The NeXT machine has been announced! (long)
Jeff Lo
in San Francisco and thought I would update the net on what Steve Jobs
announced about the NeXT computer.
The machine is based on the Motorola 68030 with a 68882 floating point
chip as well as a 56001 DSP chip, all running at 25 MHz. It will support
up to 16 MB of RAM with 1 Mbit chips, maybe 64 MB with 4 Mbit chips (they
haven't tried this yet). Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
is a gray-scale mega-pixel display (no exact sizes given). There was no
mention of color. Everything is displayed with Display PostScript, developed
jointly by NeXT and Adobe. This apparently runs with a proprietary window
system. There was no mention of X Windows. Also standard are audio input
and output, ethernet, and SCSI. Jobs said that with the standard sound
capabilities, all that is needed for a 9600 bps modem is some software
and a phone connection.
The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips as compared to 100+ for a fast
PC and 300+ for a typical workstation. Everything has been crammed onto
a 12 inch square board through the use of very dense surface mounted
devices, and a few large custom CMOS chips. Two of these chips implement
what Jobs called a "mainframe on two chips". These basically provide fast
I/O processors for all I/O systems including the optical disk, SCSI,
ethernet, sound processors (I assume the DSP and A/D-D/A converters) and
the NuBus. The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
is this what the Mac II uses?). The SCSI interface was reported to have
a 4 MB/sec. transfer rate. There are 12 I/O processors total.
The CPU box has 4 slots, 1 is used by the CPU board, the others were empty.
The box itself is a black cube a foot on a side. The display, keyboard and
two-button mouse are also black. The display has an integral adjustable
height and tilt stand. The display is connected to the CPU box with a single
3 meter cable which transmits the 100 MHz video, power, sound, keyboard
and mouse data. The back of the display has connectors for the keyboard and
mouse, along with a speaker, microphone and headphone jacks and gold-plated
RCA stereo jacks.
The sound capabilities of the system were impressive, being able to record
and playback high-quality sound. Using the DSP chip some very realistic
sounding music was generated on the fly in real-time.
The box, display, and everything else looked very modern and high-tech -
all black.
The operating system is based on MACH with NFS support. On top of this is
Display PostScript. Above this is what NeXT is calling NextStep. This
consists of their window server, interface builder, application builder
and workspace. This is what was licensed by IBM. On top of this are the
applications.
When you login, you get a browser several icons, and a menu on the screen.
The browser lets you move quickly from directory to directory, and to run
applications or open icon based directory windows. The root menu is always
on the screen, always on top, and may be positioned anywhere on the screen
(and even off the screen). The menus cascade, and the submenus may be torn
off and left on the screen. Along the right edge is what I think Jobs called
the icon dock. It is a set of icons for commonly used applications which are
kept on the left edge, and are always on top. If you need the screen space,
this column of icons may be slid down off the screen, leaving only the NeXT
icon showing. Icons may be freely moved in and out of the dock so you can
keep what icons you use a lot there.
Jobs said that the new environment should cut the time used in coding the
user interface of a program from 90% to 10% of the total coding time. With
the application builder Jobs said it would go to zero. The environment is
object oriented, I believe based on Objective-C. You can modify existing
stuff with subclassing and inherit much of the base application. The
application builder lets you build an application just by placing buttons,
sliders, and any other graphic objects into a window, and then attaching
the the input and output objects to object messages.
Software that comes bundled with the system include MACH, Display
PostScript, NextStep, the sound and music tools, the digital library,
WriteNow, Mail, Mathematica, Sybase and Franz Lisp.
The digital library consists of Webster's 9th Collegiate Dictionary,
Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare on-line. There is a built
in spell program and dictionary/thesaurus lookup application. A word can
be selected in any window and looked up. The dictionary even includes
the pictures.
WriteNow is a word processing system, Mail is arpanet compatible mail,
including the capability to send speech, Mathematica is for (obviously)
mathematical problems and such. Sybase is a sequel database server.
A PostScript laser printer was also announced the can run at either
400 dpi or in 300 dpi "draft" mode. The printer is markedly smaller
(shorter) that most laser printers. No mention was given of speed.
Several demos were run with rotating molecules, smooth scrolling text,
voice storage and playback, speech waveforms and FFTs, etc. Everything
ran well, and ran fast.
Jobs announced the following prices (apparently education prices):
NeXT computer: $6500
NeXT PostScript Printer: $2000
330 MB winchester disk: $2000
660 MB winchester disk: $4000
Jobs said that machines will start shipping in early November '88,
the 0.8 pre-release of the software for developers will be available
in Q4 '88, the 0.9 pre-release for developers and aggressive users in
Q1 '89, with the 1.0 release for general consumption in Q2 '89.
All in all, the machine looked good and fast, although I wonder about
the fact that several desirable things were not mentioned, i.e., color
monitors, X-Windows, some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
etc. I imagine a typical SCSI tape drive could be used for archival
storage.
I'm sure I must have left something out, but I'm sure someone will fill
in the gaps and correct any mistakes I made (sometimes it was hard to
hear from the nosebleed seats in the back row of the top balcony).
--
Standard Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with NeXT except being a possible
software developer that got invited to the announcement.
--
Jeff Lo
..!{ames,hplabs,uunet}!elan!jlo
Elan Computer Group, Inc.
(415) 322-2450
Ken Seefried III
be dumped on the net about NeXT...but hell, I just gotta know some things...;'}
In article <3...@elan.UUCP> j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
>
>The machine is based on the Motorola 68030 with a 68882 floating point
>chip as well as a 56001 DSP chip, all running at 25 MHz. It will support
^^^^^
Will they be including any development tools for
the DSP, like the Motorola assembler or (better)
C compiler?
>up to 16 MB of RAM with 1 Mbit chips, maybe 64 MB with 4 Mbit chips (they
>haven't tried this yet). Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
>optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
^^^^^^^^^^^^
I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage. What
magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?
>is a gray-scale mega-pixel display (no exact sizes given). There was no
>mention of color. Everything is displayed with Display PostScript, developed
^^^^^
My understanding (read: the rumour I heard) is that Pixar
is developing the colour board and it isn't done yet.
>jointly by NeXT and Adobe. This apparently runs with a proprietary window
>system. There was no mention of X Windows. Also standard are audio input
^^^^^^^^^
If it is Mach, its 4.3 compatable
and X can be ported. Or NeWS (goes with NeXT).
>and output, ethernet, and SCSI. Jobs said that with the standard sound
>capabilities, all that is needed for a 9600 bps modem is some software
>and a phone connection.
Well...when does the V.32 software get here? Or the Telebit
PEP emulator?
[stuff deleted]
>the NuBus. The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
>is this what the Mac II uses?).
Several questions...I thought that NuBus was standardised to
run at 10MHz, synchronous. Is 'NuBus' running at 25MHz still
NuBus? Will not most availible NuBus cards choke?
Also, what form factor are the cards: the original (MIT/TI)
Eurocard or the Apple form factor? Are they interchangeable
(ie can you run an Apple NuBus card in a MIT/TI NuBus size
card cage?
Will we see a NeXT version of the TI MicroExplorer or
Symbolics MacIvory Lisp CoProcessors?
>The operating system is based on MACH with NFS support. On top of this is
>Display PostScript.
The big question of the day: how stable is Mach? Until
relatively recently, Mach was a reseach OS. Has NeXT
had time to get all the kinks out?
Same question for Display PostScript. Also, considering
how much of a resource hog Printer PostScript is, how
quick is it?
[tons deleted]
>object oriented, I believe based on Objective-C. You can modify existing
^^^^^^^^^^^
Thats what I heard.
Double Bonus Points for Jobs...
>and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare on-line.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Interesting, but welcome...
I wonder if Jobs is trying to increse our literacy...
>Jobs announced the following prices (apparently education prices):
>
> NeXT computer: $6500
> NeXT PostScript Printer: $2000
> 330 MB winchester disk: $2000
> 660 MB winchester disk: $4000
Who do I give my cheque to...? (notice, no smiley face)
>Jobs said that machines will start shipping in early November '88,
>the 0.8 pre-release of the software for developers will be available
>in Q4 '88, the 0.9 pre-release for developers and aggressive users in
>Q1 '89, with the 1.0 release for general consumption in Q2 '89.
What does this mean? If I buy one now, do I have to
wait until Q2 '89 for an operating system? Or are the
machines only shipping to developers in November?
> , some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
>etc. I imagine a typical SCSI tape drive could be used for archival
>storage.
umm...Why? The optical is removable, no? non-volitile?
indestructable? 256MB? Seems like a pretty good
backup/distribution media to me...
>--
>Jeff Lo
>..!{ames,hplabs,uunet}!elan!jlo
>Elan Computer Group, Inc.
>(415) 322-2450
Well, I guess he really did do it...
ken seefried iii ...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs,
k...@gatech.edu inhp4, masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl,
cca...@gitvm1.bitnet unmvax, ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken
Ralph Hyre
In article <3...@elan.UUCP> j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
>The machine is based on the Motorola 68030 with a 68882 floating point
>chip as well as a 56001 DSP chip, all running at 25 MHz.
>The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips ...
>ethernet, sound processors (I assume the DSP and A/D-D/A converters) and..
>the NuBus. The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
>The CPU box has 4 slots, 1 is used by the CPU board, the others were empty...
>There are 12 I/O processors total.
Does this mean that all of the circuitry is on NuBUS cards, or did they
put some stuff on the motherboard, leaving the CPU and DSP on the backplane?
What is really on the CPU board (030, 882, and 1M memory?)
How much memory is in the base configuration?
--
- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.
Internet: ral...@ius3.cs.cmu.edu Phone:(412) CMU-BUGS
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
"You can do what you want with my computer, but leave me alone!8-)"
David Maynard
> relatively recently, Mach was a reseach OS. Has NeXT
> had time to get all the kinks out?
Mach has been used for production computing on literally hundereds of machines
here at CMU for some time now. (That isn't to say that the Mach people aren't
still making big improvements and enhancements.)
I've also heard (rumors) that NeXT has made several file system improvements to
Mach. Judging from the announcement of NFS support it sounds like the rumors
may be true.
---
David P. Maynard (d...@cs.cmu.edu)
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
---
Any opinions expressed are mine only. I haven't asked the ECE or CS
departments, or CMU what they think.
---
Henry Spencer
Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Jobs has a very low opinion of X.
>... The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
>is this what the Mac II uses?)....
Probably, since that's what a NuBus is supposed to run at. (At least
according to the spec I have, which is admittedly old.) Sigh, Yet Another
New And Improved And Faster And Better (and incompatible) Bus.
--
The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu
Werner Uhrig
Subject: "NeXT opinions"
Sometimes its interesting to compare the notions others have
about new technology / products. Here are a few quotes from
today's _Wall Street Journal_ (Oct. 13, 1988), reproduced without
permission:
"...[the Next computer offers so much more for the money that it
will] redefine what people expect from a personal computer. THe
big question is whether Steve can master some of the destructive
side of his personality that has emerged in the past. If he can
do that - and there are signs he has - I think he can succeed."
- Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation
"Steve [Jobs] always tries to make his computers exceed what
people expect them to be, and the guy has done it again." In
response to a question regarding Jobs chances of creating another
computer standard: "He's done it twice before, hasn't he?"
- Stewart Alsop, publisher of _PC Newsletter_
"Frankly, I'm disappointed. Back in 1981, we were truly excited
by the Macintosh when Steve showed it to us because when you put
it side-by-side with another computer, it was unlike anything
anybody had ever seen before [because of its distinctive
graphics]. In the grand scope of things, most of [NeXT's]
features are truly trivial. [There is] *no way* [I will have my
programmers write software for NeXT any time soon]." (Emphasis
added by poster).
-Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft
"Steve is going to talk revolution in the computer business, but
unfortunately you'll find more similarities than differences
between his machine and other workstations. And some of the
differences that glitter now may well tarnish in a while."
-Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems
"[Regarding the initial market thrust into universities:] The
idea appears to be to seed the nerds and enthusiasts and let them
make the computer look good, much like hobbyists transformed the
original Apple II into a broadly popular machine. Once it's
established in the universities, they can take it into the
mainstream."
- David Grady, publisher of the _Grady Report_
"He has to win a niche market somewhere to get started. But I
think it's going to be fairly tough to win in education, because
all the biggies - IBM, Apple, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard,
Sun and Appolo - already are fairly well established. They also
give away a lot of free equipment."
- Regis McKenna, founder of Regis McKenna, Inc.
"[Regarding the announced price of $6,500 and snappy features in
the NeXT computer:] I think it's an incredible value. They
listened to what we asked for and gave it to us."
- Peter Lyman, director of the Center for Scholarly
Technology, UCLA
"[Regarding her experience of being on the NeXT advisory board (a
group of university officials who made suggestions regarding the
computers functionality):] You wouldn't believe the pressure
we've been under to give people hints about the machine. I'm not
sure i'd want to do this again."
- Barbara Morgan, director of advanced technology planning,
UCB
"[Regarding Steve Jobs inability (or unwillingness) to keep
developments secret while at Apple:] At Apple, we used to joke
that it was the only ship we knew of that leaked from the top."
- John Couch, former director of the Apple Lisa team
--
--------------------> PREFERED-RETURN-ADDRESS-FOLLOWS <---------------------
(ARPA) wer...@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1)
(INTERNET) werner%rascal.ics...@cs.utexas.edu
(UUCP) ..!utastro!werner or ..!uunet!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner
Greg Corson
other mass storage. Isn't it going to be kind of hard to copy software or
make backups?
Even with 8 meg in the machine...there is going to be a LOT of disk swapping
to do if you want to make a duplicate copy of that 300 M optical disk!
Is there an option for a second optical drive per chance?
Greg Corson
19141 Summers Drive
South Bend, IN 46637
(219) 277-5306
{pur-ee,rutgers,uunet}!iuvax!ndmath!milo
Eric Green
Nit #1: First you say:
> haven't tried this yet). Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
> optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
Then you say:
> All in all, the machine looked good and fast, although I wonder about
> the fact that several desirable things were not mentioned, i.e., color
> monitors, X-Windows, some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
^^^^^^^^^^^^
One question: Why the hell have a floppy drive when you have a 256MB
removable erasable optical disk? AND, why the hell have a typical SCSI
tape drive for archival purposes, when you have a 256MB removable
optical disk? I suspect that the optical drive is there as a
replacement for the traditional floppy drive or streaming-tape
cartridge; it's too slow to use as primary data store. I suspect the
typical NeXT installation will look much like the typical Sun
installation (file servers, and "nearly-diskless" nodes), except for
user files on the optical drive (heck, it's no speed demon, but it's
faster than a floppy.)
Nit #2: Bemoaning "No X windows!" is silly. From what I hear,
X-windows is slow, clumsy, huge, and, generally, Typical University
Software ("Free software that's too expensive to use"). The NeXT
windowing system looks a lot more user-friendly, and probably is
faster, more compact, and more efficient.
About the color monitor: I've seen rumours that they're "working on
it." In any event, color is mostly useful for CAD/CAE applications,
while from looking at the software packages included, the NeXT
workstation seems targetted at academia. I see no real problem (I'm
typing this right now from a window on a monochrome system, although
it's an Amiga, not a NeXT).
--
Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
It's understandable that Mike Dukakis thinks he can walk on water.
He's used to walking on Boston harbor.
Mike Rutenberg
>Will they be including any development tools for
>the DSP, like the Motorola assembler or (better) C compiler?
I haven't seen it on paper but I'm pretty sure they are including the C
56000 C compiler for it.
>I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
>and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage. What
>magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?
A person from Reed who was at the announcement said that things seemed
to load slowly but then goes faster. That makes a lot of sense, since Mach
uses as much memory as it can as a disk cache, making things go faster
once you use them. The optional SCSI drives would be faster I suspect.
>The big question of the day: how stable is Mach? Until
>relatively recently, Mach was a reseach OS. Has NeXT
>had time to get all the kinks out?
CMU is planning a new release of Mach this fall which will be independent
of the AT&T license requirements and will be more machine independent.
I don't know what the NeXT people are using.
It is such a nice machine. I wish I could go to school & buy a machine
at the same time. I wish I had a BMW I could sell for a few bucks.
Mike
Dave Haynie
> Summary: One of a million followup questions...
> Xref: cbmvax comp.sys.misc:1941 comp.os.misc:565 comp.misc:4233 comp.arch:6833
>>Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
>>optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
> I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
> and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage. What
> magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?
They say it's DMA driven and has an 8K static RAM cache. The words "very
little" come to mind. Certainly stuff's going to be cached in DRAM as
well; the standard setup is 8 megs. But 96ms is SLOW...
>>the NuBus. The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
>>is this what the Mac II uses?).
> Several questions...I thought that NuBus was standardised to
> run at 10MHz, synchronous. Is 'NuBus' running at 25MHz still
> NuBus? Will not most availible NuBus cards choke?
I'd sure expect all available NuBus cards to choke. Not only is NuBus set at
10MHz, but this NeXT bus is also apparently defined at CMOS, not TTL, levels.
Certainly that'll kill the one standard NuBus card that would have otherwise
worked.
However, it might make some sense. While NuBus isn't a great match to the
680x0 family, certainly running NuBus synced to the host CPU is going to
eliminate the sync-up slowdowns you see in a machine like the Mac II. And
if they are otherwise NuBus, perhaps they're counting on developers to
figure that a redesign for NeXT is a much smaller step than going to a
completely different bus. Or perhaps they don't care about 3rd party devices,
planning instead to populate that bus with additional CPU cards and PIXAR
things.
> Also, what form factor are the cards: the original (MIT/TI)
> Eurocard or the Apple form factor?
The size certainly implies Eurocard; the whole computer is actually on a
card. Apparently the box is really just a backplane and power supply.
>> , some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
>>etc. I imagine a typical SCSI tape drive could be used for archival
>>storage.
> umm...Why? The optical is removable, no? non-volitile?
> indestructable? 256MB? Seems like a pretty good
> backup/distribution media to me...
So you're going to spring for the second optical drive. Or copy 256MB, 7.5Meg
at a time, in an 90's version of the old "floppy shuffle". I guess any real
power used is going to need a real hard drive anyway; I could think of worse
than 256Meg floppies...
>>Jeff Lo
> ken seefried iii ...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs,
--
Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests"
{uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy
"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"
Pierce T. Wetter
->
-> [There is] *no way* [I will have my
->programmers write software for NeXT any time soon]." (Emphasis
->added by poster).
-> -Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft
->
->
YAY! The NeXt Machine is safe from Microsoft! That in itself makes it
worth buying. YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!
Only an idiot like Bill Gates would be disappointed by the NeXt Machine.
Pierce wetter (slumming from comp.sys.mac)
--------Flames to wet...@tybalt.caltech.edu (beware sometimes they bounce
back ---------------
--------Lauds to wet...@tybalt.caltech.edu (Cheerfully accepted)
Ken Seefried iii
>in article <3...@elan.UUCP>, j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) says:
>
>Nit #1: First you say:
>> haven't tried this yet). Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
>> optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
>
>Then you say:
>> All in all, the machine looked good and fast, although I wonder about
>> the fact that several desirable things were not mentioned, i.e., color
>> monitors, X-Windows, some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>One question: Why the hell have a floppy drive when you have a 256MB
>removable erasable optical disk? AND, why the hell have a typical SCSI
>tape drive for archival purposes, when you have a 256MB removable
>optical disk?
Because, as was pointed out by an earlier poster, since there is
but one optical platter, and you take it out to archive it, what
do you intend to run your machine on? Or perhaps you prefer swaping
platters (like to old single floppy machines). at 8MB a swap, thats
only 32 swaps. Besides, what it you only want to mail a 10K file
to a friend. 256MB (and $50) seems like overkill to me...
>I suspect that the optical drive is there as a
>replacement for the traditional floppy drive or streaming-tape
>cartridge; it's too slow to use as primary data store. I suspect the
>typical NeXT installation will look much like the typical Sun
>installation (file servers, and "nearly-diskless" nodes), except for
>user files on the optical drive (heck, it's no speed demon, but it's
>faster than a floppy.)
No, wrong, incorrect. Read any one of the 3 or 4 detailed
postings. The optical is PRIMARY storage. And no, NeXT
instillations will be quite disk-full, as a 330MB and 660MB
normal hard drive is a reasonably priced option....
>Nit #2: Bemoaning "No X windows!" is silly. From what I hear,
>X-windows is slow, clumsy, huge, and, generally, Typical University
>Software ("Free software that's too expensive to use"). The NeXT
>windowing system looks a lot more user-friendly, and probably is
>faster, more compact, and more efficient.
From what you heard, eh? Well, perhaps X may be desirable
because there is a huge amount of work being done on it in
the academic world, and there is a substantial amount of
software running under X. Perhaps X may be desirable to
allow transparent (kindof) interaction with those obsolete
Suns and Apollos and SGI and Multiflows, etc. lying around
that run X. Furthermore, while X is big and rough on the
programmer, a whole buch of companies have decided that it
is the way to go, companies that don't think that it is
"too expensive to use". Little companies like DEC and IBM
and Sun...
>About the color monitor: I've seen rumours that they're "working on
>it." In any event, color is mostly useful for CAD/CAE applications,
>while from looking at the software packages included, the NeXT
>workstation seems targetted at academia. I see no real problem (I'm
>typing this right now from a window on a monochrome system, although
>it's an Amiga, not a NeXT).
