Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!princeton!udel!rochester!bbn!husc6!think!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!nuchat!peter
From: peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The REAL problem is the nature of personal computers.
Message-ID: <528@nuchat.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 88 04:51:43 GMT
References: <7967@g.ms.uky.edu> <1363@sugar.UUCP> <8692@ccicpg.UUCP>
Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx
Lines: 47

OK. I just got call-waited or something in the middle of a carefully reasoned
response to this message, so I'm just going to be content with describing
systems that systematically demolish each and every one of his points.

In article <8692@ccicpg.UUCP>, harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes:
> In article <1363@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > Security and convenience are opposite goals. You (the personal computer
> > market) rejected the security of UNIX because it was a little inconvenient.

> 	Well there is more to it than an inconvenience. You need an MMU, 
> which means you need a 68020 (unless it's a custom MMU).

Dozens of 68000-based UNIX systems make this argument a joke, from some of the
early ONYX boxes (some of which were Z8000 based) onwards.

> Then you need a
> bloated OS like UNIX to support users that are not on your machine to
> compete with your "resources".

Thousands of PDP-11 based UNIX systems with less total memory than on off
the shelf Amiga 1000 with its 256K of RAM and 256K of "Kickstart RAM".

> To have UNIX (or for that matter ANY multiuser
> OS) you need a hard disk to deal with these LARGE issues.

HP Integral would even boot without any floppies, let alone a hard disk.
Supported a mouse and windows and everything. If it hadn't been HP, it would
have even been reasonably priced.

> Add to that,
> the overhead and "non realtime" response of such an OS.

The overhead of a message passing operating system is far higher than the
overhead of a monolithic lump like UNIX. I must admit it's a lot prettier,
though.

> 	We is talking HUGE bucks for this unsupported condition (for now!).

We is talking the cost of one little MMU chip. Given the number of custom
chips in the machine already, surely they could have come up with this?

The basic problem is that "you, the Market" rejected small UNIX systems
until it was too late. AT&T had no low end to satisfy so System V grew
without bound.

It's too late for system V, but Version 7 seems to have gained a new lease on
life with Minix.