Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: bauman@shell.com (E. G. Bauman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Info requested on: RDI/TriGem's Britelite portable.
Keywords: Compatibles
Message-ID: <2763@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 9 May 91 23:05:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date: Mon, 29 Apr 91 09:01:29 CDT
X-Refs:  Original: v10n22, Replies: v10n22
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 95, message 1
X-Note: Submissions: sun-spots@rice.edu, Admin: sun-spots-request@rice.edu

We just tried one out last Friday.  A local salesman brought one over to
our center, but would not loan it out to us for a few days (sigh).

As a Sun, it's pretty decent.  It ran Sunview and Openwindows.  It took a
bit getting used to the smaller screen.

The Mac emulation was astonishing to see.  I would never have anticipated
seeing Mac emulation on a Sun ever.  We loaded up the Mac with our own
benchmark.  Namely, letting the computer play itself at Strategic
Conquest.  It's about the same speed as a Mac SE.  The only problem we
could detect is that the sound doesn't work in the Mac window (makes SC
kind of dull to play).  An inconvenience is that the floppy only reads the
high density Mac floppies in the Mac window (1.4 MB?).  Trying a standard
800KB floppy in the Mac window was unsuccessful.  You can resize the Mac
window to a variety of sizes while in the Finder.  Some are bigger than
the screen.  The actual emulator window appears as a sunview window which
will work in Sunview and in Openwindows.

The Mac filesystem is contained in a single file, a la the C: file in DOS
Windows.  No accessing SunOS directories as Mac disks.  This can make
moving files around a little difficult.

Mouse tracking is marginal whether in the Mac emulator or just in
Openwindows.  You see mouse shadows follow the mouse arrow.  Getting the
mouse to cross the boundaries of the Mac emulator window was sometimes
difficult.

Didn't try out the PC emulation.  I just assumed it was SoftPC.

What we're really interested in is RDI's Mac emulation for desktop sparcs.
We've been told about the product, but the salesman told us that it was
still unavailable.

The salesman told me these machines were being purchased at an oil company
in Houston (not Shell) where it is very difficult to get Macs, but easy to
buy Suns, for their Mac emulator alone.  A $12,000 Mac SE...  Makes one
wonder about the sense behind corporate strategies sometimes.

	Evan G. Bauman - Combustion/Reaction Engineering
	Shell Development Company - Westhollow Research Center
	PO Box 1380; Houston, TX 77251-1380
	bauman@shell.com  (713)-493-8937