>
Well YOU don't see a problem, but I see a bunch of people
screaming. Chemists like to have a different colour for
each element when they model molecules, for example. As
you point out, NeXT is for academia. Well the academia
here at Georgia Tech seems to want colour. Perhaps you
could convince them otherwise...
Indeed, the single largest complant that people here have
had with NeXT is lack of colour support.
Besides...colour sure looks good...;-)
>--
>Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
> Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
I can see now that the disinformation and ignorance surrounding
the NeXT machine is going to follow it a bit longer...
ken seefried iii ...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs,
k...@gatech.edu inhp4, masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl,
cca...@gitvm1.bitnet unmvax, ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken
soon to be open: ...!gatech!spooge!ken (finally ;'})
P. Allen Jensen
> ............. I suspect that the optical drive is there as a
> replacement for the traditional floppy drive or streaming-tape
I have seen access speed listed as somewhere between 30 and 90ms,
30ms being the peek and 90ms being an unknown measurement. My understanding
of magneto-optical disks is that they should be capable of up to 20ms
access time (see Feb. 1988 IEEE Spectrum, "Optical disks become erasable"
Can someone clear up all this confusion about the NeXT Optical Disk -
What are the actual specs. from NeXT ?
P. Allen Jensen
--
P. Allen Jensen
Georgia Tech, School of Electrical Engineering, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250
USENET: ...!{allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,ulysses}!gatech!gt-eedsp!jensen
INTERNET: jen...@gteedsp.gatech.edu
John Moore
]
]One question: Why the hell have a floppy drive when you have a 256MB
]removable erasable optical disk? AND, why the hell have a typical SCSI
]tape drive for archival purposes, when you have a 256MB removable
]optical disk? I suspect that the optical drive is there as a
And if you accidently type "rm -r *" or something equivalent?
If its erasable, it needs a backup.
And, as was mentioned before, how about software distribution? The
removable disk media costs ~$50.00!
Finally, does anyone know which "magneto-optical" technology is
being used on the drive and how it works?
--
John Moore (NJ7E) {decvax, ncar, ihnp4}!noao!nud!anasaz!john
(602) 861-7607 (day or eve) {gatech, ames, rutgers}!ncar!...
The opinions expressed here are obviously not mine, so they must be
someone else's. :-)
Dru Nelson
> Xref: umbio comp.sys.misc:299 comp.os.misc:111 comp.misc:1293 comp.arch:1418
>
> -> [There is] *no way* [I will have my
> ->programmers write software for NeXT any time soon]." (Emphasis
> ->added by poster).
> -> -Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft
> worth buying. YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!
>
> Only an idiot like Bill Gates would be disappointed by the NeXt Machine.
> Pierce wetter (slumming from comp.sys.mac)
I agree with you 100%. Lets look at the next machine. It comes with
development software that's object oriented(for the most part). It
comes with a SQL database. It comes with Display Postscript, a Unix
mail program, music software, a good word processor, and the MACH OS!
Not one of these items is made by Microsoft.
TOne of the best machines to come out in a long time and at a great
price and Microsoft doesn't have one claim to fame on it!!! That is a
slap in the face to Microsoft (from Microsoft's point of view) Yay!
Alright! No more monopoly.
No more expensive development systems!
Look at what Mr. Joy said... Oh it isn't too different from whats out
right now. Bullcra*! Price is an important feature too! He better
recognize the great features of the NeXT or start losing sales.
Go ahead Jobs! :-)
--
Dru Nelson UUCP: ....!uunet!gould!umbio!dnelson
Miami, Florida MCI: dnelson
Internet: dnelson%um...@umigw.miami.edu
Carl Ellison
>
> The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips as compared to 100+ for a fast
> PC and 300+ for a typical workstation. Everything has been crammed onto
> a 12 inch square board through the use of very dense surface mounted
> devices, and a few large custom CMOS chips.
By my calculator, 45 chips in 144 square inches
gives 3.2 sq.in. per chip, on the average.
Since a number of those need to be memory (therefore not monster PGAs),
I don't see the need to cram.
What's up here?
--Carl Ellison ...!harvard!anvil!es!cme (normal mail address)
...!ulowell!cloud9!cme (usenet news reading)
Joel Spolsky
| My only comment so far....if the thing has only ONE optical disk and NO
| other mass storage. Isn't it going to be kind of hard to copy software or
| make backups?
|
| Even with 8 meg in the machine...there is going to be a LOT of disk swapping
| to do if you want to make a duplicate copy of that 300 M optical disk!
|
| Is there an option for a second optical drive per chance?
The NeXT box has two full-height 5.25" bays, one of which is taken up
by the 256M optical disk. You can buy another optical disk for $1495,
although because the optical disks are so slow (96-ms average seek
time) I suspect many will buy the SCSI hard drives (e.g. 670MB for $3995)
as their main drive.
By the way, the optical disks have 30% redundancy for error
correction which is why they only (!) hold 256M formatted. Tiny little
critters.
+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Joel Spolsky | bitnet: spolsky@yalecs uucp: ...!yale!spolsky |
| | arpa: spo...@yale.edu voicenet: 203-436-1483 |
+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+
#include <disclaimer.h>
Joel Spolsky
| In article <3...@elan.UUCP> j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
| | ... The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
| | is this what the Mac II uses?)....
|
| Probably, since that's what a NuBus is supposed to run at. (At least
| according to the spec I have, which is admittedly old.) Sigh, Yet Another
| New And Improved And Faster And Better (and incompatible) Bus.
Well, the SCSI bus is compatible with Macintoshes. The fast NuBus will
allow multiprocessor enviroments quite comfortably. The Byte article
spoke of OS support (ultimately) for assigning threads (lightweight
processes) to different processors.
Joel Spolsky
| Will they be including any development tools for
| the DSP, like the Motorola assembler or (better) C compiler?
(reprinted without permission from Byte:)
"There is [sic] also a number of library functions (not objects) that
allow you to tap into the processing capabilities of the DSP. These
libraries provide some 50 functions for performing tasks like fast
Fourier transforms, and spectral filtering."
BYTE claims the primary compiler is the GNU-C compiler, with the GNU
debugger and Emacs, plus Objective-C 4.0, (in which widgets like
buttons, scroll bars, etc are "objects" and can be treated as such),
and an "Interface Builder" that's kind of like programming hypertalk
only it generates full blown programs, not hyperstacks.
| I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
| and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage. What
| magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?
None. Average seek time = 96 ms.
Joel Spolsky
| in article <17...@gatech.edu>, k...@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried III) says:
|
| | Also, what form factor are the cards: the original (MIT/TI)
| | Eurocard or the Apple form factor?
|
| The size certainly implies Eurocard; the whole computer is actually on a
| card. Apparently the box is really just a backplane and power supply.
|
Right. Each slot uses a Eurocard type C connector.
Andy Nicholson
> >Jobs announced the following prices (apparently education prices):
> >
> > NeXT computer: $6500
> > NeXT PostScript Printer: $2000
> > 330 MB winchester disk: $2000
> > 660 MB winchester disk: $4000
>
> Who do I give my cheque to...? (notice, no smiley face)
The prices announced at the introduction were "University" prices.
The prices for regular folks, "Commercial" prices for a NeXT box will be
around $10,000. While this is still more for less than anybody else has,
(see Thursday's Wall Street Journal), and is the only thing I know of with
*Real* DSP capability (Amiga comes close, but not quite), it is more than
a new car costs. I still want one, but I think $10,000 is out of the range
of any concept of a personal (Home) computer, no matter how sophisticated
the user. It would especially annoy me to think that a college student
could purchase one of these but I could not. If said college student could
get come up with $6500 in the first place ;-).
Andy Nicholson, Microware Systems Corp.
The company policy manual says that I do not speak for the company, so
these must be my opinions, not theirs.
Jeff Bowden
>In article <58...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> e...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) writes:
>>in article <3...@elan.UUCP>, j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) says:
>>Nit #2: Bemoaning "No X windows!" is silly. From what I hear,
>>X-windows is slow, clumsy, huge, and, generally, Typical University
> From what you heard, eh? Well, perhaps X may be desirable
> because there is a huge amount of work being done on it in
> the academic world, and there is a substantial amount of
> software running under X.
I don't think a lack of X support from NeXT will be that damaging even
to those who want to use X. Do you actually think no one will write a
NeXT driver for X? After all it is a 68030 running something that can
basically be viewed as Unix (from the program point of view).
It won't even be necessary to choose between X and NeXT on a NeXT machine
because you will probably be able to run X from within NeXT (like you can
from within SunView). Perhaps you will even be able to run X in its own
window.
Rick Richardson
>removable erasable optical disk?
Because even "free" software will cost $50 on an eraseable optical disk,
at least for the next several years. Plus, there is no "standard" eraseable
optical disk, and 256MB is just too small (given other announced alternatives)
to make me believe that it will be the standard.
--
Rick Richardson | JetRoff "di"-troff to LaserJet Postprocessor|uunet!pcrat!dry2
PC Research,Inc.| Mail: uunet!pcrat!jetroff; For anon uucp do:|for Dhrystone 2
uunet!pcrat!rick| uucp jetroff!~jetuucp/file_list ~nuucp/. |submission forms.
jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU {2400,PEP19200} 12013898963 "" \r ogin: jetuucp
ethan miller
->In article <3...@elan.UUCP>, j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
->>
->> The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips as compared to 100+ for a fast
->> PC and 300+ for a typical workstation. Everything has been crammed onto
->> a 12 inch square board through the use of very dense surface mounted
->> devices, and a few large custom CMOS chips.
->
->By my calculator, 45 chips in 144 square inches
->gives 3.2 sq.in. per chip, on the average.
->Since a number of those need to be memory (therefore not monster PGAs),
->I don't see the need to cram.
->What's up here?
->--Carl Ellison ...!harvard!anvil!es!cme (normal mail address)
I saw a picture of the board today. The guest speaker in our graduate
computer architecture class had it with him. I'd say the 45 chips can't
include the memory. There must be 64 1Mx1 bit chips to get 8MB on board, and
that's already more than 65. There are also 2 large custom chips, a DSP, a
68030 and 68882, and assorted drivers and buffers. Jobs even left about
four or so square inches free for his name. Those custom chips and
the other "main" chips are pretty big, especially the custom gate arrays.
If you exclude the memory area and the name plate, you're down to
about 100 square inches or less, which is not so much considering
how many chips with 200 pins are on the board.
ethan
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
ethan miller (EECS graduate serf) | "Quod erat demonstrandum, baby."
bander...@ernie.berkeley.edu | "Oooh, you speak French!"
They're my opinions; don't abuse them. | - Thomas Dolby, "Airhead"
James Van Artsdalen
> One question: Why the hell have a floppy drive when you have a 256MB
> removable erasable optical disk?
Each one of those 256MB disks costs almost as much as a floppy disk
*drive*. How do you propose NeXT to economically distribute updates &
software? Certainly not on a $50 optical disk!
