 68030 doesn't hit the same peaks, but it's also very hard to slow down with
multitasking.
All of which means, don't pay too much attention to marketing hype like "MIPS"
numbers. When reality sets in, I'm sure the 68040 will be a nice improvement
over the 68030, but I don't think you're often going to see 3x-6x speed
increases outside of bad benchmarks and perhaps some finely turned special
purpose single threaded number crunching jobs. It also helps to know ahead of
time why you're buying this computer and what you expect to do with it. Lots
of us techies want faster machines, and a good percentage of that crowd may
even have a real use for them.
>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
Chris The Bartman Seaman
> Chill people (those who've been flaming me for writing about the NeXT).
Not on your life.
I must say that congratulations are in order. We have a winner in the
coveted -MB- award for December (and it's only the 10th as I write
this!). Young-Kyu Yoo clearly takes the cake for the most arrogant,
ill-advised, mis-placed articles ever to grace comp.sys.AMIGA.
NOW SHUT UP!
Regards,
Chris
--
Chris (Insert phrase here) Seaman | ___-/^\-___ qatul batlh.
cse...@gateway.sequent.com <or> | //__--\O/--__\\ qatul Huch.
...!uunet!sequent!cseaman | // \\ qatul roj.
The Home of the Killer Smiley | `\ /'
Thad P Floryan
Oh? How quickly some forget; sigh. I clearly stated there are some parts
of BSD which are DEFICIENT (not "missing") when compared to SysV, and, as ONE
example, cited the curses issue which recently caused me much grief.
"System V Fanatic"? Gee, as previously posted, I even tested curses/termcap
on my own BSD machine, and there are several more available to me. A true
"SysV Fanatic" wouldn't have a BSD box in the same room as a SysV box.
Personally, I consider myself more an Amiga-fanatic! :-)
The point of my continued participation in this thread was to elicit some
informed statements as to why some think BSD is so much greater than SysV.
To date, none have surfaced. Not in this thread nor in the years I've been
asking the same question elsewhere.
The ONLY comments I'm getting from BSD-fanatics is "BSD is better!" without
any supporting evidence. Consider Kent Paul Dolan's recent posting as just
another example (my original comments preceded by "> "):
You had to pay a BSD license on top of a SYSV license.
[...]
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.
[...]
> {Re: AT&T's license fees}
Gee, I just saw it as corporate greed, bureacratic stupidity,
development incompetence, idea infertility, and hostility to their
customer base.
[...]
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, 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.
[...]
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.
[...]
> 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. ;-)
Opinions, opinions, opinions.
BSD's "open sources"? Sure, if you already had the SysV source.
Then comments about "hands tied" WRT SysV, and SysV being an "insult to user";
more opinions without examples.
Then the "undefined" ``programmer development environment'' of BSD. And what
might THAT be? If it's just a collection of progams and utilities, then that
is NOT BSD-specific since such programs can be ported to or installed upon any
system of one's choosing (as I previously stated, and have demonstrated to my
satisfaction re: emacs, bison, HDB uucp, smail3.1.19, networking utils, etc.).
The fact that such "programmer development environment" utilities may have
been first developed on an BSD system is irrelevant. Back in the early '60s
such programs were developed on SDS-930 and PDP-10 systems because, then,
THOSE machines were readibly available to university students and researchers.
You'd be surprised to learn how many good programs from back then I've since
ported to TOPS-20 and again to the UNIX (and other) boxes I use today.
And I was using ftp, telnet, network sockets, etc. LONG before BSD UNIX even
existed, on the ARPAnet host systems such as Tenex, ITS, SAIL, &c back in 1970;
that year is significant, because that's the "birth" year of UNIX at AT&T, 20
years ago. Those ARPA networking capabilities and protocols were ported to
BSD UNIX from those other systems much later (but NO earlier than 1977 when
1.0BSD surfaced).
Point is, you use what machine(s) are available at the time. The fact that
a given program runs on machine A does not automatically make machine B an
inferior, substandard system simply because a given program hasn't been ported
to it.
Again, when comparing SYSTEMS, one must restrict the discussion to the
kernel and its intrinsic support libraries. Ancillary support programs can
be ported to (practically) ANY system.
