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From: thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Buy Memory; Don't Laugh
Message-ID: <28652826.11D5@deneva.sdd.trw.com>
Date: 23 Jun 91 23:00:53 GMT
Sender: news@deneva.sdd.trw.com
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 46

I thought some of you could stand a chuckle.

I was asked to present my group's software on NeXT at a
rather small gathering of NeXT folk and company folk. Steve
Jobs was to be there to give a talk, some new products were
promised from 3rd party vendors, and some of us custom
developers were going to look over one another's shoulders.
Sounded like fun.

Well, not having our NeXTdimensions yet (we be slow, no fault
of NeXT here) we first wanted to get our software running on
NeXTdimension. (We had used a NeXT prototype called Red
October to get to a color application, for those wondering).
We asked our local NeXT rep to borrow his ND for a day and
managed to get the software mostly running. 40MB CPU RAM
and 16MB ND RAM. Got good animation of ozone hole opening and
closing. Did the rest of the work on grey cubes and got it
to run.

We go to the gathering last Friday. We asked for a ND to be
provided. It was. But we did not mention memory. The hard
disk (in cube provided by someone else - not NeXT) did not
have room for the app. The configuration was 16 MB CPU RAM
and 4 MB ND RAM. Started deleting stuff from HD and barely
could run. Everything ran slow. (We sling around 3MB images
like chips at a poker game). The HD got to NO SPACE available.
We are frantically trying to improve it when ...

Steve decided to drop by and see what we are up to. We show
a couple of things. Some Q&A about machine and what they are
looking at that might help. We apologize for performance
due to low memory configured. Then he grabs for the mouse.
Two clicks and it pretty much dies. Just the way you want
your software remembered.

It could have been embarrassing. However he (and several
other NeXT folk there) was more interested in our thoughts
on the development environment and the overall machine. It
will not go down as our best demonstration moment.

I will post real soon on the talk itself. And I want the
machine Steve demonstrates on (one NeXTie called it, at
last fall's roll-out, "The most expensive machine we can
build").

Mark R. Thomsen