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From: hummel@s.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 68020 Amiga??
Message-ID: <212200003@s.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 88 19:59:00 GMT
References: <111400004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
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Nf-ID: #R:uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:111400004:s.cs.uiuc.edu:212200003:000:2926
Nf-From: s.cs.uiuc.edu!hummel    Oct 14 14:59:00 1988


Written  1:17 am  Oct 13, 1988 by ewhac@well.UUCP in comp.sys.amiga:
[ Leo aims a response at Dave Haynie regarding UNIX, hoping he'll
  accidently hit the right person at Commodore to be telling this to ]

>	Please O please O please O *PLEASE* support the 68030.  It is in
> your best interest to do so.

When he spoke here last month, Dave [worth every penny of his $10,000 speaker's
fee :-) :-) :-)] demo'd for us a prototype '030 board he had built as well as
a 2620.  One of the tales he told was how one of Commodore's UNIX people was
running benchmarks on the '030 board (hint, hint) and had determined that it 
was "only" running at 32MHz.  Well, it had turned out that Dave was using
a 32MHz crystal on a 33MHz '030 because you don't ususally find 33MHz XTALs
just lying around the lab (unless you're Motorola :-).  So my guess - as 
someone who is pig ignorant of what Commodore is thinking behind closed doors -
is that at least as far as Dave and the UNIX crew are probably concerned, UNIX
can be supported on the '030.  Mind you, although none of what I write here
is secret - we (CUCUG) saw and heard all of this at an open meeting - it is
not meant to imply that the '030 board is formally announced or that it will
necessarily be a product or run UNIX.  What I'm saying is that I don't think
support for UNIX on the '030 is at issue ... only whether it runs on
non-Commodore CPU's.

Now, what I personally think is in everyone's best interests is for some
third-party to port BSD 4.3 or MACH (!!) to run on any Amiga with a hard
disk and MMU.  If Commodore is going to sell UNIX, they must provide SVr3.x
to satisfy its European and American business customers.  So at least by
keeping their UNIX proprietary, they have the options to:

	(1) Guarantee a private market for their own coprocessor boards.  I 
	    don't think this is a particulary kind gesture, but that's the 
	    business world for you.
	(2) Provide support on only one hardware architecture.  "Hi, I'm having
	    trouble with xxxx when running your UNIX on Ronin's '030 board"
	    is not something that Commodore can be expected to have the time
	    or resources to deal with.  After all, can you run A/UX on a Mac
	    with a Levco Prodigy?  Would Apple want to have to support it if 
	    you could?
	(3) Keep the incentive alive to actually develop a third-party
	    UNIX.  Preferably BSD 4.3 or MACH (you wouldn't really want
	    to run SV anyway, would you Leo?-).

				< Lionel
----------

Lionel Hummel					404 W. High St., #6
ldh90267@uiucuxa.cso.uiuc.edu			Urbana, IL  61801
{seismo,pur-ee,convex}!uiucuxa!ldh90267		(H)  (217)344-5303
Dept. of Computer Science			(W)  (217)333-7408
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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