Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!uwvax!umn-d-ub!nic.MR.NET!shamash!nis!ems!pwcs!stag!daemon
From: to_stdnet@stag.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: 68030 box, Cringely, Comdex
Message-ID: <624@stag.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 88 20:40:01 GMT
Sender: daemon@stag.UUCP
Lines: 47

From: thelake!steve@stag.UUCP (Steve Yelvington)


Robert X. Cringely's column in the Oct. 17 misInfoWorld
outlines the following specs for the Atari '030 system
(coming soon to a Comdex not-so-near you):

Four slots, passive backplane (no mention of bus standard)
68030 CPU
56000 Motorola digital signal processor 
1 MB RAM
1 MB VRAM
Ethernet
Color monitor
44MB removable hard disk
GEM (no mention of Unix. Surely an oversight.)
Imagen clone of Display Postscript (this puzzles me; I thought
                                    Imagen had developed a PS interpreter,
                                    not a display processor.)
Price: $1,995.
(Salt thoroughly before consuming.)


The NeXT package, as described elsewhere in the same issue:

Four slots, passive backplane, NuBUS
68030 CPU
68881 math processor
56001 Motorola digital signal processor 
Two proprietary VLSI chips
8 MB RAM
Ethernet
Monochrome monitor, 1120x832, 2 bits/pixel
256 MB removable optical disk
SCSI controller
NeXT STEP, Mach, Objective-C, GNU C Compiler, EMACS, Lisp, SQL database,
     Write Now, Mathematica, Display PostScript, Sun NFS
Price: $6,500 to academia.


Not-so-incidentally, the same issue describes the NeXT $2,000
laser printer: Canon print engine, driven via bit-image dump
from the computer over the DMA port. Sound familiar?



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