HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: Re: Acorn 610 as processor/coprocessor?
Date: 12 Nov 92 13:41:46 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <BxL7t4.3tE@iat.holonet.net> bwilliam@iat.holonet.net (Bill Williams) writes:
>It has only 32000 transistors yet can magically support 4096 bytes of
>cache RAM in the 32000 transistors... hmmm lets see... lets pretend that
>each bit of cache was magically stored in exactly 1 transistor each
>without requiring the other 6 transistors I mentioned earlier....

	
	I was referring to the Byte magazine article some months 
	back.  32k transistors, 4k cache and no FPU.   

	Can anyone cite a claim from Acorn themselves??



>SOMEONE OUT THERE IS A LIAR!!!! I assume the liar is Acorn, and that the
>chip has 500,000 transistors and not the 32000 transistors claimed.


	I doubt it has much more than they claim, after all-that would
	be hard to pass off, wouldn't it?  

	However, I might be willing to venture a guess that the cache
	and cache-control silicon is off chip..?



-- 
 Robert Stephen Rodgers  ||  rsrodger@wam.umd.edu  || IRC: Yamanari
 --------NeXTmail-preferred!!--------------------------------------
 Snout: O Bottom, thou art chang'd!  What do I see on thee?          
 Bottom: What do you see?  You see an ass-head of your own, do you?
From: isbell@cats.ucsc.edu (Art Isbell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: Re: New SPARC Classic
Date: 12 Nov 1992 15:52:37 GMT
Organization: Cubic Solutions - NeXT software development and consulting
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


In article <1992Nov12.112919.1683@proponent.com> Monty Solomon <roscom!monty@think.com> writes:
>	SMCC INTRODUCES COLOR RISC WORKSTATION PRICED LESS THAN A PC
[ details deleted ]

My own sense in all this is that a company NeXT's size cannot possibly compete
in all arenas of workstation production with companies 1 or 2 orders of
magnitude greater in size (like Sun, IBM, DEC, HP, etc.).  NeXT simply must
concentrate on a subset of what workstation production entails, and excel in
those areas.

Apparently, Bud Tribble felt that Jobs overemphasized hardware versus software
development and resigned when this disagreement couldn't be resolved.  I am
leaning more and more toward Tribble's point of view.  Hardware is becoming a
commodity item, whereas software (NeXT's real strength) is where NeXT should be
concentrating.

So I hope that NeXT is spending its limited resources on porting NeXTSTEP to as
many hardware architectures as possible rather than on trying to decide what
CPU to go with for the future, a decision fraught with pitfalls when one
considers the choices and politics of each choice.  But I'm afraid that Jobs
considers its own hardware to be essential for NeXT, and I can't see how NeXT
can possibly compete in this very expensive area.  One would hope that van
Cuylenberg (sp?) or Canon or others with influence at NeXT are able to point
NeXT in a successful direction, but I guess Jobs can be difficult to convince,
at times.
-- 

Art Isbell                                                      Cubic Solutions
NeXT Registered Developer #745         NeXT software development and consulting
NeXTmail: isbell@cats.UCSC.EDU                             Voice: (408)335-1154
USmail: 95018-9442                                           Fax: (408)335-2515
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: ice@socrates.umd.edu (Fredrik Nyman)
Subject: Re: New SPARC Classic
Keywords: sun, classic, sparc
Organization: University of Maryland University College
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 17:34:45 GMT

songer@lexmark.com (Christopher Songer) writes:

>(Fredrik Nyman) writes:
>>
>>I hope NeXT will announce new hardware *soon*.  Sun has already
>>announced that they will switch to Display PostScript, and once they
>>do, the SparcClassic will become *very* attractive for DTP since it
>>will offer almost twice the power of a NSTC for half the price *and*
>>upgradeability.
>>

>Are you sure about this one? What kind of SPARC do they have in
>there to give twice the performance? I agree with half the price,
>but I'm not so sure about the twice the performance part. The 
>name "classic" appeneded on the end make me think of the onld
>Sparc 1's which are quite a bit slower than the turboes.
It uses a Tsunami SPARC chip at 50 MHz.  CPU performance is virtually
equivalent to the SPARCStation 2, so yes, I stand by my above assertion
that the SSC will have roughly twice the CPU performance of NSTC for
roughly half the price. :-(
From: andrew@cubetech.com (Andrew Loewenstern)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: Re: New RISC workstations / 88110 demise
Date: 6 Nov 92 11:06:32 GMT
Organization: Cube Technologies, Inc.