--
James R. Van Artsdalen ja...@bigtex.cactus.org "Live Free or Die"
Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 338-8789 9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759
Steve J. Rudek
waiting!
There are obviously a lot of USENET folks jumping up and down and
salivating because (a) NeXT is offering an "educational discount"
and (b) they are "students" (I surmise). Is it correct to assume
that *individual* students will also be eligible for this price
discount? (If so, I suppose I can always go back to school for a
quarter:)
I keep hearing that MACH is *derived* from UNIX -- and, in one
previous message, that the new release of the OS will be free from
AT&T licensing. This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH
a *complete* UNIX clone? Does it include basically *all* the utility
programs that come pretty much standard with AT&T/BSD UNIX? Just
how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we expect it to be? There
are LOTS of UNIX clones already out there (e.g., Coherent, Idris,
Minix) but there are significant reasons why most of us prefer the
real thing.
--
#############################################################
# PRIVATE # Serving The State Capitol #
# PARKING # Of California: sactoh0 #
#############################################################
Josh Hodas
Well, It seems clear that the 45 chip count does not include the memory.
If we make the fairly safe assumption that Jobs is using nothing bigger
than 1 Megabit drams, then the 8 megs standard in the machine would require
64 chips (assuming no parity check bit), so it must be 45 chips in addition
to ram.
Josh
-------------------------
Josh Hodas (ho...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu)
4223 Pine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 222-7112 (home)
(215) 898-5423 (school office)
Alan Dorn Hetzel
>
>Because even "free" software will cost $50 on an eraseable optical disk,
>at least for the next several years. Plus, there is no "standard" eraseable
>optical disk, and 256MB is just too small (given other announced alternatives)
>to make me believe that it will be the standard.
Well, 360K was WAY to small to be the standard floppy, but there are sure
a lot of them out there. Standards are rarely out on the edge of capability,
tending towards the more affordable lower half of what is possible. I think
that the 256MB removable has a good chance of becoming something of a standard
if NeXT sells many systems.
Dorn
gatech.edu!fabscal!dorn
Alan Dorn Hetzel
>
>gives 3.2 sq.in. per chip, on the average.
>
>Since a number of those need to be memory (therefore not monster PGAs),
>I don't see the need to cram.
>
>What's up here?
>
If you stop to think, 45 chips doesn't include the 8 megabytes of memory,
or if it does, it's not your typical memory chips, some sort of mondo hybrid
packaging. My guess is that the 45 refers to other than memory chips,
which don't get counted generally, since they can vary by configuration.
8 megabytes of 1-megabit (what they used, i hear) chips, with byte parity,
would be 72 chips, which would tighten up the spacing a little, no?
Dorn
gatech.edu!fabscal!dorn
J. M. Johnson
Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
it belongs.
--
Life's just a game, you fly a paper plane, there is no end. - TBA
J. M. Johnson, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Reading, PA ...!att!mhuxu!jmj
Louis A. Mamakos
>
>And, as was mentioned before, how about software distribution? The
>removable disk media costs ~$50.00!
Funny, no one is complaining that their SUN 3/60 doesn't have a floppy
disk on it. Why should the NeXT box? Or do you think this is just a
super-duper IBM-PC? I thought that this thing was a WORKSTATION targeted
at Universities.. some some PC or Mac clone.
Excuse me if I offended those of you who think PC and Mac class machines
are workstations. Hey, I've got an Amiga 2000 at home, and I don't delude
myself in thinking of it in the same class as a Sun or MicroVAX.
Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: lo...@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming
Henry Spencer
>... I'd say the 45 chips can't
>include the memory. There must be 64 1Mx1 bit chips to get 8MB on board, and
If you assume that "chips" is loose language for "packages", note that the
most compact way of packaging RAMs is in SIMMs, which put 8 or so RAMs in
a single package.
--
The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu
John C Schultz
Summarizing my opinions, a 256 MB optical disk drive seems a tad too large or
too small to be a really useful media system.
Case A) - Software Distribution.
It would seem that the best cost/performance ratio would occur if removable
media were sized to typical distribution software. I can just see people
paying $50 media costs for 500 KB of data. Even large programs such as GNU
EMACS, TeX, and X11R2 fit on a 45 MB tape with room to spare. WHAT TAKES 256
MB to distribute?? It is easy to use 256 MB but not with one distribution. Oh
I forgot about the complete works of Shakspeare to which I refer at least
daily :-).
Case B) - Backup
If you have one 330 MB drive (which will not be enough - somebody's law), you
need TWO disks to back it up. A 660 MB is 3 disks, etc. Why is the removable
disk not a 1+ GB optical disk? Cost? Technology? Disk shuffling will still
be a problem, escpecially if people implement 100+ networks of NeXT machines,
each of which need to be backed up.
--
john c. schultz sch...@mmm.3m.UUCP (612) 733-4047
3M Center, Bldg 518-1-1, St. Paul, MN 55144-1000
The opinions expressed herein are, as always, my own and not 3M's.
Charles Simmons
>in San Francisco and thought I would update the net on what Steve Jobs
>announced about the NeXT computer.
...
>All in all, the machine looked good and fast, although I wonder about
>the fact that several desirable things were not mentioned, i.e., color
>monitors, X-Windows, some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
>storage.
>Jeff Lo
So far I've heard three objections to the design of te NeXT machine,
and I'm wondering just how valid the objections are. The first objection
is that the machine doesn't have a floppy drive for software distribution.
The second objection, somewhat related, is that there is only one drive,
so that when copying disks, the user will have to sit around and swap
disks in and out of the drive.
It seems to me that the people who raise these objections aren't considering
the type of environment that the NeXT machine was designed to run in.
Certainly, these would be valid criticims if the NeXT machine was
designed to be a standalone PC. However, the NeXT machine comes
equipped with Ethernet capability, and most people will want to attach
their machine to a network. In a networked environment, both software
distribution and archiving should be simple. For archiving, I would
store my files on a file server, and allow the operations staff perform
daily backups of my files. For software distribution, a software publisher
could distribute a tape to the administrators of the network and have
the administrators collect a fee from each user that wanted to use the
software. When a user had paid her fee, she would be allowed to access
the file. Alternatively, a user could buy the software, wander down
to the tape drive attached to a file server on the network, mount her
software, and copy it onto her machine. Also, with the existence of
the SCSI port, user's can go out and buy additional attachments for
handling these tasks, as Jeff points out.
The third criticism is that the Optical disk is slow. This seems like
a valid criticism. But maybe now that the NeXT machine is helping
to make optical disks standard attachments to computers, optical
disk manufacturers will begin to have a large incentive to increase
the speed at which their disks access data.
Comments?
-- Chuck
Joe McGuckin
As I see it, Bill Gates (Yep, the same guy who once upon a time
lambasted computer hobbyists as pirates and software thieves) is
pissed because up 'till now, he controlled the only commercial
(mabye 'commercial' is not the right word, but you get my meaning)
windowing system. Now he's got some competition.
Gee, I wonder if IBM's licensing of NeXTStep indicates any
dissatisfaction with the Gates/Microsoft organization...
David Muir Sharnoff
>A couple points about the 256 MB optical drive I have not seen mentioned.
>Summarizing my opinions, a 256 MB optical disk drive seems a tad too large or
>too small to be a really useful media system.
>
>Case A) - Software Distribution.
>
I think you are missing the main point of the machine: it is for students.
As a student I am not given anywhere close to 256MB of disk space. It would
be *wonderful* to be able to carry around a laser disk with all of
my files on it.
Case C) - Portable User File System
-Dave
Lance Franklin
>Summarizing my opinions, a 256 MB optical disk drive seems a tad too large or
>too small to be a really useful media system.
>
>Case A) - Software Distribution.
>
>It would seem that the best cost/performance ratio would occur if removable
>media were sized to typical distribution software. I can just see people
>paying $50 media costs for 500 KB of data. Even large programs such as GNU
>EMACS, TeX, and X11R2 fit on a 45 MB tape with room to spare. WHAT TAKES 256
>MB to distribute?? It is easy to use 256 MB but not with one distribution. Oh
>I forgot about the complete works of Shakspeare to which I refer at least
>daily :-).
I think you're probably right on this count...a $50 dollar disk (even if it goes
down in price quite a bit in quanity) is NOT the kind of thing you want to be
distributing NeXT-Moria on. Perhaps we'll see a SCSI-based floppy disk at some
time in the future for this machine (It DOES have SCSI, doesn't it?)
>Case B) - Backup
>
>If you have one 330 MB drive (which will not be enough - somebody's law), you
>need TWO disks to back it up. A 660 MB is 3 disks, etc. Why is the removable
>disk not a 1+ GB optical disk? Cost? Technology? Disk shuffling will still
>be a problem, escpecially if people implement 100+ networks of NeXT machines,
>each of which need to be backed up.
Well, I don't think it will necessarily take two 256k opticals to backup a 330
MB drive, considering most good backup programs do some kind of compression
on the data while moving it to the backup media...and usually, one doesn't
backup the entire system every time. You do a total backup once, then
incremental backups every so often afterwards.
What confuses me is, the last time I heard, R/W optical disks had a definate
limit as to the number of writes that could be done...eventually, they just
stopped taking data reliably after ~n number of writes. Is this a problem
with the NeXT drives...I hope not, since I've heard talk of swaps being done
to the drive when it's the sole mass storage device.
Lance
.
--
+-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+
| Lance T Franklin | | I never said that! It must be some kind of a |
| l...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US | | forgery...I gotta change that password again. |
+-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+
Rick Richardson
>
>Funny, no one is complaining that their SUN 3/60 doesn't have a floppy
>disk on it. Why should the NeXT box? Or do you think this is just a
OK, then, let me be the first. I find it totally inconvenient to have
to take my tar or cpio HD floppies and rewrite them to have the
the archive inside an MS-DOS file (great fun if the archive is bigger
than one disk), bring them in to work and down the hall to the PC,
and ftp them to the sun. I've got *hundreds* of floppies with usable
source code (typically 1 or 2 HD disks per package), but what a pain
in the butt. Return trip, same problem.
The story would be different if we'd been collecting software all along
on optical disk. My whole library would fit on one of the Maxtor
1 gigabyte opticals, or 3 on the NeXT. But that wasn't an option.
Charles Simmons
> I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
> and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage. What
> magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?
>
Random question for the day... Suppose I buy one of these NeXT
boxes, and I buy, say, a 30MB hard disk drive with 20 ms seek times
for something less than $1000. Now, I attach this little drive
to my SCSI port. At this point, I basically teach the operating
system to use the disk as a cache for the slower optical drive.
A few questions arise:
For Mach gurus:
How hard will it be, using Mach, to implement the hard drive as
a cache?
For cache gurus:
Will 30MB be sufficiently large to significantly reduce
the amount of accesses I need to make to the optical
drive?