I've been stating facts; most everyone else has been stating opinion and
getting emotional about the issue. I suppose this is not the time nor place
to discuss the superiority of SysV's ksh to BSD's csh, or .... :-) :-)
Thad Floryan [ th...@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
Tommy Petersson
-In article <61...@crash.cts.com> se...@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes:
->
->I'm aware of the DEVELOPER A3000UX bundles, but I'm not a developer...so this
->does me, and a large percentage of the greater Amiga community, little good.
->
- The cost to become a developer is $75, and approval is
-essentially automatic. So basically just think of it as adding
-$75 to the cost of the machine.
- Yes, ANY developer can buy it, including certified, which
-is $50/year.
- -- Ethan
-
I just wonder if You can buy a Developer A3000UX bundle in Sweden, even if
You register as a developer... :-( No? I didn't think so...
- Woody Allen on Los Angeles:
-
- "I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only
-cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?"
Tommy Petersson
Barry Shein
>BSD's "open sources"? Sure, if you already had the SysV source.
Much of the BSD sources are right now sitting in UUNET's anon FTP
area, and the rest are heading there. So much for that. That includes
kernel source.
BSD was/is vastly superior to SYSV, at least pre-SYSVR4 which
basically cloned most of BSD so what's there to say? The fast file
system alone was enough to make you run the other way from systems
which lacked it. Not to mention SYSV's lack of any backup facility. A
stable file store is kind of important, at least to me.
Chris Siebenmann
| xant...@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
| 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
Rodney Ricks
In article <MWM.90De...@raven.relay.pa.dec.com> m...@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes:
>I wouldn't bet on that last one. The the DEC 5100 is a figment of your
>imagination (unless you've got an EFT of a new machine that I haven't
>heard of, which is unlikely - we get them for IFT before they go EFT).
> whatever ontop of it) blows away the ami. Even the 040 ami and the 040
> NeXT.
Hmmm, as far as I've heard, there are no '040 Amiga's available yet, either.
Nor are there even any '040 add-on boards available for the Amiga.
It's AMAZING how someone can compare TWO non-existent systems, and state
that one BLOWS AWAY the other, isn't it??? :-) :-)
Rodney
--
///
///
Rodney Ricks, Morehouse College \\\///
\\//
Mike Ford Ditto
>Actually, it means that you can't depend on an OS feature (in SVR4)
>unless it's in the SVID. After all, someone may not implement it.
Someone may not implement all of Mach or OSF/1, too. In fact, someone
could make a Mach system that didn't meet the SVID! Ooohhh! Horrors!
You don't care, you say? Ah, that's my point. Nobody cares about the
SVID. Not me, not Next, not AT&T, not OSF, not IEEE. If *you* care
about the SVID, then make that one of *your* purchasing requirements.
I think you're a bit confused on the difference between System V and
the SVID. The SVID had two purposes:
1) An application writer can depend on the specified source-level
and command-level capabilities, knowing that the application
will then run on any "System V compatible" system.
2) An OS vendor, selling any operating system, whether Unix-
derived, OSF/1, VMS, or whatever, can claim to be "System V
compatible" by meeting the specifications of the SVID.
These purposes apply to any operating system - SysV, Mach, whatever.
You seem to be arguing that SysV systems are limited by the SVID.
Your right, but in the wrong direction: the SVID is a *lower* limit.
OSF/1 does not promise to implement everything in the SVID; SysV does.
This is independent of any other promises they make, like POSIX, etc.
A user who cares about SVID will buy an SVID compatible system. A
user who cares about POSIX will by a POSIX compatible system. A user
who cares about m68k ABI will buy an m68k ABI compatible system. A
user who cares about ${foo} woudl be stupid to reject a system because
it is also ${bar} compliant, but that's what you seem to be doing.
The time when some people cared about SVID was before there were
*real* standards like POSIX. I have heard that AT&T has no plans to
create any more SVID editions: nobody cares. POSIX, X/OPEN, XPG/3 are
more legitimate standards, and for the most part are supersets of the
SVID. The old SVID still exists, and people can still make OS's that
are SVID-compliant for those of you who care, but the real world has
moved on.
If you're afraid that someone will make a stripped-down version of
some OS, that's a legitimate concern. But it's equally likely to
happen to OSF/1 as SVR4. If someone takes some major essential
subsystem out of an OS, such as BSD compatibility or POSIX compliance,
I say no one will buy such a thing, and therefore there is no need to
discuss it in this thread, where we're trying (I think) to compare
industry-standard open systems.
What users care about are:
"Will my program that I wrote on {4.2BSD,SVR3} two years
ago compile and run correctly?"
"Will this ANSI C POSIX-compatibile program I got off
the net compile and run correctly?"
"Will this application I bought at the computer store work?"
What programmers care about are:
"Can I write code to the {POSIX,FIPS,foobar,...} standard
and do my debugging and testing on the system, knowing
that my software will almost certainly work on other
platforms meeting the same standard?"
"Does it have the neato frobnitz feature that will let me
access such-and-such resource in a convenient and efficient
way?"
None of these things are affected by SVID, unless SVID is the standard
you choose to write code for.
> "application-controlled hooks in the input
> stream", which sounds like a window-system function, not an O.S. one).
[ ... ]
> It can also be used to add protocol layers to a network
>connection. Streams gives you the ability to take a data filtering
>module and add it to any open connection that support streams. OSF1
>lets you do that for modules that weren't compiled into the kernel.
I'll address the not-compiled-into-the-kernel issue in a moment, but I
think you also meant to point out that these modules can run in user
mode contexts. That is a feature which impresses me and is a
significant advantage of OSF/1. But otherwise, SVR4 seems to have the
same capability here.
>As for SVR4 having all those things, that'd sure surprise me.
>let's see:
>
>user-mountable & dismountable file systems: the ability to take a
>device driver off of tape, put it on disk, then mount it and use it.
I have extensively used SysV systems with dynamically loadable device
drivers, and this feature is invaluable for development and testing of
a device driver by its author. As for end users, when they install a
hardware device, they reboot the system anyway. For software-only
device drivers, ideally, they wouldn't need to be part of the kernel
at all. Here again, Mach / OSF/1 have some good capabilities that
help this situation. Dynamically loaded kernel modules are quite
convenient, though; enough so that we've thought pretty seriously
about adding the capability to Amiga Unix.
>And SVR4 has a message passing kernel? They threw out the monolithic
>monitor that's been the heart of AT&T (and BSD) Unix for the last 20
>years?
It's not quite all gone. But the obviously message-oriented parts are
now message (streams) based, such as tty, network, and
multiplexing/protocol drivers. The only part I know of that's missing
compared to Mach is message-based paging drivers. Of course, if you
have to look at or work on internal OS code, the Mach design has
aesthetic benefits there from its more modular structure.
>Posix threads - that's now part of the SVID, so I can depend on them
>being on every SVR4 system?
The SVID doesn't really apply to SVR4, so your question doesn't make
much sense. As for threads, they're in there. Lightweight context
switching calls are available to implement kernel-supported threads
within one process at a level somewhere between Mach's -lco_threads
and -lthreads.
I don't know if a POSIX interface is provided. I don't remember POSIX
(IEEE 1003.1) specifying threads, so I suspect you are talking about a
proposed standard. If so, I'm sure it will be adopted by X/OPEN and
UI/AT&T when it's in POSIX. If there is an existing POSIX standard
for threads, I suspect that XPG3 and SVR4 already include it.
>The ability to reconfigure disk devices, the virtual memory manager
>(even adding new ones), adding new file system, adding the ability to
>load a new type of object file - all while the system is running,
>without rebooting it - that's all in SVR4?
Aside from the multiple VM managers (a nice feature of Mach that SVR4
lacks), those features are all accomplished by kernel reconfiguration
in SVR4. They can be added in a modular way, and invoked by booting a
new kernel. Along with some other configurable subsystems, like the
per-process-selectable scheduling classes. Yes, it would be nice if
this could be done without booting.
>And they still call it "System V"????
Well, here, we call it: System V "It's in there" Release 4.
So far, I've really only heard one real advantage of Mach or OSF/1
over SVR4, and that is the breakup of the kernel into more modular
pieces, many of which can be run as user processes. This is a truly
admirable accomplishment, addressing one of the big holes in Unix
where the "Unix philosophy" traditionally was not addressed.
That, along with the promised multiprocessing capability, are probably
the main reasons that AT&T/UI has considered Mach as a basis for
future Unix implementations.
