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From: sl35746@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (By-Tor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: A3000UX Seems Fated
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.045924.20212@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 04:59:24 GMT
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 24

I just had a talk with one of our system administrators here, and I told him
about the A3000UX.  He told me that Sun came out with a workstation that was
286 based and ran Unix along with PC's in windows that multitasked.  I don't
know of the model number, but he said they didn't sell, and Sun discontinued.

AmigaDOS and Unix will not run at the same time, and there is a much smaller
demand for Amiga compatibility than IBM compatibility, so I would think that
there isn't going to be much of a demand for these things unfortunately.
Considering you can buy a Sparcstation now for $3000 that comes inside a
1200x800 monitor that will outperform an A3000, with the expansion capability
to reach 100 MIPS, I really don't see where the market is.

Another interesting point he made was that Sun is almost guaranteed to support
their computers.  Commodore is just starting out, so things will be even harder.
I don't really see the point of putting Unix on an Amiga.  I think they should
have just made a Unix box that was competitive, and started from there.  The
fact that AmigaDOS and Unix are totally isolated basically makes the point
almost moot to combine them in one box.  The Unix side is limited to the hard-
ware that is needed to keep it Amiga compatible.

I guess they only real market niche they could sneak into, and probably won't
succeed in reaching, is a low-cost color workstation.  If the current
implementation of X doesn't support color, then there is no way anyone will
buy it for color.