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From: madler@eeyore.caltech.edu (Mark Adler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: 2.1
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.180751.14953@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 16 Mar 91 18:07:51 GMT
Sender: news@nntp-server.caltech.edu
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 40


Yes, 2.1 is out and supposedly shipping.  It is $50 for seven (?) 2.88M
floppies.  However, you do not have to buy it to be entitled to have it.
From the announcement:

>> Licensing fees aren't associated with each copy of the update
>> software. Thus the Update Set grants the buyer a license to copy and
>> install the NeXT Update Set Software on any NeXT computer for which
>> NeXT Software Release 2.0 has previously been licensed.

I would suggest, as was suggested to me by a NeXT employee, that to
save money just make one local order for the update and install it on
every NeXT with 2.0.

(They *could* have shipped on 13 or 14 1.44M floppies for $10, but I
suppose they have to show off their super-cool 2.88M floppy capacity
in a product.)

More importantly, I would point out that there is a more serious bug
that is fixed in 2.1 than is mentioned in the announcement's bug list:
the old Motorola 68882 emulation code for the 68040 that came with the
2.0 operating system can cause the system to die a horrible death
while doing floating point calculations.  Both Bing Chen and Sam Finn
have found serious examples of this, but they do not appear to crash
under 2.1, which has new code from Motorola.  The bug list *does*
mention the relatively minor tanh() bug that is also fixed in the new
68882 emulation code.

NeXT says in the announcement:

>> This release contains no new features,
>> and most Release 2.0 users of monochrome systems won't need to update
>> to the new release.

In light of the inability of the NeXT computer to compute under 2.0, I
strongly disagree.  I believe everyone should upgrade to 2.1 if at all
possible.

Mark Adler
madler@pooh.caltech.edu