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From: cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX Seems Fated
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.171343.2923@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 17:13:43 GMT
References: <1990Dec14.045924.20212@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Daily News)
Organization: Columbia University
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In article <1990Dec14.045924.20212@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> sl35746@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (By-Tor) writes:
>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.

Well, normally I reside on "your side of the fence."  That is to say,
that I would prefer to have a 15 MIP SPARC box over an 030 based
box given similar pricing.  This is fine for people with a somewhat
technical background, as they can get used to dealing with unix, shell
programming, C programming, etc.  However, I would speculate that 75%
of the people who use computers have no idea what those things are,
and even a smaller percentage that do know what they are would be able
to cope well with the task.  I think products like the Amiga 3000
are aimed at that grey area of people in between.  The machine is
simple enough to use that you can pop off-the-shelf software in and
use it, but at the same time it offers the ability to run unix
if you want/need it.  I would think that very few people actually
WANT unix and  even fewer need it.  However, it is "nice" that
it will be available.

All this talk about the 3000UX being a workstation is a little
on the silly side (though I have done it myself in the past <blush>).
Anyone who really needs a workstation will probably go out and
buy a Sun/Apollo/etc.  The markets are very different.  You don't
buy a Corvette to haul logs, and you don't buy a pickup to race
around the track.

Best regards and happy holidays,

Chris

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Chris Mauritz                 |D{r det finns en |l, finns
cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu   |det en plan!
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