-- Chuck
Werner Uhrig
> Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
> Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
> it belongs.
alt.whatever is not the place to discuss computer hard/software
*.misc groups, in contrast, were created EXACTLY for the purpose
of discussing machines/topics which do not have their private group.
BTW, have you voted to create comp.sys.mac yet? or better yet,
collect NEXT-news-articles and send them to your nearest (former)
net-god...
--
--------------------> PREFERED-RETURN-ADDRESS-FOLLOWS <---------------------
(ARPA) wer...@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1)
(INTERNET) werner%rascal.ics...@cs.utexas.edu
(UUCP) ..!utastro!werner or ..!uunet!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner
Peter da Silva
working environment. This is an alternate solution to the problem addressed
by Athena or Andrew... the student walks up to any NeXT machine on campus,
puts his $50 optical disk in, and reboots. Now it's *his* machine. The
workstation becomes the 1990s version of a 1980s floppy-based campus PC.
Of course the security problems this would cause a network are obvious... I
hope the NeXTwork (heh) has more in common with Athena than NFS.
--
Peter da Silva `-_-' Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
"Have you hugged U your wolf today?" pe...@ficc.uu.net
Roy Smith
Various People have been complaining that a $50 "optical floppy" is
far too expensive to use for software distribution. Why not do a turn on
the usual "you've bought the disk but only licenced the software" routine?
When you buy a program you get a copy of the manuals to keep and a
distribution disk, on which you put a $50 deposit. You copy the software
onto your own local disk and send back the distribution disk to get your
$50 back.
Of course, the bookkeeping involved might well be prohibitive. You
also have to worry about the possibility of the user somehow destroying or
changing the bits on the disk.
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!r...@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"
Michael Galassi
>Each one of those 256MB disks costs almost as much as a floppy disk
>*drive*. How do you propose NeXT to economically distribute updates &
>software? Certainly not on a $50 optical disk!
Why not? You send your original system disk to NeXT (you only work off
a backup anyway, right?), they erase the original material and return it
to you with the updated software on it. Also keep in mind that if our
cost on the disk is $50, NeXT's cost on it is $50/4=$12.50 if they use
the same rule of thumb ratios we use where I work, i.e. customer cost
is 4 times our manufacturing cost. I beleive that a single 27512 (512
KBit EPROM) costs on the order of $10 in 100s, not that much less than
a 256 MByte disk.
Another thought comes to mind, a non-erasable optical disk can be had
for $1 or 2 after you cover the fixed overhead of recording it, could
updates be shiped on a non-erasable disk (discus volgaris? :-) that
could be copied onto the real disk by the customer? I don't know if
one could make the drives in the NeXT read any sort of cheap disk but
if one could that would solve all the distribution problems. Anyone
out there in the know?
-michael
--
Michael Galassi | If my opinions happen to be the same as
...!tektronix!percival!nerd | my employer's it is ONLY a coincidence,
...!sun!nosun!percival!nerd | of course coincidences OFTEN DO happen.
Scott Storkel
from the announcement inidcate that Jobs was begging, excuse me, suggesting
that software packages be priced under $500. If software is going to cost $300-
$500 then what's 50 bucks for the media? Besides, if you buy in quantity, you
could probably get the price down to $20-$30 or lower. This is comparable to
distributing Unix programs on 1/4 inch tape. As for software updates, shareware
GNU and stuff, you could either have disks with big libraries of stuff (X, GNU
Emacs, etc.) or you could get stuff through anonymous ftp. I assume that most
major universities (and that is the targeted market, no?) are fairly well
connected. Anyway, I can't wait until we get some NeXT machines here. I'm
just dying to hack away at Objective-C, Common Lisp, and the NeXTStep
interface. Somebody put a NeXT on my desk and I'll write software that will
change the world!
Scott Storkel
Macintosh Software Development
Rice University
Robert Silvers
>In article <84...@mhuxu.UUCP>, j...@mhuxu.UUCP (J. M. Johnson) writes:
>
>> Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
>> Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
>> it belongs.
>
> "crap, yourself, bozo" (yes, I have lost my composure now)
> alt.whatever is not the place to discuss computer hard/software
> *.misc groups, in contrast, were created EXACTLY for the purpose
> of discussing machines/topics which do not have their private group.
|||||||
alt.next is currently the private group for the NeXT. Please only
post to that group. If you do not recieve alt groups, perhaps it is
time to have a talk with your sysadmin.
--Rob.
Robert Silvers. Bush for President.
Box #1003 University of Lowell.
Lowell Ma, 01854
Jonathan A. Fischer
climb out of whatever ruts we're in due to what's been done in the
past. These removable disks _can_ be a viable medium for distribution
of s/w. For instance, a vendor can simply include a SASE in the
package for the user to send the disk back for some sort of refund if
(s)he doesn't need an extra disk at the time. Or the user can keep
the disk.
Second, the size of the thing opens the door for distribution of
really amazingly huge pieces of software, such as your typical CD-ROM
product, or something *less static*, like, I don't know, a large,
extensible, hypertext system. Or an encyclopedia for which you
receive monthly updates over the phone with your (I love this) 9600
baud modem *emulator*.
Besides, the $50 price is sure to come down; I can now get a box of
10 3-1/2" disks for $14 CDN. Compare that to the $70-ish prices of
three years ago.
--
-Jonathan Fischer
David Maynard
> message, that the new release of the OS will be free from > AT&T licensing.
> This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH > a *complete* UNIX clone?
> Does it include basically *all* the utility > programs that come pretty much
> standard with AT&T/BSD UNIX? > Just > how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we
> expect it to be? There > are LOTS of UNIX clones already out there (e.g.,
> Coherent, Idris, > Minix) but there are significant reasons why most of us
> prefer the > real thing.
then you should contact ly...@spice.cmu.edu or look at the published papers.
There was a recent bibliography posting in comp.os.research.)
First of all, Mach IS UNIX just as much as 4.3BSD is. Sure, there is a
completely (for the most part) new kernel under the system call layer, but that
only matters to people that want to use the new features like IPC and
multi-threading. Sun re-wrote a large percentage of the kernel for SunOS 4.0
and peole don't question whether SunOS is still "UNIX."
As far as compatibility is concerned, you can run your 4.3 VAX binaries on a
Mach VAX without modification. In fact, I run a lot of Mach Sun binaries on my
SunOS Sun (those that don't use the new features). I also consider the Mach
systems I use to be just as stable as the non-Mach UNIX systems. Mach has been
receiving a lot recent attention, but it has actually been in widespread use
here for a long time.
Speaking completely on rumor....reports of a public domain version of Mach are
highly exaggerated. One of the biggest complaints that I have heard is over the
large number of licenses that you need to get it. Except for local
modifications, CMU basically uses the 4.3 utility set. If you want a PD UNIX
then you had better start supporting GNU since they are the only ones I know who
are really pursuing it. I certainly don't want to spend my time writing a PD
version of "ed." The GNU people are interested in using the Mach kernel in
their effort, but that doesn't mean that CMU will be releasing a PD Mach.
---
David P. Maynard (d...@cs.cmu.edu)
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
---
Any opinions expressed are mine only. I haven't asked the ECE department
or CMU what they think.
---
William R. Somsky
> So far I've heard three objections to the design of te NeXT machine,
> and I'm wondering just how valid the objections are. The first objection
> is that the machine doesn't have a floppy drive for software distribution.
> ...
> It seems to me that the people who raise these objections aren't considering
> the type of environment that the NeXT machine was designed to run in.
> Certainly, these would be valid criticims if the NeXT machine was
> designed to be a standalone PC. However, the NeXT machine comes
> equipped with Ethernet capability, and most people will want to attach
> their machine to a network. ...
Well, I had had the feeling that the NeXT machine was supposed to be
designed so that the STUDENTS could own them. (I got this impression
from Jobs himself when he made a stop here in Princeton some time ago
(~1 year?). They arranged a lunch for him with about 20 students so
he could meet with us and get our input. I was one of two grad students
there.)
If the students are going to own these, they'll have them in their dorm
rooms, and they almost definitely WILL be run as standalone PC's. I know
of one campus (Iowa State University) that has wired their dorm rooms with
a second phone line for future data communications use, and there are probably
more, but I doubt that ANYONE in the near future will be wiring their dorms
with full ethernet capability, file servers and extra tape/disk drives for
loading data. In a DEPARTMENTAL context, I can see the use of these machines
in a fully networked environment, but then it'll be the professors who have
the individual machines, possibly a FEW grad students (but not likely), and
a couple machines for general undergrad use. But that's not terribly
different from the way things are now with undergrad access to campus
machines, and quite different from what I thought Jobs had been wanting
to push: EACH student having their OWN machine.
That also brings up another point, the $6500 price tag, *academic*. I don't
know many undergrad students (or grad, for that matter, but I'm not sure
Jobs was thinking about us at all) that could afford pay that much for a
machine. When Jobs was here, he was probing us on the issue of cost as
well as other things. The gist of the question was: "If we made this
really neat machine that does all these thing, but it's kind of expensive,
(I think he was vaguely suggesting the $3000 range, but don't remember)
would you get one?" Of course one of our Princeton undergrads piped up with,
"Oh sure; I'd just ask my parents to buy one for me", but most of the rest
of us were more of the "Gee, well, I dunno..." persuasion. And now he's
come out with a price of $6500? How many students are going to be able to
afford that? That's a fair chunk of a year's cost at a private school
and should be more than enough to pay for a full year (tuition, room&board,
books, etc) at any state school.
Maybe the economics of the thing has forced him to give up on the idea
of letting the students themselves own them, but if it really was his
intention to release a machine that's AFFORDABLE and USEFUL to the
average, individual student, I think he's failed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R. Somsky Physics Dept ; Princeton Univ
w...@pupthy.Princeton.EDU PO Box 708 ; Princeton NJ 08544
Tom Neff
reason there's nothing quite like Usenet. But as matters stand right
now there are about 6-10 separate discussions taking place cross-posted
to 4 or more newsgroups, all under one Subject: line! This plays havoc
with newsreaders, both in the software and human sense.
I suggest we move everything to comp.misc for now, and edit our subject
lines to reflect what we're ACTUALLY talking about, e.g.:
NeXT - chip cramming
NeXT - educational/public pricing
NeXT - optical drive pro/con
NeXT - what about MACH?
etcetera. Please take a moment to think about this suggestion and (I
hope) comply for the sake of net.sanity.
