Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!questor!lclarke From: lclarke@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Lawrence Clarke) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Highlights of Vancouver BC NeXT Users Group Meeting, Jan. 30, 1991 Message-ID: <0iLNw1w164w@questor.wimsey.bc.ca> Date: 31 Jan 91 20:33:56 GMT Organization: Questor: Internet/Usenet in Vancouver, BC ==> +1 604 681.0670 Lines: 97 On January 30, 1991, the Vancouver BC NeXT User's Group held their monthly meeting at the Granville Island Hotel. Following is a summary of highlights of the meeting: - NeXT will be selling their machines locally through Advantage Computers (tel: 604 685-NeXT). - NeXTstations with Hard Drives in sizes 105 mb and 200 mb are currently being shipped - colour NeXTstations are due to be shipped on the 15th. of February, 1991 - NeXT dimension boards will probably ship sometime between April and December, 1991 :-) (There are problems with the "C- Cube" chip and the JPEG compression.) - There was a demonstration on how to install external SCSI drives. Apparently the SCSI drive number in the NeXTstation is 1, (not 0 as it is in the cube) as this allows for an external SCSI drive addressed as device 0 to be used as the boot disk. The external drive connected to the NeXTstation during the demo was set to device 2 in order to use it as the second hard drive. (There was some discussion as to the need for termination on MAC external drives.) - Lionel Tolan from SFU stated he has available 5 hours of video- tape and some software to demonstrate the capabilities of the NeXT system - There was mention of an undocumented command that is apparently used to partition Hard Drives. - There was some discussion about Optical Drives. Concern was expressed by users with optical drives only, that it appeared NeXT was dropping optical drive support, as NeXTstep 2.0 software does not support two optical drives, and Improv and Mathematica will only be shipped on floppy disks. - The DB Toolkit (demonstrated by S. Jobs in the Next demo videotape) is currently under development by NeXT, and is not yet shipping. - There is a new issue of "RMnug" newsletter on the archive sites. - The NeXtView newletter is looking for articles for the next issue of their publication. - The FrameMaker update application does not work with releases prior to 2.0b: 2.0b will be converted to 2.0d but there will be problems with printing (extremely slow). The local NeXT rep should be consulted for an update to 2.0d. - Version 2.1 of the NeXTstep operating system will include routines for the NeXTdimension board, but no bug fixes. - One of the users mentioned he had a 105mb NeXTstation for sale. - A Kanji version of NeXTstep is available in Japan. It will not be available in North America, but can be specially ordered. - A Kanji Postscript font is available for documents. (Menus remain in English.) - The Dove faxmodem is now available; Abaton's faxmodem is expected to be shipping within two weeks. - UNIX "man" pages are not available on the 105 mb NeXTstation, but are available from some of the archive sites. - Contrary to information in "InfoWorld" magazine, IBM *is* going with NeXTstep and Microsoft has officially dropped OS/2 development. - Lotus Improv is expected to ship within two weeks, and Mathematica is expected to ship sometime in February. - The NeXT offices for Vancouver, BC will be moving from their Granville Island location to the Park Place tower, 13th. floor. (The telephone numbers remain the same.) - The next meeting of the User's Group will be held at Advantage Computers on the 27th. of February, 1991, at 7:00 p.m. (Their address is 4664 Lougheed Highway, Suite 148, Burnbaby, B.C.) /==============================================================\ | lclarke@questor.wimsey.bc.ca | c/o TRIUMF Operations | | larry@triumfcl.bitnet | University of B.C. Canada | | Compuserve: 70441,1776 | 4004 Wesbrook Mall | | Phone: +1 604 275-5902 | Vancouver, British Columbia | | FAX: +1 604 275-4184 | Canada V6T 2A3 | \==============================================================/