In article <Bx83uH.50v@netnews.jhuapl.edu> chuck@nighthawk.jhuapl.edu (Chuck (Non-Peon) Waltrip) writes:
>In article <1d6hsuINNi85@flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU> mcgredo@prism.CS.ORST.EDU  
>(Don McGregor) writes:
>	[...regarding rumor that NeXT might use Intel P5 processor...]
>> I don't know why they'd bother.  There are going to be a zillion  
>low-margin
>> clone makers making 586 boxes, so there won't be any shortage of them.
>> NeXT has a neat factory, but I don't think they'd want to get into
>> a price war with CloneTek Computers and Fishing Bait inc.
>
>	Well, maybe they wouldn't mind getting into a price war.  Suppose
>	their factory really is neat and, given sufficient volume, they
>	could be price competitive.  If they offered a low-cost Intel box
>	that was available with NT or NeXTSTEP ?86 (and maybe even, as 
>	I've suggested before, NT with NeXTSTEP), they might be able to
>	sell enough boxes to bring their unit costs down and that would be
>	good for all of us.


Whoah there a minute.  You guys are forgetting who you are dealing
with.  A NSTC has the same processor as a Quadra 950, but which is a
better machine?  If NeXT puts out a P5 machine, it's not going to be
anything like what the P5 machines clone manufacturers will be
cranking out.  NeXT won't ever be competing with companies like Dell
or Gateway when it comes to hardware.  If NeXT puts out a new machine,
it's going to be a monster compared to P5 clones.

BTW, NeXT could definitely manufacture their hardware cheaper
overseas.  Those robots are expensive.  But, if NeXT were to move
manufacturing overseas, they wouldn't be able create the same quality
of board as they do now.  Plus, they wouldn't be able to crank out
prototype boards in 45 minutes (including travel time from
Fremont->Redwood from what I understand).



andrew
-- 
andrew@cubetech.com     | "Carpe Nocturn - I get more work done after
Andrew Loewenstern      |  2 a.m. than most people do all day."
Cube Technologies, Inc. |                          - Simson Garfinkle
From: volks@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (Lorraine Van Wingerden)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: External Hard drive problems
Date: 6 Nov 1992 15:04:54 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


Hi,
I have just purchased an external Micropolis 1588 hard drive 
for my NeXT computer, but I am unable to initialize it or build
it.  I have tried doing this under NeXTstep 3.0 and 2.1, but I 
keep getting the same results.

It seems to be formatting with no problem, but everytime I try
to build or initialize I get error messages giving me I-O errors
saying it is unable to write to the disk.

Specifically when you boot with the disk attached, it recognizes it,
asks you if you want to initialize it and then you get 
SD3: Incomplete disk tansfer, bytes moved = 0X1e00, resid=0X1C48,
     retry=1
SD3: Incomplete disk transfer -FATAL-

The DISK command "FORMAT" seems to work OK, under 2.1 and 3.0, but
when you "INIT" the disk (from DISK cmd) the MKFS bombs with an I/O
error that has an address <size of the disk - 1> 

The drive had been previously formatted for a Macintosh computer
successfully and when I first connected it to my NeXT computer, 
it recognized it as a Mac disk.  Even after I have formatted it, when
I reboot my NeXT it recognizes the type of disk and the other 
information, so it seems to be reading from the disk ok.  

I suspect it may have something to do with the default parameters that the 
initialize and build commands send to the newfs or mkfs commands.
I think it is expecting a block size of 1024, but the specs for the
external drive say it has a block size of 512.

Does anyone have any ideas???
Please let me know if you need more information.
Please send responses directly to me.

Thank you,
Lorraine Van Wingerden 
volks@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: bwilliam@iat.holonet.net (Bill Williams)
Subject: Re: Acorn 610 as processor/coprocessor?
Organization: HoloNet (BBS: 510-704-1058)
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 10:08:40 GMT

misconceptions regarding number of IC gates (transistors) on large scale
CPU chips....

A MC68000 was labled such a name because it had a whopping 68,000 or so
transistors. Since that era, CPUs have been supplied with larger and
larger DAta and Code caches, memory management, floating point processors
(with trancendental table aids),barrel shifters, etc. etc. But the LARGEST
PERCENTAGE of the transitors on a one million transistor CPU chip are used
to support 4K data cache and 4K code cache. These caches are sometimes
larger and such but from what I was told long ago 7 gates are needed
minimum for retaining a single bit of memory storage and 4K + 4K = 8K; 8K
is 8192 bytes (65536 bits of cache storage). This cache storage if using
the minimalistic 7 gates per bit is over HALF A MILLION GATES!!!!!!

