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

[David Kessner]

In article <EACHUS.91Mar20181104 at aries.mitre.org> eachus at aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>   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 have the standard "PC AT" bus which is called the ISA bus, for Industry
Standaed Arch.  Then there is MCA or Microchanel-- where IBM clames that
you cannot do 'multitasking' without it (and only thet have it!).  There is 
also EISA, for Extended ISA-- wich is like MCA, but isnt owned by IBM and is
compatable with normal ISA cards.  

I have the ISA bus, but have never experienced the jerkyness that you 
describe...

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

Yes, but Amiga UNIX V2 will support color on the standard hardware! :)

>   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.

Yes, as long as Amiga UNIX has a small/piddly market share in the 'typical
UNIX shop'.  Once/if it gets a larger market share, it might be cost
effective to make such a machine.  That's one of the reasons that I said
C= would be foolish to actually build a machine like that.  In 
addition, it would look just like any other 030/040 based UNIX box out
there (with the exception of the NeXT, which is stange in its own way).

>   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.

Yes.  Percieved speed is another issue.  But more on that in a sec...

>   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.

C='s UNIX market is on a 'lower level' than your typical SUN user.  That is
to say that they have less knoledge of UNIX than most SUN users/sys-admins.  
Given that, C= needs to do a little more "hand holding" to keep their 
customers happy.  Some companies are realizing this, like Apple shipping
Mac UNIX already installed on a hard drive.  There are other companies that
are doing this as well-- or will be soon.  

I installed UNIX on my 386 from 40+ 1.2 meg floppies.  You though 6 hours 
was long!  

I dont think that set-up time is as important to those UNIX guru's.  But 
it is obviously important to someone...

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

These results are consistent with EVERY dhrystone test I have seen, including
those in UNIX Review, where they list 1.1 results as well as 2.x.  

>   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 same Dhrystone program when compiled with Lattice C under AmigaDOS (with
the 030 optimization turned on) got 7600 dhry/sec.  I would not expect 
any Dhrystone program (1.1 or 2.x) to get more than 8500 using any compiler.

I would not expect the Dhrystone results to get better with Amiga UNIX v2, 
but OS overhead will improve signifigantly.  

I've hinted enough:  DOES ANYONE HAVE DHRYSTONE 2.X OR SPECMARK CODE????
(and now back to the normally schedualed program...)

>   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).

For me, the raw CPU power is important since I do a lot of CPU bound 
tasks.  Disk I/O is also important, but to a lesser extent.  I also have
12 meg of RAM, so swapping is not a problem.  All of the terminals (one
local, another via 9600 V.42bis modem) are connected via 38400 baud 
connections and are not a bottle-neck themselves.  All in all, I am only
I/O bound when I get a large Netnews batch-- but that has to do with the
28ms drives I have...

FYI, I have found a BIG case for text only displays.  On the 386, I can 
'cat' a 80K text file in about 6 seconds.  It even supports ten virtual
terminals.  It makes X windows look snail'ish...

>   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 expect all of these to be available for the A3000-- but I too expect it to
cost as much as a "mainstream" workstation which is the original point.  If
you spend this much for a fast Amiga, why not just get a SPARC Clone or
comparable machine?  In terms of proce/performance there is little reason-
there is only "AmigaDOS" and "set-up time" that may/may-not be a factor
(depending on what brand you get).

Another FYI:  Do you know why God made <insert your favorite type of 
person here>?  Someone has to pay list price?

>   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...)

Judging buy what I saw at the FALL COMDEX, there are a dozen or so new SPARC
Clones that should be in the $8000-9000 range for 16" color, 200 meg HD, 
8meg RAM, and eithernet.  The ones I saw ran Sun OS 4.?  but I would not
be suprised to see System Vr4 in the bunch.  Some of these systems are 
available now (like the Mars/Tatung system), while others should be 
available this summer (like Goldstar, DTK, and Compuadd).  

>   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!

Ahhh...  You mean something more like "Working right out of the box." 
That is another story.  I agree that something needs to be done here (I 
still dont have my eithernet working correctly).  I have not played too
much with AmigaUNIX on this part-- but would assume that once you get off
the "standard configuration" that things are pritty much the same as 
typical UNIX systems.  Am I wrong to assume this?

>	   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.

I can configure a 386 UNIX system in the $4000-4500 range.  Add $1000 for
a 486/25 system.  Here is what I base this on:

	$1500	Bare bone 386/25 (one floppy, keyboard, case, 200 watt PS)
	400	8 Meg RAM
	400	150 meg HD
	100	HD/Floppy controller
	600	800x600x256 SVGA card and monitor
	1500	UNIX System (unlimited users, development, X/Motif, manuals)
	400	Math Co-processor (not needed, but a good idea)
	100	Mouse (a damn good mouse, since most cost $65).
	---------------------------
	3500	Total

Add to this $1000 worth of add-ons.  Perhapse a 34010 board for $600.  
Eithernet for $125.  Tape backup for $400.  A Telbit T2500 at $950.  Etc..

The usuall price difference between a 386/25 and a 486/25 is about $1000, but
this changes daily...

As you see, the 386 system is some real competition.  At the $3500 base
price, there are a lot of changes that you can add-- 34010 boards and 
caching disk controllers are near the top of the list.   I wont say that 
a 386 system is better-- just damn attractive.

>					Robert I. Eachus

				- David K
-- 
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