Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!convex!killer!tness7!tness1!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AMIX? Message-ID: <1878@sugar.UUCP> Date: 23 Apr 88 20:48:19 GMT References: <466@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> <863@gethen.UUCP> <391@brambo.UUCP> <50356@sun.uucp> Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX Lines: 65 Keywords: Amiga AMIX Unix Summary: What is a workstation? In article <50356@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: > Ok folks, I may get flamed for this but hey what's life for anyway. No flames, just a bit of perspective. > The problem comes when we get down to brass tacks and define what > a "workstation" is. In my lexicon a workstation has 4 megabytes of > memory, 1M pixels (optionally in color), 80Meg+ of disk space, UNIX* > in some form or another, and a window system in system in some form or > another. Ideally, it also has built in networking. That's an interesting definition. Let's take the quantitative stuff out of that and see what we get... Memory... well, 4 megabytes is nice. I have that much in my Amiga. But it's not necessary. Let's say you need enough memory that you can run the rest of the stuff without swapping. Carnegie-Mellon specs 1 Meg for a workstation, by the way. Pixels... well, a megapixel display is nice. Part of the 3M definition. But do you really need that? Unless you're doing CAD work you really only need enough to fit a couple of "terminal-size" windows on the screen. With ColorFonts you can even use antialiasing and get nice looking text. Disk space... well, enough is enough. Let's say you need twice the disk space that the basic operating system takes up, with a minimum of ten megs of user space. So this depends again on another parameter: how big the O/S is. UNIX in some form of another... I'm tempted to cut this requirement, but you'll hang me for it. So, how small can UNIX be and still be UNIX? Well, you need ALL the binaries. The SCO-Xenix distribution for the IBM-PC, with the manuals, is 23 320K diskettes. That's over 7 megabytes, and makes a good baseline. No windowing, but the Amiga ROMS have all the layer manager code in them. A windowing system that takes advantage of them could be pretty small. Let's be gross, though, and say you need 3 meg of disk space for the WM and utilities. a 20 Meg disk would do, at a minimum. But let's double that and say 40 Meg. Sun's sold workstations with that much disk, anyway. Windowing... The Amiga has windowing. The Mac has windowing (echoes of Jonathan Livingston Seagull: "Just flying? A mosquito can do that much!"). You don't need megabytes of RAM or Disk for windowing. Networking... that's a toughy. But do you really need it for a home workstation? Surely you can come up with a machine that uses plain multisync monitors and runs or under 4 Grand. I suspect that a 2500-type system could do it. A multisync monitor and flckerFixer instead of the Hedley monitor, and a less ambitious UNIX than full SVR2. > Sure, you can run UNIX on an AT clone with probably less memory > and an EGA card, but it wouldn't be a workstation in my book. Not everyone has tastes quite that rich. Try these design specs: 1 meg of memory, 1 million pixels resolution, and 1 MIPS. The monitor to display all those pixels is the hard part, but if you multiply pixels by bitplanes and take advantage of antialiasing the Amiga with a 2620 can do it. It's not *that* much of a cheat. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- "Have you hugged your U wolf today?" ...!bellcore!tness1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions, these are *values*.