-=] Ford [=-
"The number of Unix installations (In Real Life: Mike Ditto)
has grown to 10, with more expected." di...@amix.commodore.com
- The Unix Programmer's Manual, uunet!cbmvax!ditto
2nd Edition, June, 1972. fo...@kenobi.commodore.com
Martin Hunt
>th...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>| xant...@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.
Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer
In article <MWM.90De...@raven.relay.pa.dec.com> m...@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes:
A user who cares about SVID will buy an SVID compatible system. A
user who cares about POSIX will by a POSIX compatible system. A user
who cares about m68k ABI will buy an m68k ABI compatible system. A
user who cares about ${foo} woudl be stupid to reject a system because
it is also ${bar} compliant, but that's what you seem to be doing.
You're missing the point. You're right - users don't care about SVID.
Or about POSIX, the OSF AES, VR4, or OSF1. Users care about
applications.
Application writers care about POSIX/OSF/etc. If they need feature X,
and the standard they're using supplies it, then they can depend on it
being on _every_ system that conforms to that standard.
If you're afraid that someone will make a stripped-down version of
some OS, that's a legitimate concern. But it's equally likely to
happen to OSF/1 as SVR4.
Ah, but if they don't comply with the OSF AES, then they aren't an
OSF1 system. If they comply with SVID, and use a SysVR4 base, they are
a System V, and are SysVR4. In other words, if my application depends
on feature X that's normally found on SysVR4, but not part of the
SVID, I cannot claim that it will run on any SysVR4 system. If AT&T
has changed the rules for what can & can't be called SysVR4, I missed
it, and apologize for the confusion.
I don't know if a POSIX interface is provided. I don't remember POSIX
(IEEE 1003.1) specifying threads, so I suspect you are talking about a
proposed standard. If so, I'm sure it will be adopted by X/OPEN and
UI/AT&T when it's in POSIX. If there is an existing POSIX standard
for threads, I suspect that XPG3 and SVR4 already include it.
It's a proposed standard (1003.6? 1003.9 maybe?). It's expected to
pass "substantially as is", and "soon". Note that _this_ is the
interface that OSF1 supports now, and will support in the future. The
Mach interfaces may/may not be there for future versions of OSF1.
So far, I've really only heard one real advantage of Mach or OSF/1
over SVR4, and that is the breakup of the kernel into more modular
pieces, many of which can be run as user processes. This is a truly
admirable accomplishment, addressing one of the big holes in Unix
where the "Unix philosophy" traditionally was not addressed.
If you look carefully, most of the things on the list were facilities
that have been in Unix for a while, basically as you describe (though
VR4 improves on them), except OSF1 adds the ability to do these things
"as users processes"; which in reality means "shutting the system
down." The ability to add various modules via a reboot isn't
interesting or even new; I've been using "drop-in" modules since v6.
AT&T has just made the splash smaller. With OSF1, these things can be
done without disrupting ongoing processes. That's a difference that
makes a difference.
That, along with the promised multiprocessing capability, are probably
the main reasons that AT&T/UI has considered Mach as a basis for
future Unix implementations.
Delete "promised" for OSF1. OSF1 != Mach. It's based on the Encore
mutlithreaded, multiprocessing version of Mach, with changes from
various other sources.
BTW, one other advantage OSF1 has over SysVR4 - lower licensing fees
:-).
<mike
--
Scott Hess
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?
No. But small and medium sized companies (and small and medium sized
schools, for that matter) oftern have people who are perfectly capable
of applying patches that someone elsewhere wrote. It's not like
everyone across the country who owns Unix source must find their own
method of fixing each and every bug . . .
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.
Many of the bugs are not "critical", but are simply misfeatures. It's
not critical that your stty work nicely, or that your getty automagically
determines the line speed, it's just alot nicer.
>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.
??? I don't get it. Can you do this with VMS, or something? Out
of the box? I've never heard of an OS which covered every single
possibility of user-configurability without distributing source.
>| 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.
Why, can't businesses find a use? I'd think the opposite would be true -
many businesses can afford to bring someone in to add features if they
have to, even small ones. There is currently a consulting firm which
will come in and get GNU stuff running on your machines, and add
things you need, for a fee, of course. This is how it should work -
rather than begging the company to come fix your stuff, you should
be able to do it on your own. That cures many problems (for
instance, if ATT is not all that interested in a version of vi
with built-in robots and rogue.)
