Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!emory!stiatl!stbimbo!jer From: jer@stbimbo.UUCP (John Ramspott) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Amiga 3000UX news Message-ID: <178@stbimbo.UUCP> Date: 3 Oct 90 21:14:09 GMT Reply-To: jer@stbimbo (John Ramspott) Distribution: usa Organization: Sales Technologies Inc. Atlanta, Ga. Lines: 97 A3000UX News from the 10/2/90 AAi meeting ----------------------------------------- First, no one from Commodore made it to the meeting, so they were not able to follow through on their promise to discuss pricing and packaging of the UNIX operating system. However, in a phone conversation, Gail Purcell told me that the educational price of a complete system would be less than $4500. An engineer from Rockwell International now has a box on his desk that his company paid $4200 sans monitor. But these prices are not fixed, and no telling for what exact configuration the "less than $4500" would be for. The speaker was Dr. Mac Lindsey, Professor of Physics at Emory University, who received an evaluation unit a little over a month ago. His system had the following configuration: 9 MB RAM (1 MB chip, 8 MB fast) 200 MB hard drive Ethernet card (configurable for thin or thick) 1950 Multisync monitor 150 MB Tape Drive Some of the software that came with it: 4 shells - Bourne, C, Korn, and Job TCP/IP, Berkeley sockets, NFS, RFS, rlogin, ftp, telnet X-Windows, Open Look, standard sample X clients and OL-specific clients C came on it. He was also able to get BASIC and Fortran. In /usr/amiga/bin were some Amiga specific examples. One of the unique abilities is that it supports multiple "virtual" screens. He was logged on as himself several times, and each one ran on its own screen that he could flip between. One was even running open look. This is similar to the ability of having multiple screens under AmigaDOS. ALT-Amiga switches between screens. You can have up to 10 virtual screens. The X-Windows performance was very good. The ico example he ran runs much faster than it does on my Sub 386i here at work, and is pretty close to how it looks on SparcStation (the 12.8 MIPS box). Window dragging, resizing, opening, and closing all were smooth, but still rough to people use to the snappiness of Amiga Intuition. The current server supplied is only monochrome. The only program UNIX using color was a dotty type program in /usr/amiga/bin/samp. The fellow from Rockwell is getting the 8-bit graphics board created by Lowell in 2-3 weeks, and he will be running in color just like the A3000UX in the TI booth at Spring Comdex. No telling when there will be a color server for the 1950 class of monitors. Dr. Lindsey successfully hooked into a network of many machines like Suns, Apollos, etc, and was able to login and to ftp file transfer. He even logged into the Amiga from other machines. The only caveat here is that this beta UNIX has a 2 user license. He said that this would not be present in the released version. He has not tried NFS yet. The problem yet to be addressed is the AmigaDOS <===> UNIX connection. He could find no obvious way to do even file transfer between the two. You CANNOT run AmigaDos under UNIX. You must shutdown UNIX and re-boot to run AmigaDOS applications. However, you do have the ability to partition the drive to have both an AMigaDOS partition and a UNIX partition. He suggested that disk hackers will solve the file transfer problem if Commodore does not soon. To measure performance, Dr. Lindsey ran a test that did a Fast Fourier Transform of a Sine Wave. He selected this benchmark because it uses floating point, and he can vary how much memory is malloc'ed. He also likes it because it solves a real problem that is useful in physics. The numeric value is HOW MANY TIMES FASTER than an A3000UX the listed item is. A 80286 box is .012 times faster (in other words much slower), while an RS/6000 is 7.0 times faster. System Result ----------------------------------------- ------ 80286 8 MHZ, no ffp .012 Amiga 2000, AMigaDos, Manx C .019 80286/80287 12 MHZ .14 Mac II, 16 MHZ .48 AMiga 3000, Manx C .72 Zenith 80386/80387, 33 MHZ .76 Mac IIfx, MPWC, 40MHZ '030 .9 AMIGA 3000UX, 68030, 25MHZ 1.0 (by definition) Next Cube 1.2 Mac IIfx, AUX 1.? (couldn't read it) Sun 4/280 1.9 Sun IPC (15.8 MIPS box) 3.6 IBM RS/6000 model 320 7.0 (boooh!) Dr. Lindsey concluded that it felt like real UNIX, worked well on the network, and the UNIX system itself has never gone down (although some programs have, naturally). As a long time Amiga user, he may be a little biased, but this sounds very hopeful. Gail Purcell told me by phone that Commodore will very definitely be selling into the educational program, so they have by NO means dropped the product. They are just unsure at this point about general distribution to dealers who don't even understand what UNIX is. Hope this is useful information. --John E. Ramspott