Btw the volume of discussion on this machine (if it keeps up), coupled
with NeXT's apparent academic targeting, make it seem real likely to me
that comp.sys.next is inevitable sooner or later. We can make the best
case for the newsgroup by focusing everything in one group like
comp.misc -- the regulars of which will then become comp.sys.next's
biggest boosters! :-)
--
Tom Neff UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
"None of your toys CIS: 76556,2536 MCI: TNEFF
will function..." GEnie: TOMNEFF BIX: t.neff (no kidding)
James H. Cloos Jr.
|In article <20...@cloud9.UUCP> c...@cloud9.UUCP (Carl Ellison) writes:
|>In article <3...@elan.UUCP>, j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
|>>
|>> The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips as compared to 100+ for a fast
|>> PC and 300+ for a typical workstation. Everything has been crammed onto
|>> a 12 inch square board through the use of very dense surface mounted
|>> devices, and a few large custom CMOS chips.
|>
|>By my calculator, 45 chips in 144 square inches
|>gives 3.2 sq.in. per chip, on the average.
|>
|>Since a number of those need to be memory (therefore not monster PGAs),
|>I don't see the need to cram.
|>
|>What's up here?
|If we make the fairly safe assumption that Jobs is using nothing bigger
|than 1 Megabit drams, then the 8 megs standard in the machine would require
|64 chips (assuming no parity check bit), so it must be 45 chips in addition
|to ram.
The spec's were posted to alt.next. The board has slots for 1Mx32 bit SIMMs.
That is 16 chips for the 16 M max mem. 8 of those 16 slots are populated
by default. See alt.next for details.
P.S. The article in alt.next seems as though it is to be published; in
BYTE perhaps. (It was long enough that I'm not sure now if it
did say BYTE, but the author(s) did say that they were the 1st
journalists to get an in depth look at a beta version.)
-JimC
--
batcomputer!cl...@cornell.UUCP |James H. Cloos, Jr.|#include <disclaimer.h>
cl...@batcomputer.tn.cornell.EDU|B7 Upson, Cornell U|#include <cute_stuff.h>
cl...@tcgould.tn.cornell.EDU |Ithaca, NY 14853 |"Entropy isn't what
cl...@crnlthry.BITNET | +1 607 272 4519 | it used to be."
Alan Dorn Hetzel
>It would seem that the best cost/performance ratio would occur if removable
>media were sized to typical distribution software. I can just see people
>paying $50 media costs for 500 KB of data. Even large programs such as GNU
>EMACS, TeX, and X11R2 fit on a 45 MB tape with room to spare. WHAT TAKES 256
>MB to distribute?? It is easy to use 256 MB but not with one distribution. Oh
>I forgot about the complete works of Shakspeare to which I refer at least
>daily :-).
>
I understand the problem, but consider that not all that long ago, a box
of ten 3.5 inch floppies could set you back almost $50. A 45Mb tape will
still set you back half that or so. Yes, it may be a little bigger than
needed for most situations (at present), but it may be a good compromise
with future needs... Making it hold less wouldn't necessarily have made
it any less expensive. If you are familiar with WORM disks (Write Once,
Read Many Times), then you know that only quite recently, a 100Mb disk
could set you back $200.00, so $50 for 256Mb is pretty good. I also feel
that as volume of usage (and therefore production) of these disks builds
up, the price will drop to about $10-$20. (fingers crossed) It does
seem very reasonable to expect, given historical price curves for removable
media of many sorts.
>Case B) - Backup
>If you have one 330 MB drive (which will not be enough - somebody's law), you
>need TWO disks to back it up. A 660 MB is 3 disks, etc. Why is the removable
>disk not a 1+ GB optical disk? Cost? Technology? Disk shuffling will still
>be a problem, escpecially if people implement 100+ networks of NeXT machines,
>each of which need to be backed up.
>
1) You don't always have to back up your ENTIRE disk.
2) Think how many 45-60Mb tapes it would take, and what THEY would cost.
3) Since it's a rotating media, backup files can be had very quickly and
individually (as oppossed to the usual tape methods)
4) Again, media cost will fall.
5) Maybe compression during backup (assisted by the 56001?) can yield fewer
output disks needed to store 330 or 660Mb (maybe 1 for 330, 2 for 660)
6) Incremental backups are an option as well.
7) Backing up other 256Mb optical disks, it will always be big enough...!
Dorn
gatech.edu!fabscal!dorn
Ken Seefried III
>
>Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
>Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
>it belongs.
>
Because most of the net does not get the "alt" hierarchy. That being the case,
and there not (yet) being a "comp.sys.NeXT" group, the "misc" IS the appropriate
group.
Lighten up...and edit your kill file if it torques you out so much...
ken seefried iii ...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs,
k...@gatech.edu masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, unmvax,
cca...@gitvm1.bitnet ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken
ag...@urbsdc.urbana.gould.com
>Funny, no one is complaining that their SUN 3/60 doesn't have a floppy
>disk on it. Why should the NeXT box? Or do you think this is just a
>at Universities.. some some PC or Mac clone.
>
>Excuse me if I offended those of you who think PC and Mac class machines
>are workstations. Hey, I've got an Amiga 2000 at home, and I don't delude
>myself in thinking of it in the same class as a Sun or MicroVAX.
>
>Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: lo...@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
>University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming
Well, here is one person who *DOES* complain that his SUN does not
have a floppy. I'm even going to the extent of pricing SCSI floppies,
Bernouilli boxes, *anything* that is dismountable storage that
I can have in my office.
Centralized systems with big disks and tape backups are great,
but there is no way that a cartridge tape is as convenient as
a floppy for small objects. Especially if you've got a SUN 3/50,
and have to walk to the other end of the building to use
a cartridge tape.
Man, I think that every machine from a Gould PN to a Cray should have
personal, dismountable, storage right in the office - in my terminal,
if you will.
Andy "Krazy" Glew.
at: Motorola Microcomputer Division, Champaign-Urbana Development Center
(formerly Gould CSD Urbana Software Development Center).
mail: 1101 E. University, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
email: (Gould addresses will persist for a while)
ag...@gould.com - preferred, if you have MX records
ag...@fang.gould.com - if you don't
...!uunet!uiucuxc!ccvaxa!aglew - paths may still be the only way
My opinions are my own, and are not the opinions of my employer, or any
other organisation. I indicate my company only so that the reader may
account for any possible bias I may have towards our products.
PS. I promise to shorten this .signature soon.
Pierce T. Wetter
>daily :-).
>
out of nowhere or 2: NeXt gives me one {I'll trade work for machine, need a
ray tracer, NeXt?} ) one of the first things I'll do is wire the book of
quotations and the works of shakespeare to the thesaurus in such a way that
you can give it any subject and it will give you an appropriate quote. I.e
give it "Dog" and you get a quote about dogs. After that, who needs fortune?
NeXt Box% "What do you wish to work on today, oh master?"
Me% "Women"
NeXt Box% "Women are Evil, that's why they're so much fun. -PTW"
Pierce
Thomas Hameenaho
+in article <3...@elan.UUCP>, j...@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) says:
+One question: Why the hell have a floppy drive when you have a 256MB
+removable erasable optical disk? AND, why the hell have a typical SCSI
+tape drive for archival purposes, when you have a 256MB removable
+optical disk?
Well, if the optical disk is your primary mass storage device, how do you
get anything new onto it if you have to take it out and put another disk in?
The old macintosh way? ("Please insert disk foo bar") :-).
I sure would like to have at least a streamer to do backups, software
distribution and file exchange with other systems. I sure hope it will be
compatible with most other streamers (not the hp way).
--
Real life: Thomas Hameenaho Email: thomas@uplog.{se,uucp}
Snail mail: TeleLOGIC Uppsala AB Phone: +46 18 189406
Box 1218 Fax: +46 18 132039
S - 751 42 Uppsala, Sweden
Matt Goheen
> Of course, the bookkeeping involved might well be prohibitive. You
>also have to worry about the possibility of the user somehow destroying or
>changing the bits on the disk.
I wonder if NeXT has built in any way to write protect individual disks?
"Evangelist Mode On"
I envision a little hole in the disk that you can cover (with tape or
chewing gum) to write protect the disk.
"Evangelist Mode Off"
Seems like a good idea to me. First time I've ever agreed with an
evangelical type though...
--
- uucp: {rutgers,ames}!rochester!srs!matt Matt Goheen -
- internet: ma...@srs.uucp OR matt%srs....@harvard.harvard.edu -
- "We had some good machines, but they don't work no more." -
Joel Spolsky
|
| boxes, and I buy, say, a 30MB hard disk drive with 20 ms seek times
| for something less than $1000. Now, I attach this little drive
| to my SCSI port. At this point, I basically teach the operating
| system to use the disk as a cache for the slower optical drive.
You could easily mount /tmp and /bin on the fast hard disk, as well
as some swap space, which would speed things up significantly.
+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Joel Spolsky | bitnet: spolsky@yalecs uucp: ...!yale!spolsky |
| | arpa: spo...@yale.edu voicenet: 203-436-1483 |
+----------------+---------------------------------------------------+
#include <disclaimer.h>
David Maynard
> rooms, and they almost definitely WILL be run as standalone PC's. I know > of
> one campus (Iowa State University) that has wired their dorm rooms with > a
> second phone line for future data communications use, and there are probably >
> more, but I doubt that ANYONE in the near future will be wiring their dorms >
> with full ethernet capability, file servers and extra tape/disk drives for >
> loading data.
token ring running to all of the dorm rooms. The campus computer store sells an
ethernet adapter for the ring. NeXT machines here will probably use the Andrew
software so they would have access to all of the Andrew file servers, printing
facilities, etc. Students with IBM PC compatibles already have this access (if
they fork out the money for a token ring card). It is expensive to wire a
campus, but I think that more places will be doing it.
I think the high price tag IS a real barrier to student sales. If you add up
the component costs though, it would be REALLY hard to build a $3K workstation.
The 68030 isn't cheap. Memory prices are still pretty high when you want 1Mbit
parts, and hi-res monitors cost a pretty penny. NeXT has tried to side-step one
of the big money sinks by selling hard disks as an option. I know that I would
want one though. n
Brian bcase Case
>>time soon]." (Emphasis added by poster).-Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft
> YAY! The NeXt Machine is safe from Microsoft! That in itself makes it
>worth buying. YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!
Notice "any time soon." He left himself a loophole (damn).
>Only an idiot like Bill Gates would be disappointed by the NeXt Machine.
Then count me among the inane. Let's face it: except for some development
software and he optical drive, everything else is available on other
machines! esp. SUNs.
Bob Sutterfield
In article <32...@utastro.UUCP> wer...@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
>"[Regarding her experience of being on the NeXT advisory board (a
>group of university officials who made suggestions regarding the
>computers functionality):] You wouldn't believe the pressure we've
>been under to give people hints about the machine. I'm not sure i'd
>want to do this again."
> - Barbara Morgan, director of advanced technology planning, UCB
I saw it in early July, and others in our Department saw it well
before that. It's been almost fun, keeping the questioners wondering
(Hi, Mark! :-) with evasive answers - a lot like just before the MacII
came out. I'm not a good one to keep a secret, either, but Jobs made
me raise my right hand and stare him in the eye and tell him I
wouldn't tell anyone else. Seriously. I'm glad it's out now and I
can marvel at it in public. It's a lovely box.