I'm not really arguing that all software should have source included,
or anything. Sure, that would be really nice, but I don't believe
in it enough that I distribute my stuff with source (I gotta make
a living, after all). But I can see many reasons why _I_ would
want source to my Unix, not the least of them being the ability to
find out what's really going on in there, rather than realying
on a scanty, and probably buggy, manual to tell me . . .
--
scott hess sc...@gac.edu
Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad
<I still speak for nobody>
"Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ."
"Buy `Sweat 'n wit '2 Live Crew'`, a new weight loss program by
Richard Simmons . . ."
JKT
>>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 ||
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Paul Dolan
>th...@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>| xant...@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 [...]
> (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.
A fourth "good" from having system source available is the _tremendous_
increase in programmer productivity it gives. When chasing down a bug,
it is much faster to chase _my_ bug through the vendor's code to see
just why it is a bug, than to chase _their_ bug all over my code, looking
for something that just isn't there. In a day of source level debuggers,
having _all_ the source is crucial. Having it priced out of reach is a
devastating blow to code implementation.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Kent Paul Dolan
>c...@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writes:
>> 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.
Compared to what? In the micro world, MS-DOS has still got bugs in it
from the first release. In the mainframe world, the most successful
vendor, IBM, releases OSs so buggy it is standard practice for big
businesses to "rent" _several_, full time (in some cases, 24 hours, 7
days a week) IBM systems analysts to be on-site to fix problems that
would otherwise prevent them from conducting business. Compared to the
general run of commercial OSs, Unix is a marvel of robustness and utility.
Watch a Unix site bring itself back on line from a cold, dropped power
shutdown, unattended, including fixing the corrupt file structures on its
way up. Compare that to the one armed paperhanger mood bringing up a
mainframe from a similar shutdown. I'm talking from person experience in
all these cases.
>> 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.
Nonsense. I've visited many vendors _making_ computers who do their own
software development for their machines on a VAX under BSD. It isn't an
accident that every OS that matters is either adopting Unixisms or being
replaced by Unix. Take a look again at the principals in the two
competing "standard" Unix efforts; no one of consequence is left out.
Except for extremely special purposes, it won't be long before "the
world's not Unix" will no longer be a fair putdown.
> 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.
Perhaps your experiment has been limited to talent-free businesses; the
ones I've worked at had programmer staffs in the hundreds; one sold
computers, one sold software, one sold ships. The one selling ships had
the most programmers. Source code access is just too important to be
hindered by the false image of people randomly hacking the kernel;
that's not what happens in the real world. In the real world, user found
patches go back to the vendor, where they are evaluated, added if sound,
and distributed in the next release.
No business is _forced_ to hack the source code it has available, or to
run anything but a clean, vendor release OS. Every site that _does_ do
kernel hacks also knows that the way to isolate problems with newly
installed software is to go back to the clean release, and install patches
one by one until the one causing the problem is isoleted. That's standard
practice, well known, and completely removes the "hacked OS" bugaboo.
Barry Shein
From: mar...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt)
>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...
WHAT?
How about those zillion OS tuning parameters in VMS? More importantly,
how come Unix has been able to live w/o them all these years (just as
another data point, so have IBM mainframe OS's.)
No user serviceable parts...just answer a few simple questions about
what you would like for page-cluster sizes and minimum/maximum
resident and working sets and why the sea is boiling hot and whether
pigs have wings.
Oh, and let's let mere mortals muck with system logical names under
VMS and see what you end up with...
>Even AmigaDOS is way ahead of Unix in
>this.
Since you got the VMS example wrong it would be nice to know what you
mean by this for those of us who don't use AmigaDOS.
>Operating systems (IMHO) should be simple, modular and expandable.
Right, and all together now, "except for the stuff I need..."
>In AmigaDOS, filesystems and networking protocols can be dynamically
>added or removed from the system. Why can't Unix do this?
Sounds like a "user-serviceable part", make up your mind. Do you want
tons of little tuning features or not?
>The other issue is the suitability of Unix to businesses. Why do
>most businesses with VAXen run VMS?
Boy, you've narrowed the set quite a bit. Do most businesses have
Vaxes? etc.
Mostly because, until relatively recently, DEC refused to support VMS
and Vaxes were a good hardware buy.