You see then there is absolutely nothing special about a 32000 gate CPU or
a 68,000 gate CPU that is not precisely on par with complexity of the
million gate chips of todays era. The reason is because the majority of
the gates ar just simple minded arrays of memory storage (usually machine
designed and layed out) No football field sized blueprints, No million man
hours of research and development. Nothing.


This foolish and reoccuring fallacy regarding the complexity of a CPU
based on its gate count annoys the shit out of me. I read it in MacWeek,
Byte, Dr. Dobbs, etc at least 4 times of year, and have NEVER seen anyone
stop and point out that a huge portion of the gates are merely used for
cache storage.

I have no real background in hardware (I am a software developer) but I
can use a calculator easily enough as the next guy to burst the bubbles of
these COMPLEXITY=NUMBER-OF-GATES fallacies.

Once you see what can be done with just 68000 transistors, you will
realize that the Acorn 610 is not totally deviant from the engineering
realm of possibilities with its claim of merely 32000 transistors.

Bill Williams


Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: jypai@ccnext.csie.nctu.edu.tw
Subject: Re: NeXTStep on I486 Platform
Reply-To: jypai@ccnext.csie.nctu.edu.tw
Organization: Computer Science & Information Engin., Chiao-Tung U, Taiwan, ROC
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 13:35:30 GMT

In article <92309.160806MARK@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>  writes:
> Could anybody give more some Info on the above.  I take it NeXTStep will
> eventually be available for Intel bases 486 machines.  Will NeXTStep run
> with a UNIX OS on the 486 ?  Will applications written using NExt Machines
> be then Ported to the I486 ?.  Will NeXTStep really cut into the OS/2  
market.
> 
> I am thinking about purchasing a NeXT machine for my own use (since I
> would like to become proficient in UNIX and I believe NeXT will eventually
> gain a much bigger share of the industry than they do now.  Currently I use  
a
> I386 machine with OS/2, TCP/IP, NFS


I.  NeXTSTEP486 Questions & Answers

There has been a lot of recent speculation and rumors regarding
NeXTStep 486.  Here is the NeXTSTEP 486 Product information from the
NeXTSTEP486 Program manager, Bob Lawton.  If you have any other
questions not addressed below or wish to be placed on the beta list,
please send your email to the following address with the subject
heading: "NeXTSTEP486 beta":


        nextstep486_info@next.com


if you wish to placed on the beta list.

Conrad Geiger
International NeXT User Groups


--

Yuan
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| Internet Address         : jypai@csie.nctu.edu.tw        |
| NeXT mail GLADLY accepted: jypai@ccnext.csie.nctu.edu.tw |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: bwilliam@iat.holonet.net (Bill Williams)
Subject: Re: Your only 1+Gig drive possiblities...
Organization: HoloNet (BBS: 510-704-1058)
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 09:51:44 GMT

in SCSI newsgroup, lupe@ukw.uucp (Lupe Christoph at cic) offered some
specifications he collected regarding this new age of fast 3.5 inch 1
gigabyte drives. He posted:

DEC             HP              Seagate         Micropolis      IBM       
     Fujitsu
DSP3105         C2247           ST11200N        2112            0663-L12  
     M2694SA
Fast SCSI-2     Fast SCSI-2     Fast SCSI-2     Fast SCSI-2     ?         
     Fast SCSI-2
5400RPM         5400RPM         5400RPM         5400RPM         4316RPM   
     4400RPM
250,000MTBF     300,000MTBF     300,000MTBF     200,000MTBF     ?         
     ?
1.05GB          1.05GB          1.05GB          1.05GB          1.044 GB  
     1.082GB
20ms max.seek   25ms max.seek   26ms max.seek   25ms max.seek   ?         
     ?
9.5ms ave.      ?               12ms ave        ?               9.4ms ave 
     10ms ave
1ms t-t.seek    2.5ms t-t.seek  1.9 ms t-t.seek 1.5ms t-t.seek  ?         
     ?
264bit ECC      ??bit ECC       ??bit ECC       64bit ECC       ?         
     ?
512KB cache     256KB cache     256KB cache     512KB cache     ?         
     ?
2yr? warranty   5yr warranty    5yr warranty    5yr warranty    ?         
     ?
 
Note that IBM has (announced?) a 0663-E15 with 1.206 GB.
 
I have benchmarked the DSP 3105 and the 0663-L12. The DEC disk performs
somewhat
better than the IBM disk. Sequential reads are much better. The difference
is most
noticeable on small blocks (1 sector), for all accesses
(random|sequential) (read
|write).

------ end of quote.


