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

[Robert I. Eachus]

In article <1991Mar20.211652.3247 at kessner.denver.co.us> david at kessner.denver.co.us (David Kessner) writes:

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

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

   I thought your system didn't have an XT bus?  The problems "only"
occur when DMA can choke the CPU by taking over the bus.
Unfortunately, most PC compatable '386 machines currently have XT
busses.

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

   No, I was speaking about other alternatives.  As far as I know, the
ULowell board will only be required for color X.

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

   My point was that there is no point to spending the money to take
these features out, the savings in hardware cost wouldn't come close
to covering the development overhead and the added manufacturing costs
of an additional product line.

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

   I have been complaining about the user percieved speed of the
Sun-3's since back when SPARC was a glimmer in Sun's eye.  The problem
has been that a display interface that was not a bottleneck with a
68010 based Sun-2 is a real pain in the neck on a Sun-3.  My 2500/30
happens to be faster than most of the Sun-3 around here, but not the
factor of ten that the relative display speeds will convince you is
the case.

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

   And I think Commodore is figuring that people who have to support a
lot of machines will much prefer the Amiga, due to a much better
support level, and less set-up time, etc.  I expect to get in some
SPARCstations in the next month, I'll time how long it takes to set
them up, last time it was 6 hours/machine, (Ouch!) but I hope to
remember some of the gotchas for next time.  The 3000U is shiped plug
and play.

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

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

   But not the same code generators!  The cheats for Dhrystone (as opposed to
optimizations) were all in the code generators.

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

   If you read between the lines of what I wrote, you might see that I
expect that the Dhrystone speeds for the next relase of Amiga Unix to
be somewhat higher (but not higher than the comparable AmigaDOS
numbers).  The biggest improvement in the next release may be that the
system is compiled with a better compiler.

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

   I think that you and I are looking at two different types of
performance.  Robert Silverman here at MITRE uses distributed networks
of workstations to factor large prime numbers.  He cares about raw
(integer) speed, but most of the people at MITRE do mostly text
processing, and for this the Amiga (with 8 Meg at least for emacs on X
:-), is faster than most of the SPARCstations.  Flipping instantly
between screens instead of rooting through windows is easy to get
addicted to (and actually makes smaller displays preferable).

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

   All these are available or are in the pipe, and modulo what I said
above about large displays, I expect that such a machine will list for
about what a color SPARCstation does.  (But no one will pay list for
either.)

   I seriously doubt the A3000UX's ability to do 38400 baud, and 19200
   is questionable (this is under UNIX, ya know)...

   I'll let Dave Haynie or one of the third party board manufacturers
reply to this, but I will note that the message that arrived
immediately after this one was from someone running his (Amiga Unix)
serial port at 38400 and wanting to turn on CSD. 

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

   As I said, the market they are playing in seems to have a "real"
prices in the $5 to $10K range.  By going third party for disks and
memory, I can set up a color SPARCstation for about $15K.  (Flame
retardant: The system hardware is less than half of that, additional
network plant adds about $1 to 2K and the rest is software.)  If I can
get a comparable Amiga with Unix for less than $10K, I'm happy.  For
$15K I expect that I will be able to get the system you describe
above.  (Again, less than $10K for hardware...)

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

   Again, you lost me.  I wasn't talking about such things as third
party devices (like Exabyte tapes :-), I was talking about the time to
get the basic system configured, up, and running.  I am always
appalled by the fact that configuring NFS under AmigaDOS (with a
Ameristar card and software) took less time than hooking up the cable,
while similar installation or changes on a Sun are a nightmare.  And
Sun invented NFS!

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

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

   I don't think I'll ever see a Unix workstation with a real cost
below $5000, but the Amiga does come close.

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

   I don't know beans about Proformance :-), but the performance seems
to compare nicely to machines in its price range. ('386 boxes with a
decent bus and disk controller.) I don't count the low end
SPARCstations, because the initial cost is sky high.  They only
compete when you already have an active Sun network.  you might be
able to put together a ten box system for under $10K per seat, but
quantity one will kill you.

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

   I can't help you with dealers in Denver, but there are several good
dealers in NH and Massachusetts.

	   Spiffy Features?	It runs AmigaDOS :)

   And you can take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on, and get
a login prompt.  And then log in again and again without X-windows.
:-)


--

					Robert I. Eachus

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