How many businesses are buying Vaxes to run VMS anymore? I dunno, but
judging by DEC's recent stock prices (~$50, down from a high of $175
three years ago), not an impressive number. And DEC just announced a
$1B cost-trimming program.
But I guess we should all follow their lead...?
Meanwhile, Sun continues its 140% compounded annual growth, and they
sell neither Vaxes nor VMS. Only Unix.
(That's more significant than it might first appear, name another
company over $1B that only sells Unix and the hardware to run Unix on.
Now go thru companies that happen to sell Unix as a sideline [DEC, DG,
Prime] and how they're doing financially, IBM is the only major
exception I can think of, not sure how HP is doing OVERALL these
days.)
If we're really going to follow your logic we should all run out and
buy 3090's to run MVS on, since that accounts for more bucks out there
than a Vax can hold in its registers (I might be right on that, hmm,
$4B/register, 16 registers, $64B, that's probably about the size of
the MVS market...amusing.)
>Because it's easy to configure, is well supported
>and doesn't require a Unix kernel hacker to support it?
Bosh. How many VMS shops don't have VMS hackers. Ever do a VMS OS
upgrade and watch every third-party package bite the dust? I have.
This is mythology, have you ever run a VMS shop? I have, it's a pain
in the butt, give me Unix any day.
Mike Ford Ditto
> You're missing the point. You're right - users don't care about SVID.
> Or about POSIX, the OSF AES, VR4, or OSF1. Users care about
> applications.
That's not quite true. Users do want to run applications, and
application compatibility these days is specified by those sorts of
standards. The ones you mentioned are mostly relevant to source
compatibility (the day when people no longer expect Unix software to
come with source will be a sad one IMHO), but corresponding binary
standards also exist and will be important to users. And even with
binary standards, POSIX, etc. still define the behavior of the system
calls, system files, shell-level commands, etc.
> Application writers care about POSIX/OSF/etc. If they need feature X,
> and the standard they're using supplies it, then they can depend on it
> being on _every_ system that conforms to that standard.
Exactly, and when comparing SVR4, note what standards it provides
(POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD, etc.). And all the SVR4-specific capabilities
(and the older SysV functionality) are provided *in addition* to
those.
> If you're afraid that someone will make a stripped-down version of
> some OS, that's a legitimate concern. But it's equally likely to
> happen to OSF/1 as SVR4.
>
> Ah, but if they don't comply with the OSF AES, then they aren't an
> OSF1 system. If they comply with SVID, and use a SysVR4 base, they are
> a System V, and are SysVR4.
That's where you're misinformed. The latest version of the SVID
describes SVR2 and SVR3 - it's only useful for application writers who
want to run on all SysV systems, and don't need the facilities of the
more modern standards. I don't think there will be very many such
applications.
SVR4 has its own documentation and specifications, called the System V
Release 4 {programmer's,user's,administrator's} reference manuals.
You can buy these *today* at B. Dalton's or any book store with a good
computer section. If you don't want to do that, take my word for it:
it's a superset of POSIX, X/OPEN XPG3, and the SVID. And it applies
to all SVR4 systems.
> If AT&T
> has changed the rules for what can & can't be called SysVR4, I missed
> it, and apologize for the confusion.
I think the "rules" for SVR4 have always been as I describe above. No
apology necessary, I just hope everyone has this under contol now.
Barry Shein
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.
logan shaw
>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"...
>:-(
Well, I don't know if it's a tragedy. With IFF, I can take the output
from a ray-tracer and load it into a paint program without having to send
the image(s) through a program which converts formats. On the Amiga,
a font is a font and a picture is a picture and a sample is a sample.
I haven't been able to do the same thing when using certain other
machines.
We may not have compatibility with everyone else, but at least we
have it with ourselves, and that's more than some can say.
> 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 ||
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
=----------------Logan-Shaw---(ls...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)----------------=
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct
thy paths" - Proverbs 3:5-6
Thomas Cleland
>>>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"...
>:-(
>
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 /
// / tcle...@ucsd.edu / to get forgiveness /
\X/ / ASOCC * Amiga Users' Group at UCSD / than permission... /
\____________________________________\____________________/
Dan Bernstein
> >when someone can log in.
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
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?
Peter Kittel GERMANY
>
>> Barry Shein writes:
>
>> I don't know of any OS, for example, which gives much control over
>> when someone can log in.
>
>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