Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mwm From: mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amiga have keyboard garages) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: More random Unix topics Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 90 19:29:01 GMT References: <296@amix.commodore.com> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 49 In-reply-to: ag@amix.commodore.com's message of 1 Mar 90 14:32:57 GMT In article <296@amix.commodore.com> ag@amix.commodore.com (Keith Gabryelski) writes: >Don't get me wrong - I think having Unix available is a wonderfull >thing. I also think that, like the Mac & PC world, the price of >running Unix will keep almost everyone from doing so. This is a good point. How much is do you think a low end Unix workstation should go for to be in the typical user's price range? Simply rule of thumb - if I can start considering a new car for the price of the system, then it's to expensive. That puts the cap around $5,000. (same author, different article) Infact, I just took a current system and removed all networking/man pages and things and I ended up with 27meg used. That doesn't seem to bad since it was a fully operation R4 system (minus any trace of a network). That's nice to know. Now, put the man pages back - doing development sans online man pages isn't a win. My experience is that you also want to put the sources back, but AT&T would probably object. In any case, this seems small enough that a streaming tape is a luxury instead of a necessity. The resulting drop in cost might make it affordable to "typical users." If you've only got one machine, you don't really need the networking stuff for development. Unless you're developing networking code, in which case you also desperately need another machine. Of course, with another machine and a network, you can use NFS to share non-critical things so the disk space growth isn't linear. Which brings up a really strange point - at DEC, we use CI (think of it as super-SCSI) as an IP pathway. Will Amix allow running IP over a SCSI net so that those operating on a shoestring budget can get networking without having to buy the ethernet hardware? Better yet, will that move to AmigaDOS (I'm not about to buy a Unix box from CBM. I've got Unix cycles coming out my ears at work). For something really from left field - I've seen how the IBM RIOS announcement is affecting DEC & MIPS. I've heard what Motorola has to say to the press. Can you say anything about how CBM feels about this?