Evidentally the fastest drive for raw SCSI sustained throughput
(especially the outter tracks) is the amazing Maxtor Magic (1GB 3.5")
spinning away at an astounding 6600 RPM. It (when finalized and shipping)
will transfer data at 4.2MB/s sustained. I know a person who tested one a
few moths ago and got less than this (but may have been using test bursts
less than one megabyte). For measuring rates of throughput on drives
capable of very fast rates you should make certain your tests last at
least 1/2 per burst or maybe even one second for the test. This means
testing a drive with a 4 megabyte single SCSI read/write command... Not
500 or 700K as done in the "old days". I have always used 1.5 megabyte
burts for the last 3 years when doing my benchmarks and will now always
use 6 megabytes for the next 3 years.

Maxtor seems very very Hot!

If you want a quality drive housing and support hardware you might want to
try a Macintosh oriented SCSI drive vendor.

Dirt cheap drives illegally sold me two refurbished drives and tried to
claim they were NEW once. I eventually got my money back but DC drives
never really appologized for their deceit.

Stick with Mac vendors, or Premium Mac vendors (such as FWB Inc. in San
Francisco) for your peripherals or you may get burnt one day.


Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: gcolello@biosphere.Stanford.EDU (Greg Colello)
Subject: Re: Color Printer Woes
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 03:23:43 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.154233.29551@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>  
eboltz@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Eric Scott Boltz) writes:
> My division has decided to buy a color printer for our network of Suns,
> PeeCees and (soon) one NeXT. We want the print to hang off the NeXT, but
> here's the problem: the NeXT color printer is o.k. output, we'd prefer
> something like the Tek Phase PXIIi plain paper printer (~$9k), BUT
> the NeXT has NO PARALLEL PORT!
> 
> Just think, a 3-4Meg Postscript file could take 20minute to send over
> a serial line - totally unacceptable.
> 
> Has anyone found an alternative? Are there 'good' printers that support
> SCSI input (many have SCSI for a hard disk, but not input)?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Eric S. Boltz
> 
> standard employer disclaimers apply.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

We just bought a Tek Phaser II SD (Dye sublimation) printer. It's  
interface is identical to the Phaser IIi. We solved the hookup problem to  
our heterogeneous network (which includes Nexts, Suns, Macs, and PCs) by  
buying Tek's 4511A network interface box ($1500). This makes the printer a  
network device with its own internet address. It takes any lpr output  
(which includes printer panel output). It is connected to the printer via  
a 96K baud Centronics interface. It only allows one job into the printer  
at a time. It relies on the lpr spool queue to hold jobs until the printer  
is ready. It works great! According to Tek tekkies who visited Next with  
their printers, this is the recommended way to hookup to a Next (but don't  
quote me on that).

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Colello
Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology
Stanford University
gcolello@biosphere.stanford.edu
From: dockd@storm.CS.ORST.EDU (Dion Dock)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: both serial ports die on NS TurboColor
Date: 10 Nov 92 18:27:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: flop.1doutmINNkvc
Distribution: usa
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Oregon State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: storm.cs.orst.edu
Originator: dockd@storm.CS.ORST.EDU

Both of the serial ports died on my NeXTstation Turbo Color last week.  I was
using A with a Supra 14.4 modem and a NeXT asynch cable, and started getting 
"device busy" errors.  I called for the repairs, and switched to port B.  Before
I could get my new motherboard, port B broke also.

just a warning.
-- 
Dion Dock                    __                   __
                             /  )                 /  )        /
dockd@storm.cs.orst.edu     /  / o ______        /  / _____. /_ 
                           /__/_<_(_) / <_      /__/_(_) (__/ <_
From: ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: Re: New RISC workstations / 88110 demise
Date: 9 Nov 92 14:55:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.BxGEsK.Kwr.2
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

>You can do reasonable realtime operations (such as animation) under the
>current Mach kernel (Version 2.6 on NeXTs, I believe).

"Reasonable" realtime operations?  It's either realtime or it isn't.
Right now it isn't.

> Try looking at the DPSTimedEntry stuff.  There are examples from NeXT
> where at each frame, the animation code checks the actual time delay
> from the last frame, and generates the next frame accordingly.  This
> means that the frame rate is not constant, but animated objects have
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Then it's not realtime.  It would not be good enough, for example, for
controlling scientific instruments or operating CAM machinery.  And
often it would not be good enough for a lip-synched video that had
been digitized.  It'd look like a Saturday afternoon kung-fu movie.

> constant velocity and could be sync'ed reliably with sound.  This is
> generally acceptable if the CPU(s) can generate a reasonable frame
> rate considering the other loads on the system.

There's no way you can guarantee that.  On a workstation like the
NeXT, being sold to ordinary folks, the animation has to look good and
smooth *even* *if* they're running a heavy Mathematica process in the
background, or else it won't look good up against Macs and PCs with
this capability.
-- 
Doug DeJulio
ddj+@cmu.edu
From: bruehl@gurke.physik.tu-berlin.de (bruehl local gurke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: slow Fujitsu 2624FA 520MB disk?
Date: 12 Nov 1992 16:57:47 GMT
Organization: ZRZ/TU-Berlin
NNTP-Posting-Host: gurke.physik.tu-berlin.de


I have installed System 3.0 on a new Fujitsu 2624FA (520MB Fast Model) and  
was surprised of slow transfer rates. 

Write: 800 kB/sec *** but read only 400 kB/sec *** 
tested by DrivePerformance, cp and a self made C program.
These results are independent of SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 mode, and 1024 or 512  
byte sectors.

What did I made wrong?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware,comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: kent@ziggy (Kent Tse)
Subject: NeXTstations won't boot up.
Reply-To: kent@ziggy.cs.mcgill.ca (Kent Tse)
Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:03:24 GMT

     Hello,

          I have a couple of NeXTstations (25Mhz/100 M disk) that do
     not boot up.  It seems like it is a video problem because when I
     try to power on the computer I can see that the fan and the disk
     starts up.  The monitor never turns on, and I have tried other
     monitors that do work.  Any suggestions?  Thanks in advance.

     					- Kent
From: jfr@RedBrick.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
Subject: Re: New RISC workstations / 88110 demise
Keywords: RISC
Date: 5 Nov 92 16:09:00 GMT
Organization: Red Brick Systems, Los Gatos, CA

In article <1992Nov5.070604.2071@cubetech.com> andrew@cubetech.com writes:
>In article <Bx5Iwn.to.2@cs.cmu.edu> ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov2.170741.2092@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> eboltz@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Eric Scott Boltz) writes:
>>>This week's Info World, "Reports from the Field" claims that NeXT has
>>>terminated the dual 88110 NRW and will go with the P5 (Pentium) from
>>>Intel in future machines.
>>>
>>>This sucks for a few reasons:
>>>1. We won't have a faster NeXT till the P5 ships.
>>>2. We're stuck with Intel.
>>>3. The NRW will be AS FAST AS A HIGH-END CLONE.
>>
>>This last item is not neccesarily true.  Let's suppose NeXT goes with
>>the P5.  Remember that the NeXT OS, Mach, already has support for
>>multiprocessor systems.  Doesn't the P5 have enhanced support for
>>working in multiprocessor systems?  Can you imagine a four processor
>>P5 system, with one processor devoted to a realtime Display PostScript
>>environment, another devoted to a realtime sound server (including a
>>port pin-compatible with the current DSP port), and two more for
>>general purpose CPU tasks?  NeXT could put out a wide variety of
>>systems simply by changing the number of processors.
>
>Dedicating processors is stupid (a whole P5 for sound?  what a waste).
>Let mach split everything up on all the processors and use thread
>priorities to ensure good interactive performance.
>
  I agree with the comment on a P5 for sound.  The exception to this
  would seem to be the Window Server.  I would assume there could be
  some extremely useful optimizations both in hardware and software
  that could be made if a complete processor is dedicated to the
  window server process.  Since the Window Server has to be constantly
  operating anyway (unlike the sound process and most other processes),
  dedicating a single processor for this app might be useful.  
  
  Of course this has to be handled carefully in order to not disrupt
  support for systems where there is no specialized Window Server
  processor.  I.e., there still has to be a normal WS process that
  is simply assigned and locked to the WS processor on a multi-process
  system, and has internal smarts that lets it optimize operations
  (such as direct access to a video bus, or something like that)
  in the dedicated processor environment.  

  Jon Rosen
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware
From: dasu@sscux1.ssc.gov (Sridhara Dasu)
Subject: Re: Should I buy a NeXT -> Thanks!
Organization: SSC Laboratory, Dallas, TX
	<19220@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 04:03:53 GMT


You should not be comparing NeXTStation Turbo Color with Quadra 700.
You should compare it with Quadra 900. Turbo and 900 both have 33MHz
68040, 700 has 25MHz. To account for all costs add price of Mathematica,
C-Compiler + Software development tools, and Textures for MAC. If you
still find MAC to be cheaper than NeXT we would like to hear from you.

				- Sridhara
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.hardware