Xref: utzoo comp.arch:18743 alt.folklore.computers:6431
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Perq
Message-ID: <1990Oct25.152909.23360@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Oct22.163604.178@mdbs.uucp>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 15:29:09 GMT

In article <1990Oct22.163604.178@mdbs.uucp> zed@mdbs.uucp (Bill Smith) writes:
>Cruftyness aside, was there a product in the same price/performance
>range as a Perq with a landscape high-resolution screen?

Not right at the instant it was announced.  The instant when it was
*delivered* was another story.  The Sun 1 was announced while people
were still waiting for Perq deliveries... and Sun not only delivered
the hardware reasonably promptly, they also delivered a real operating
system running on it.  Performance wasn't as good as the Perq in a
number of ways, but a running system always beats a letter postponing
delivery yet again.  So what if it was a lousy little 68000 with no
user-writable microcode, and no fast BitBlt engine, and a kludgey MMU
that imposed some annoying restrictions?  It ran and you could get one.
A lot of Perq purchases got cancelled in favor of Suns.
-- 
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry