Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!thad
From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: What is an att 7300
Message-ID: <33395@cup.portal.com>
Date: 30 Aug 90 05:53:50 GMT
References: <85@g73.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 56

grant@g73.UUCP (Grant Balkema) in <85@g73.UUCP> writes:

	I have the chance to pick up three att unix computers.  As usual, they
	are a thousand miles away and nobody there understands what they are,
	other than a secretary who said it had the number 7300 on it, and she
	thought that it had a hard disk in it.  The listing said ATT unix
	computer.  Are these worth anything (my cost is shipping) what UNIX do
	they use? system V? can ethernet them? What chipset microproc' do they
	have, etc. etc. Any comments at all!

Gee, dunno, if you ask them to ship those "number 7300" systems my way, I will
"dispose" of them for you.     :-)  :-)  :-)

Seriously, if you peruse back postings in this newsgroup (comp.sys.att) or
care to examine the unix-pc.general, unix-pc.sources, unix-pc.uucp and the
other unix-pc.* newsgroups, you'll definitely learn a LOT about those systems.
The "number 7300" is also known as the 3B1 and as the UNIXPC; not to be confuse
d
with Amdahl's "7300" UTS systems (although I've often wondered WHY Amdahl
chose that number; a good friend of mine works there (Amdahl) and "does" their
multi-CPU UNIX software, and I've shown her my "number 7300" many, many times
over the years and she even has an account on one of my "number 7300" systems
and likes it VERY much! :-)

I own four myself, and they're on both Ethernet and StarLAN networks, and the
majority of my UNIX development is undertaken on these systems simply because
I like them so much (and I also have VAX, DEC-20, HP-UX, Amdahl, Motorola, and
other systems available to me, and I *still* keep using the "number 7300").

To keep this brief: the UNIXPC sports a 10 MHz MC68010 CPU and is a
virtual-memory demand-paged SysV "box".  About the ONLY things the stock
systems lack are a SCSI interface and a color monitor.  They come "stock" with
built-in modem, 3 expansion slots, and a range of about 15 peripheral
expansion cards (for which you'd need an expansion chassis if you want to
operate up to 7 different ones).  They run just about all the GNU software,
there are numerous uucp and ftp archive sites with loads of software in source
form, and you can even operate commercial software such as dBASE III,
Microsoft WORD, SuperCOMP, MultiPLAN, Hospital Admin Packages, Informix, etc.

If you want to find a "home" for them, let me know; there are a LOT of college
students who NEED them (I get approx. 100 emails a week asking where to buy
these systems since I "run" the Silicon Valley AT&T UNIX Users' Group of which
perhaps 90% of the members own these "number 7300" systems).

Those "number 7300" systems make a great personal UNIX system and, by the way,
outperform Mac II systems running A/UX (go figure THAT out (the Mac with its
68020), but, it's true, as I'm HAPPY to demonstrate!  :-)

I just wish AT&T had continued its relationship with Convergent (the mfr. of
the "number 7300"); j'imagine a 68040-based UNIXPC.  Whew.  As it is, we now
look to Commodore's Amiga UNIX for a 68030-/68040-based SVR4 as shown in the
AT&T booths at numerous Usenix and other UNIX trade shows, and found at places
such as VPI (Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where it has displaced all the
Mac-based A/UX systems).

Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]