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From: ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried III)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (long)
Summary: One of a million followup questions...
Message-ID: <17479@gatech.edu>
Date: 13 Oct 88 05:02:25 GMT
References: <360@elan.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii)
Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
Lines: 116

I really hate to contribute to the flood of articles that are going to 
be dumped on the net about NeXT...but hell, I just gotta know some things...;'}

In article <360@elan.UUCP> jlo@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes:
>
>The machine is based on the Motorola 68030 with a 68882 floating point
>chip as well as a 56001 DSP chip, all running at 25 MHz. It will support
                   ^^^^^
			Will they be including any development tools for
			the DSP, like the Motorola assembler or (better)
			C compiler?

>up to 16 MB of RAM with 1 Mbit chips, maybe 64 MB with 4 Mbit chips (they
>haven't tried this yet). Mass storage is on a 256 MB removable erasable
>optical disk! Jobs said that the removable media goes for ~$50. The display
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
	     I spent a little time doing work with optical disk technology,
	     and it was far, far to slow to be primary main storage.  What
	     magic has NeXT worked to make it suitable?

>is a gray-scale mega-pixel display (no exact sizes given). There was no
>mention of color. Everything is displayed with Display PostScript, developed
	    ^^^^^
		 My understanding (read: the rumour I heard) is that Pixar
		 is developing the colour board and it isn't done yet.

>jointly by NeXT and Adobe. This apparently runs with a proprietary window
>system. There was no mention of X Windows. Also standard are audio input
				 ^^^^^^^^^
					  If it is Mach, its 4.3 compatable
			  and X can be ported.  Or NeWS (goes with NeXT).

>and output, ethernet, and SCSI. Jobs said that with the standard sound
>capabilities, all that is needed for a 9600 bps modem is some software
>and a phone connection.

	Well...when does the V.32 software get here?  Or the Telebit
	PEP emulator?

[stuff deleted]

>the NuBus. The NuBus is run at 25 MHz (Jobs compared it to a 10 MHz NuBus,
>is this what the Mac II uses?). 

	Several questions...I thought that NuBus was standardised to 
	run at 10MHz, synchronous.  Is 'NuBus' running at 25MHz still
	NuBus?  Will not most availible NuBus cards choke?

	Also, what form factor are the cards: the original (MIT/TI)
	Eurocard or the Apple form factor?  Are they interchangeable
	(ie can you run an Apple NuBus card in a MIT/TI NuBus size
	card cage?

	Will we see a NeXT version of the TI MicroExplorer or 
	Symbolics MacIvory Lisp CoProcessors?

>The operating system is based on MACH with NFS support. On top of this is
>Display PostScript. 

	The big question of the day: how stable is Mach?  Until
	relatively recently, Mach was a reseach OS.  Has NeXT
	had time to get all the kinks out?

	Same question for Display PostScript.  Also, considering 
	how much of a resource hog Printer PostScript is, how
	quick is it?  

[tons deleted]

>object oriented, I believe based on Objective-C. You can modify existing
				     ^^^^^^^^^^^
						Thats what I heard.
						Double Bonus Points for Jobs...

>and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare on-line. 
	 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
					      Interesting, but welcome...
	 I wonder if Jobs is trying to increse our literacy...

>Jobs announced the following prices (apparently education prices):
>
>	NeXT computer:           $6500
>	NeXT PostScript Printer: $2000
>	330 MB winchester disk:  $2000
>	660 MB winchester disk:  $4000

	Who do I give my cheque to...? (notice, no smiley face)

>Jobs said that machines will start shipping in early November '88,
>the 0.8 pre-release of the software for developers will be available
>in Q4 '88, the 0.9 pre-release for developers and aggressive users in
>Q1 '89, with the 1.0 release for general consumption in Q2 '89.

	What does this mean?  If I buy one now, do I have to
	wait until Q2 '89 for an operating system?  Or are the 
	machines only shipping to developers in November?
 
>                   , some kind of floppy drive for software distribution,
>etc. I imagine a typical SCSI tape drive could be used for archival
>storage.

	umm...Why?  The optical is removable, no? non-volitile?
	indestructable? 256MB?  Seems like a pretty good 
	backup/distribution media to me...

>-- 
>Jeff Lo
>..!{ames,hplabs,uunet}!elan!jlo
>Elan Computer Group, Inc.
>(415) 322-2450

	Well, I guess he really did do it...

	ken seefried iii	...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, 
	ken@gatech.edu		inhp4, masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, 
	ccastks@gitvm1.bitnet	unmvax, ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken