Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mailer.cc.fsu.edu!stat!gauss!kiniry
From: kiniry@gauss.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Kiniry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amiga 3000UX
Keywords: Amiga 3000UX UNIX
Message-ID: <1990Nov14.132633@gauss.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 14 Nov 90 18:26:33 GMT
Sender: news@stat.fsu.edu
Reply-To: kiniry@gauss.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Kiniry)
Organization: FSU computer science & mathematics
Lines: 45

Well everybody, I have finally got to see and use 2.0, a 3000, and better
yet a 3000UX.  Here in Tallahassee, at Florida State University, we had an
outdoor demonstration of the 3000UX on Tuesday 11/13/90.  I helped run the
entire demo all day long with one other guy who is the Commodore rep for
FSU.  We also had a 2500 hooked up to the laser disk player running various
demos, AmigaVision, etc.  We even had the laserdisk bringing in a signal 
on the workbench as I was working with a bunch of stuff.  Needless to say,
we impressed quite a few folks, gave away a bunch of T-shirts, popcorn, and
cokes.  Anyway, on to the review of the 3000UX from someone who knows the
Amiga and UNIX inside and out.

Okay, first for the AmigaDos side.  The 2.0 user interface is wonderful, they
have done an exceptional job at Commodore producing a product which looks and
feels professional - way beyond a Macs or Windows 3.0 interface.  The ability
to list files without icons and manipulate them is great, I have very little
complaints about 2.0.  But on to UNIX...

Well, the 3000UX is running XWindows on a hires interlaced two color screen.
(So thats 640 by 400 with black on white or vice versa.)  Commodore has 
followed all of the OpenLook specifications to the letter, but this results
in a magnified look.  Remember, the specs are in pixel sizes, so when you use
a 640 by 400 screen for your entire interface, it looks like you are using a
magnifying glass to look at the upper right corner of a Sun workstation.
Second, it's kind of slow.  It felt to me like the Sun 3/50's we have here in
the graduate lab at FSU.  But of course this was standing alone, i.e. we did
not have it hooked up to the network.  I looked at the proc table and there 
were about 40 processes in there, so of course it felt a little slow.  But I
could live with that.  The machine that I used, by the way, had a 200 Meg hard
drive which was partitioned as follows:
160 Meg UNIX, 10 Meg swap space, 2 Meg UNIX boot, 6 Meg for 2.0, 2 Meg for 1.3,
and 20 Meg for a Work partition.  That doesn't seem exactly right to my memory,
but it gives you a good idea of how it's set up.  Also, this machine had 10
(ten) Meg of ram.  What else?  Well, no source for anything, I guess this comes
with the extended UNIX license from Commodore.  Interlaced Productivity flicker
isn't too bad, but stuff looks a little blurry on the Commodore monitor.  
It had a ethernet card in it, the devices were there in UNIX, but all of the
UNIX experts could not figure out how to hook it up to the network when we took
it up to the Supercomputer Research Institute this morning.  It seems that
Commodore just didn't package a few necessary items with it.  Documentation?
Well, two thin books with big print which seemed to be written for a
high school
kid, (they didn't say much, no help at all).  It did come with an Amiga
3000
demo though, pretty nice except for the music section - crummy.  More in
another message...