>"[Regarding Steve Jobs inability (or unwillingness) to keep
>developments secret while at Apple:] At Apple, we used to joke that
>it was the only ship we knew of that leaked from the top."
> - John Couch, former director of the Apple Lisa team
While most of the features could be guessed by an astute person simply
watching the industry trends (what can you do that's *really*
different and still call it an academic UNIX workstation?), there were
a few that nobody guessed. They were some of the most interesting and
innovative: the optical disk, the Application Builder, the Archiver
(is that what they're calling it now?), the sound, and a few others.
This indicates to me that the leak control was fairly effective this
time around, or possibly that the probers were fairly ineffective.
-=-
Zippy sez, --Bob
- if it GLISTENS, gobble it!!
w...@moss.att.com
>
>far too expensive to use for software distribution.
>Roy Smith, System Administrator
>Public Health Research Institute
well, the main problem i see with distributing software on
them there disks is:
[ note: assuming bare-bones next-box here. just purchased. nobody
[ yet to ether-up to. just the optical drive.
assumption: mach is somewhat similar to unix in it's use of disk
swapping and paging.
i really don't think it's a good idea to un-mount (or the mach
equivolent) the one and only filesystem. remember, this is not
mush-dos. we just (probably) can't pop the OD out any old time we
want to and plug in the new one. nor can we eat up all the memory
with a big fat juicey ram-disk without crashing the system.
(remember we need program *and* swap space)
i wellcome pointers on mach internals, etc... any mach gurus
reading?
there are two solutions: (that are realistic)
a) ether-net. but only if you don't need that disk
for swap space.
b) use a hardrive as a root filesystem. keep your swap
space here too, to increase speed.
c) tape drive.
(note b & c add bucks to the final tag :-(
i am interrested in seeing (hands-on) this new machine. i don't
think it's going to be anywhere near bug free. in fact, expect a
nightmare for the first 12 months. (users manage to stumble
across the most abstruse bugs with almost un-nerving frequency :-)
.. at last! fresh meat for the net! :-)
good-luck!
=====================================================================
Bill Rankin
Bell Labs, Whippany NJ
(201) 386-4154 (cornet 232)
email address: ...!att!moss!wtr
Bob Sutterfield
In article <5...@sactoh0.UUCP> sjr...@sactoh0.UUCP (Steve J. Rudek) writes:
>There are obviously a lot of USENET folks jumping up and down and
>salivating because (a) NeXT is offering an "educational discount" and
>(b) they are "students" (I surmise). Is it correct to assume that
>*individual* students will also be eligible for this price discount?
>(If so, I suppose I can always go back to school for a quarter:)
That would have to depend upon the deal that NeXT has made with your
local University computer store. There are certain restrictions and
qualifications on just what sort of student can buy Macintoshes
through OSU, for instance, though I don't know the exact terms.
Besides that, they can't ramp up production fast enough to satisfy
that kind of demand, so the cubes are being sold to carefully selected
departments and projects that can make them shine. Individual
students may have to wait.
>I keep hearing that MACH is *derived* from UNIX -- and, in one
>previous message, that the new release of the OS will be free from
>AT&T licensing. This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH a
>*complete* UNIX clone? Does it include basically *all* the utility
>programs that come pretty much standard with AT&T/BSD UNIX?
No, Mach is just 4.3BSD, with no SysVisms thrown in (that I know of).
A Mach machine is one of the purest 4.3 systems you can find any more
from a commercial UNIX producer, since they're all mixing in varying
amounts of SysV in various ways. In fact, FSF says that the Mach
group is working hard on removing any residual code that's still
subject to the SysV license, so that FSF can use Mach in GNU. See the
ongoing discussion in gnu.announce.
>Just how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we expect it to be?
(a) They took CMU's Mach and "commercialized" it, removing a lot of
the parochialisms found in CMU's distribution, like a dependence upon
a printer named "third" because all the printers in Science Hall are
on the third floor. They also cleaned up a lot of bugs. I don't know
how much they're feeding back to the Mach group at CMU, but I
understand they're in close communication, which will help all the
other Mach port vendors as well (BBN, Encore, FSF, etc.)
(b) If you had a VAX running Mach, you could run a 4.3 VAX binary on
it. How much more compatible do you want?
See the ongoing discussion in comp.sys.next.
-=-
Zippy sez, --Bob
Are you still an ALCOHOLIC?
Bob Sutterfield
In article <11...@mmm.UUCP> sch...@mmm.UUCP (John C Schultz) writes:
>Disk shuffling will still be a problem, escpecially if people
>implement 100+ networks of NeXT machines, each of which need to be
>backed up.
Gaak! You're still thinking in personal computer terms, not
workstation terms. Remember, this machine is for a University's
networked workstation environnment. It's not intended for the home
market! That's not snobbishness, it's a marketing choice.
The reason the thing has no Winchester by default is (a) it makes more
sense as a diskfree workstation talking over the network to a NFS file
server (local / and /usr are *hard* to administer in the 100's); and
(b) so that the appropriate amount of Winchester storage can be added
in the case that someone needs to configure one as a server or the
very occasional standalone.
In this environment, the optifloppy is used for software distribution.
If a NeXT machine is a server, it can be used for dump or rdump.
Usually, though, dumps will be done to a central server's 1/2" tape
drive. The optifloppy on an individual workstation in a lab will be
used the same way students use magfloppies on Macintoshes now: to
carry around their personal work in their backpacks from lab to lab.
-=-
Zippy sez, --Bob
I just had a NOSE JOB!!
Bob Sutterfield
In article <34...@clyde.ATT.COM> w...@moss.UUCP (Bill Rankin) writes:
>[ note: assuming bare-bones next-box here. just purchased. nobody
>[ yet to ether-up to. just the optical drive.
Bad Assumption. The cube isn't being sold into such environments
right now: all the first customers will in a workstation/server
environment already, and you'll be chugging NFS from a Sun or a
Pyramid or whatever in the Computer Science department. If you don't
have a server handy, then you'll have a cube configured with a
Winchester, possibly as a new server for a small cluster. This is how
they'll go into the Dance department.
-=-
Zippy sez, --Bob
I'm not an Iranian!! I voted for Dianne Feinstein!!
Steve DeJarnett
>I keep hearing that MACH is *derived* from UNIX -- and, in one
>previous message, that the new release of the OS will be free from
>AT&T licensing. This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH
>a *complete* UNIX clone? Does it include basically *all* the utility
>how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we expect it to be? There
>are LOTS of UNIX clones already out there (e.g., Coherent, Idris,
>Minix) but there are significant reasons why most of us prefer the
>real thing.
Mach (as it stands now) is the 4.3BSD release of Unix with the
concepts that Mach provides (multiple threads of execution, and others I
can't seem to remember right now) woven into it. The idea (for the
future -- maybe with the next release) is (or was last time I checked)
to remove the particular OS kernel from Mach (in this case 4.3BSD) and
make Mach just be a small, compact system that supports Operating System
kernels as pseudo user processes, and you could boot different kernels
and (possibly) file systems and run them under Mach. This could lead to
people being able to up 4.3, play some games, read news, etc., then shut
down 4.3, boot up VMS, and start working on some report just as your boss
walks back in to see what you're working on.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Steve DeJarnett | Smart Mailers -> st...@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU |
| Computer Systems Lab | Dumb Mailers -> ..!ucbvax!voder!polyslo!steve |
| Cal Poly State Univ. |------------------------------------------------|
| San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 | BITNET = Because Idiots Type NETwork |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pierce T. Wetter
>change the world!
>
>Scott Storkel
>Macintosh Software Development
>Rice University
Ditto.
Anyone want a Linear System package for designing servos, and almost anything
with a feedback loop?
A ray tracer?
A three D modeler for the above?
Milo for the NeXT box (with Ron Avitzur's help.)?
g++?
An X-server for NeXTStep?
Anti-Aliased fonts?
An oscilloscope using the A/D in the box?
A signal generator using the D/A in the box?
Send your vote as to which project I should do first (if a NeXT box should
magically fall from the sky into my lap, or if not, maybe for my Mac II)
to wet...@csvax.caltech.edu
Pierce
ter...@tekcrl.crl.tek.com
>swapping and paging.
Bad assumption. MACH does not use the standard 4.2/4.3 method
of swapping/paging; MACH pages directly to a mounted file system.
It allocates inodes on the fly and then writes the pages out as part
of a regular file (but does not mark the inode as a regular file; it's
marked as an unknown type, in case the system crashes and fsck can easily
detect these unreferenced files and remove them as unneeded...). As a
side effect of this method of paging, one no longer needs a separate
partition for paging. One can make the whole disk one big hairy parti-
tion....
>i really don't think it's a good idea to un-mount (or the mach
>equivolent) the one and only filesystem. remember, this is not
>mush-dos. we just (probably) can't pop the OD out any old time we
>want to and plug in the new one. nor can we eat up all the memory
>with a big fat juicey ram-disk without crashing the system.
>(remember we need program *and* swap space)
>
>i wellcome pointers on mach internals, etc... any mach gurus
>reading?
Well, since MACH is binary compatible with 4.3 BSD, the MACH
equivalent is unmount. But you're right about mounting/unmounting
the one and only file system. If the floptical (love that word!! (-:)
drive is the only drive, you can't easily swap disks like the Mac...
Boy
Do
I
Hate
Inews
!!!!
!!!!
Cory Kempf
>
> Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
> Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
> it belongs.
Here is a copy of the Newsgroups: line:
]Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch
and here are the lines describing each of those newsgroups:
comp.sys.misc Discussion about computers of all kinds.
comp.os.misc General OS-oriented discussion not carried elsewhere.
comp.misc General topics about computers not covered elsewhere.
comp.arch Computer architecture.
Currently, there is no "comp.sys.next", or similar mainstram
newsgroup. If a site is not participating in the alt-net, there
is no group specifically for the NeXT.
I think that J. M. Johnson either owes the net an apology or an
explanation as to how discussion of the NeXT computer, it's
architecture and it's OS are in appropriate to these newsgroups.
--
Cory Kempf
UUCP: {decvax, bu-cs}!encore!gloom!cory
revised reality... available at a dealer near you.
Scot E Wilcoxon
article answers most of the questions asked here. I'm sure much of the
rest of the industry press will shortly supply more facts about NeXT.
(Now I can Kill this subject...)
(Oh, you want some answers? The present version of NeXT Mach crashes when
the disk is removed, but the next version should at least allow copying. All
the logic is on the CPU board, and future O/S versions will allow
multiprocessing. A second optical drive is <$1,500.)
--
Scot E. Wilcoxon sew...@DataPg.MN.ORG {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco
Data Progress UNIX masts & rigging +1 612-825-2607
I'm just reversing entropy while waiting for the Big Crunch.
Harmeet Singh Gill
#1: Send in your own disk to the software vendor who would "copy"
the software you purchased and mail it back to you.
#2: Call up the software company direct on a toll free number, pay
for the software through a credit card and they would then download the softwarevia modem and mail you a copu of the manual.
Alan Dorn Hetzel
1) DEC has a similar problem with RC25 based Microvax-II systems,
the disk had a 25Mb fixed section, and a 25Mb removable section,
but they shared a common spindle. To load a removable disk, you
had to spin down the system disk as well. They fixed the problem
by teaching VMS to understand extended absence of the system disk.
It essentially just tapped its feet and waited for you to give it
the disk back.
2) Since the NeXT has 8Mb of main memory, it is probably practical to
have a disk copy/installation utility which pages all nonessential
code out, lock itself in memory, and then performs the copy using
all spare memory as a buffer. Agreed, this would really suck for
copying a full disk, but the average installation could probably be
done in 1-3 passes.
Opinions: ?
Dorn
Juri Munkki
>
>a) ether-net. but only if you don't need that disk
> for swap space.
>b) use a hardrive as a root filesystem. keep your swap
> space here too, to increase speed.
>c) tape drive.
You could also write special boot disk that would not boot unix, but
a program that is capable of copying files from one laserdisk to another.
You could then use most of the 8MB (possibly even 8MB, if you use the
256KB video-RAM) to copy the files.
Of course it might be possible to write a program that stops all other
processes for a while, makes sure that it has all the RAM in the machine
and then enable the user to make the copies.
Remember: Just because a machine comes with Unix as the standard operating
system doesn't mean that you can't run anything else on it.
You might even be able to prepare NeXT mach for the removal of the main
storage device in the same way that a Mac handles removing floppies. A
Mac also has to be able to read/write to/from the system disk at any time.
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
| Juri Munkki jmu...@hut.fi jmu...@fingate.bitnet I Want Ne |
| Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre My Own XT |
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
P.S. Everyone knows that booting a unix box in order to do something is
not a good idea. Please do not reply to this article if you don't
have anything constructive to say. My guess is that NeXT mach knows
(or will know) how to handle an "ejected" disk.
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
| Juri Munkki jmu...@hut.fi jmu...@fingate.bitnet I Want Ne |
| Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre My Own XT |
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
John Weber, Celtic sysmom
% In article <84...@mhuxu.UUCP>, j...@mhuxu.UUCP (J. M. Johnson) writes:
% >
% > Why do people insist on continuously posting to inappropriate newsgroups.
% > Please take all this discussion about this NeXT crap to 'alt.next' where
% > it belongs.
%
% Here is a copy of the Newsgroups: line:
% ]Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch
<...>
% comp.arch Computer architecture.
% I think that J. M. Johnson either owes the net an apology or an
% explanation as to how discussion of the NeXT computer, it's
% architecture and it's OS are in appropriate to these newsgroups.
(Creaaaakkkk... Damn, this thing is getting stiff! strap, click.
Hisssss... Pop! Fooosh...)
I'm not Mr. Johnson, but I feel that this has gone on long
enough. The tone of this group has been that of a discussion
about various aspects of system design and performance. The
incessant babble about what Jobs did right or wrong is
beginning to grate on my nerves. This is not the correct
forum for these types of discussion. Please take this to
comp.sys.misc (where I have directed follow ups). The
natrue of that group is far more suited to this class of
discussion.
(squeek, drip, drip... Damn, I hate flamethrowers which don't shut
off cleanly).
% Cory Kempf
% UUCP: {decvax, bu-cs}!encore!gloom!cory
% revised reality... available at a dealer near you.
--
"In the fields of Hell, John Weber, ...!uunet!sco!johnwe
where the grass grows high, @ucscc.ucsc.EDU:joh...@sco.COM
are the graves of dreams,
allowed to die." -- Author unknown Celtic sysmom with an ATTITUDE!
Any opinions expressed are my own, and bear no relationship to those
of my employers, to the best of my knowlege.
Dan Trottier
>
>Look at what Mr. Joy said... Oh it isn't too different from whats out
>right now. Bullcra*! Price is an important feature too! He better
>recognize the great features of the NeXT or start losing sales.
Actually Bill Joy refered to the near future. I wouldn't be surprised if
it turns out that Sun has something to compete with or surpass the NeXT
workstation. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a great buyers market.
I personally would have been more impressed if Jobs' used the 88000 instead
of the 68030.
For those who claim that a floppy drive on the NeXT machine is not necessary
you are wrong. The optical disk in your only drive has the whole operating
system on it. You won't want to remove it all that often. It also doesn't
make for an efficient medium for software distribution. Consider most software
packages sold consume about 1 MB of space you will have tons of excess
capacity on the medium. Plus it will add $50 dollars to the price of buying
software.
--
Dan Trottier d...@maccs.McMaster.CA
Dept of Computer Science ...!uunet!utai!utgpu!maccs!dan
McMaster University (416) 525-9140 x3444
Henry Spencer
>I think the high price tag IS a real barrier to student sales. If you add up
>the component costs though, it would be REALLY hard to build a $3K workstation.
>The 68030 isn't cheap. Memory prices are still pretty high when you want 1Mbit
The hi-res monitor prices are a problem. The other two problems you mention
can be solved by simply using the last generation of parts rather than the
current one. Really, guys, there is no law of nature that says you have to
have a 68030 and 1Mb RAMs to have a useful workstation.
--
The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu
Henry Spencer
>... Sun re-wrote a large percentage of the kernel for SunOS 4.0
>and peole don't question whether SunOS is still "UNIX."
Speak for yourself.
Lyndon Nerenberg
> Plus it will add $50 dollars to the price of buying
>software.
Why? It seems that most software currently ships on QIC tapes. These
go for around $50 (Canadian). The floptical costs C$65 according to
everything I've read. Fifteen bucks isn't going to make a damn bit
of difference in end user price.
--
Mike Rutenberg
>-> [There is] *no way* [I will have my programmers write software
>-> for NeXT any time soon]." (Emphasis added by poster).
>-> -Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft
[...]
> Only an idiot like Bill Gates would be disappointed by the NeXt Machine.
You give Mr. Gates *far* too little credit. He is a very smart, very aware
gentleman. Is he disappointed? I suspect not.
Remember that Microsoft is currently investing millions of dollars in
technologies that are in many ways competing with what NeXT has announced.
Among them:
Microsoft NeXT
PM/Windows <--> NeXTStep (or whatever)
OS/2 <--> Mach
CD/ROM <--> NeXT optical drive
Microsoft would like OS/2 to be *the* exciting OS, the *obvious* choice
for personal computer software development. Whatever you think of the
price (yicko!), the NeXT machine is quite a bit more sexy than OS/2 on
a 386. NeXT will gather developer attention & general "mindshare" that
would have otherwise been focused on Microsoft (and Apple).
You will note that of late there have been a number of print articles
under Bill Gates name lauding Object Oriented programming, yet the NeXT
machine, which is the first major machine to be delivered with
such tools, does not get even a note of his praise.
What ever you think of Mr. Gate's comments, I really doubt that they
stem from him being disappointed.
Mike
Scott Wilson
Maybe the way to look at it is "how many $6500 machines distribute
software on $50 medium." To say that "most" software currently ships
on QIC tapes is just false unless were talking about workstations
only. Certainly software for Macs and PC's ship in much greater
numbers on floppies than does software for workstations on QIC tape.
My personal experience is that QIC tapes are always associated with
work (i.e., people with money to spend who don't really care about
buying 1/4" tapes) and floppies with home computer use. If NeXT is
targeted for poorer computer users than $50 certainly is significant.
I've purchased Mac software that sold for only $65, there's no way
this could be sold if it had to come on $50 medium.
--
Scott Wilson arpa: swi...@sun.com
Sun Microsystems uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA
Joseph D. Morrison
> alt.next is currently the private group for the NeXT. Please only
>post to that group. If you do not recieve alt groups, perhaps it is
>time to have a talk with your sysadmin.
> --Rob.
Why alt.next???? Why not comp.sys.next? Some of us don't receive alt groups
for a good reason: we don't have huge amounts of disk space, and we have to
cut back somewhere, and alt groups are the first groups that go.
This NeXT discussion is about technical aspects of a new computer and I
think it belongs in comp.sys.next. Am I missing something?
Joe Morrison
--
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science UUCP: ...!mit-eddie!vx!spectre
545 Technology Square, NE43-425 ARPA: spe...@vx.lcs.mit.edu
Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 253-5881
--
"That's no answer. That's not even science!"
Lyndon Nerenberg
>Maybe the way to look at it is "how many $6500 machines distribute
>software on $50 medium." To say that "most" software currently ships
>on QIC tapes is just false unless were talking about workstations
>only.
Sorry, I thought it would be clear from the context of my reply;
Yes, I am addressing the workstation market.
Just to prove a point, I see Sun charges the same price for QIC
and half inch tape distributions of SunOS, even though the "cost"
of half inch tape is roughly half that of QIC (based on SunOS 3.5
which was 4? QIC and 3? 1/2 in.)
My point is the media costs tend to get buried in overall "handling"
charge (e.g. FrameMaker charges CAN$150 for "media" when shipping
a single QIC tape).
[ This has nothing to do with comp.arch. Follow-ups to comp.misc. ]
--lyndon
--
Robert Silvers
>>post to that group. If you do not recieve alt groups, perhaps it is
>>time to have a talk with your sysadmin.
>> --Rob.
>
>Why alt.next???? Why not comp.sys.next? Some of us don't receive alt groups
>for a good reason: we don't have huge amounts of disk space, and we have to
>cut back somewhere, and alt groups are the first groups that go.
>
Sorry for the mixup. When I posted that, there was no comp.sys.misc.
It was formed the next day, and some people got my message after
comp.sys.next reached their site. I also did not realize that so many
people did not get alts. Please dont waste any more bandwith on this
subject. Comp.sys.next is here and alt.next is old news.
--Rob.
Robert Silvers. Bush for President.
Box #1003 University of Lowell.
Lowell Ma, 01854
Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering
>
>Well, here is one person who *DOES* complain that his SUN does not
>have a floppy. I'm even going to the extent of pricing SCSI floppies,
>Bernouilli boxes, *anything* that is dismountable storage that
>I can have in my office.
>
>Centralized systems with big disks and tape backups are great,
>but there is no way that a cartridge tape is as convenient as
>a floppy for small objects. Especially if you've got a SUN 3/50,
>and have to walk to the other end of the building to use
>a cartridge tape.
>
>Man, I think that every machine from a Gould PN to a Cray should have
>personal, dismountable, storage right in the office - in my terminal,
>if you will.
Have we (sun) got a deal for you! Trade up to a 386i. It has a 3.5"
floppy drive built right in! And it uses everyones favorite chip :>>>>>
Seriously, if (enough) customers ask for it. We do it. We even built
a '386 machine (--> we will do ANYTHING).
I am speaking out of my hat. Sun rents my opinons; I can't afford to
license theirs.
Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus