HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: coco@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (felix.lugo)
Subject: Re: Really stupid Question: NS486 (WHEN??) - Q2 '92
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 18:53:45 GMT

In article <92322.18284434II5MT@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> John Goggan <34II5MT@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> writes:
| When I asked the Michigan NeXT Rep. (Kent Foster) if the January date was
| still valid, he said "no" and that it would most likely be around April,
| plus or minus (which do _you_ think?!?) a month...
| 
|  - John Goggan (34ii5mt@cmuvm.csv.cmich.edu)


	Doesn't matter, since you'll still have to deal with their six week
delivery.  I'm still waiting for the NeXT video trilogy tapes to arrive
which were announced a month ago in OST!

	It's sad!  Such great software NeXTSTEP is, too bad NeXT employees
don't seem to care whether NeXT survives much longer ...   8^(

	Maybe I shouldn't either ...  NOT!

--Felix

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: abell@netcom.com (Steven T. Abell)
Subject: 64-bit CPUs
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 00:14:37 GMT

Regarding Scott Byer's Alpha RISC string mover,

> Loop:
>        STQ     R3,0(R2)        ; Store the alignment adjusted quadword.
>        LDA     R2,8(R2)        ; increment the to pointer
>        LDQ     R4,0(R1)        ; load the next quadbyte
>        SLL     R4,R6,R3        ; R6 pre-calculated in prolog as loop inv.
>        BIS     R5,R3,R3        ; or in the leftover piece from last iter.
>        SRL     R4,R7,R5        ; create this times' leftover piece
>        LDA     R1,8(R1)        ; increment the from pointer
>        CMPBGE  R31,R3,R4       ; check for null byte
>        BEQ     R4,Loop         ; loop

do LDQ and STQ load and store four or eight bytes? It would appear to be
eight, but the comment on the third instruction implies otherwise.

All those three address instructions really pare this down. Using my
old-fashioned two-address CISC-think, I couldn't get this below 12
instructions for full-width reads and writes.

If I could venture a summary of this discussion:

A 64-bit RISC can offer significant speed improvements, at the cost of
more complex algorithms that may invalidate traditional programming idioms.

Steve abell@netcom.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: wilcoxt@cuug.ab.ca (Terrance Wilcox 260-8100)
Subject: Re: NeXT Prices: They appear too high for me!
Organization: Calgary UNIX Users' Group
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 16:40:26 GMT

In article <178@bytepb.UUCP> ben@bytepb.UUCP (Ben Smith @ BYTE) writes:
>Why burden the Quadra with something that belongs only on
>responses to government POSIX requirements, i.e., AUX. If you
>want to do a comparison like this, may as well give both machines
>a lobotomy: make them both emulate MS-DOS and then run DOS
>benchmarks. The idea is to evaluate a machine with its native
>environment.

PC Mag tried this already. The Dell won. The Mac lost. NeXT and Sun kind
of tied. It was a really funny article. Almost as funny as yours.


>Even though I reget some of the decisions we made along the way,
>we have learned from these mistakes (I hope), and will continue
>to improve our methods of attacking this problem. (Construct
>ideas are even more valuable than fanatic criticism.)

Does this mean your next comparison won't be the Vic 20 versus
the Iris Crimson? I was looking forward to that one.
>
>Incidently, in case you are wondering why the Amiga was not part
>of the review: they didn't want to participate, nor did Data
>General. -ben

Yeah, they probably knew where the article was going. They didn't
want the bad publicity generated by an irresponsible article. Byte's
signal to noise ratio has plummetted since they got the new boss.

Terry Wilcox
From: dillon@overload.Berkeley.CA.US (Matthew Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re:  DEC's alpha is "way fast" according to WSJournal
Distribution: world
Date: 18 Nov 92 12:37:16 PST
Organization: Not an Organization

In article <1992Nov13.121623.17133@pombo.inescc.pt> rps@pombo.inescc.pt (Rui Pedro Salgueiro) writes:
>carsten@pizza.fb10.tu-berlin.de (Carsten Schultz) writes:
>:byer@adobe.com (Scott Byer) writes:
>:: Joseph R. Grace <JGrace@TetraSoft.com> writes
>:: The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, November 10, 1992, page B4,
>:: ...
>:: Huh? Dec's Alpha architecture has always been 64 bits (as far as
>:: I know).  And, yes, it does make for some wicked-fast I/O.
>::
>:: And 64 bits does give programs a big edge.	And they don't even
>:: have to be changed that much to use it.  (Well, not if they were
>:: designed right in the first place. ;-)
>::
>: I agree. I think 64 bit processors are underestimated by many people.
>:
>: Carsten
>:
>I think you two misread the original poster.
>I think he was pointig the confusion between the increase in address
>space and the increase in CPU-memory bandwidth made by the journalist
>(for lack of a better word. How do you call a person who writes about
>subjects that he doesn't understand ? :) .
>
>For those of you that also don't understand, the later is twofold (64
>versus 32) and the former is ~4G (2^32 = 4294967296) (2^64 versus 2^32).

    Yah, people are starting to get interested in linear address space OS
    design again, finally!  I've always hated the unix 'duplicate the
    address space' fork design.  Imagine fiber-optic shared-memory and
    linear-mapped databases!  You can't do that with only 4GB of address
    space but you *can* do it with 18 million terrabytes of address space.

					    -Matt

>--
>Rui Salgueiro		| Dpt. de Matematica	  | Safe sex doesn't mean no
>E-Mail: rps@inescc.pt	| Universidade de Coimbra | sex, it just means use your
>   clcmat@ciuc2.uc.pt	| Portugal		  | imagination - Billy Bragg
>   rps@mat.uc.pt   RSN | A guest @ Inesc Coimbra |

--

    Matthew Dillon		dillon@Overload.Berkeley.CA.US
    1005 Apollo Way		uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon
    Incline Village, NV. 89451	ham: KC6LVW (no mail drop)
    USA 			Sandel-Avery Engineering (702)831-8000

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: fernandeza@merrimack.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: Concerns about NeXT Prices are warranted
Date: 18 Nov 92 10:47:29 GMT
Organization: Merrimack College, No. Andover, MA, USA

In article <1e97r8INNeot@gap.caltech.edu>, ernest@pundit.cithep.caltech.edu (Ernest Prabhakar) writes:
> In article <1992Nov16.181812.25376@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> coco@cbnewsl.cb.att.com  
> (felix.lugo) writes:
>> You've
>> got to accept the fact that the new Sun hardware is very attractive and WILL
>> make potential NeXT customers think twice about which platform to support.
>> NeXTSTEP is great, but it's value is transitory.  Hardware investment is
>> THE primary concern involved when purchasing for a big project (and I'm not
>> talking about a one time purchase by an individual).  Software for devel.
>> purposes comes after that.
>> 
>> --Felix
> 
> Well, yes and no.  After all, Unix boxes have had far superior  
> price/performance for years, but PCs are still the dominant animal.  Which is  
> what NeXT is competing against, at least in the LA area (NeXTSTEP vs. Windows  
> NT, which I guess is fair since they're both 'vapor').
> 
> It is certainly annoying that NeXT has such wimpy hardware, but I guess NeXT is  
> still considered fast relative to the PC world.  And don't forget Pentium  
> (Intel '586) is due out soon, which will have comparable performance to a  
> SPARC, and NeXTSTEP '486 is already running on it in NeXT's labs...

Has Intel already sent out samples of the Pentium in advance?
If not, how can NeXT have NeXTstep 486 working on the Pentium and even
working on a dual Pentium machine without having working samples?

Alex F.

> - Ernie P.
> --
> Ernest N. Prabhakar                  Caltech High Energy Physics
> Member, League for Programming Freedom (league@prep.ai.mit.edu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: chuck@nighthawk.jhuapl.edu (Chuck (Non-Peon) Waltrip)
Subject: Re: NeXTSTEP on DEC Alpha?  Rumor in Digital News & Review
Organization: JHU/Applied Physics Laboratory
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 23:59:42 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.180100.23689@adobe.com> byer@adobe.com (Scott Byer)  
writes:
	[...in response to notion that VMS might be able to run under
		a Mach kernel on an Alpha...]
> I find it difficult to believe this, since VMS requires some
> different microcode to be downloaded to the chip than OSF/1 does.
> It's easy enough to have the two OS's on a single disk and boot
> them up one at a time, but at the same time?  Not unless you do a
> very heavyweight task switch between OS's to re-download the required
> PALcode.

	The rumor column wasn't very specific so I can't be sure but I
	don't believe that the actual OS's would be running...only their
	API's--which would then make it possible for the rest of the
	environment (which we consider to be "VMS" and "OSF/1" and 	 
	NeXTSTEP) to be running.
	
	[...]

c.f.waltrip

Opinions expressed are my own.

Email:	chuck@nighthawk.jhuapl.edu	(NeXTmail accepted.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: gmecchia@hop.Princeton.EDU (Giuseppina Mecchia)
Subject: educational institutions with NeXT computers
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 22:04:58 GMT

is there a list of educational institutions with NeXT computers? 
I would like to have one.

Giuseppina.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: andrew@cubetech.com
Subject: Re: DEC's alpha is "way fast" according to WSJournal
Organization: Cube Technologies, Inc.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 03:20:16 GMT

In article <FISCHER.92Nov16224346@steinhaus.iesd.auc.dk> fischer@iesd.auc.dk (Lars Peter Fischer) writes:
>
>>>>>> "Charles" == Charles William Swiger (cs4w)
>
>Charles> I don't see a major revolution occurring with the transition
>Charles> between 32-bit and 64-bit processors because the computer
>Charles> industry really hasn't max'ed out the possibilities of 32-bit
>Charles> machines yet.  (How many people do you know have complained
>Charles> that their machines can only address 4 gigs at a time?
>Charles> Anyone ever seen a machine with more than 4 gigs?
>
>I've seen Sun workstations with 512 M *RAM*. 1 G swap is not uncommon
>for some tasks. VLSI simulations (for RISC chips, say) often run at
>around 2 G these days -- and, yes, people are doing these things on
>their UNIX workstations, not Crays. We regularly set up machines with
>64 M for average stuff. 32 M should be considered common for a single
>user machine these days.
>
>The NeXTstation Turbo takes 128 M. This is only 4 G / 32. It is also
>640k * 204. So, the maximum memory of the NeXTstation (a rather modest
>workstation) is much closer to maxing out the 32-bit address space
>than it is to the PClown limit, once considered more than anyone could
>ever need.

On mach, you have a 32-bit address space for *each* task.  There are
exceptions, but for the vast majority of tasks, this is plenty.


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 Garfinkel
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: oyakea@rs6212.ecs.rpi.edu (Amalaye Oyake)
Subject: is it true-ATARI SUPPORT ?
Keywords: atari, falcon 
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 16:11:59 GMT

  I read that some next developers are planning to support the Atari Falcon.
In case you did not know the Falcon is an entry level 030 based system with
56001 dsp, midi, super vga graphics, 16 bit sound, phase locking for genlocks
,rs 422 network port , scsi II and numerous other features. It is priced at 
 $ 799.0 for a 1 meg model with all above features.
 I read that some Next developers feel that more Falcons will be sold in a
month than Next computers in one year. This seems possible but I hold my 
judgement and ask: ARE THERE ANY NEXT DEVELOPERS PLANNIG TO SUPPORT THE
FALCON ?
 E-MAIL oyakea@rpi.edu

thanx
From: mrothste@keiko.acs.calpoly.edu (Rothstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: Really stupid Question: NS486 (WHEN??) - Q2 '92
Date: 17 Nov 92 03:54:58 GMT
Reply-To: mrothste@data.acs.calpoly.edu
Organization: Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo

In article <1duoeuINNs91@gap.caltech.edu> ernest@pundit.cithep.caltech.edu  
(Ernest Prabhakar) writes:
> In article <1992Nov12.165309.6902@wam.umd.edu>  
rsrodger@next10csc.wam.umd.edu  
> (Robert Stephen Rodgers) writes:
> > 	So what I'm asking is--does anyone know the lastest word
> > 	from NeXT itself?  
> > 
> > 	NS486:  When?
> We just had a NeXT Product Fair, showing a functional Dell 450DE running  
'486.   
> The full development environment was functioning, although with massive  
memory  
> leaks.  No sound boards, no DOS/Windows emulation.
> 
> Our local NeXT SE said Q2 '93, or June-July 1993.  He claimed most ISV's  
had  
> already gotten a copy, and the delay was basically so they could write a  
few  
> hundred device drivers.
> 
> Following the rule of thumb that says multiply any announced date by 1.5  
times  
> the time before the delivery gets:
> 8 months x 1.5 = 12 months.
> So, I'm putting my money on the END of 1993.  Hopefully NeXT will  
surprise us,  
> but you never know.
> 
> Oh, by the way, they are taking about 3.1 in about four months.  Would  
be nice.
> 
> - Ernie P.
> 
> --
> Ernest N. Prabhakar                  Caltech High Energy Physics
> Member, League for Programming Freedom (league@prep.ai.mit.edu)
> CaJUN President        NeXTMail:ernest@pundit.cithep.caltech.edu
> "...and ourselves, your servants for Jesus sake." - II Cor 4:5b
> #import <std/disclaimer.h>

If this is ture then it sounds like they are shooting for NeXTWorld Expo.   
I sure hope not.  I'm computerless right now and I am waiting for NS 486  
before I buy a machine.  Q1 would be alot nicer.

Has it gone beta yet?

--
-Mont

   NeXTmail OK :-)
   President CP-NUG (Cal Poly NeXT User Group)
   mrothste@data.acs.calpoly.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: johnsd2@jec326.its.rpi.edu.its1 (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: Byte silliness.
Reply-To: johnsd2@jec326.its.rpi.edu.its1
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 18:49:07 GMT

In article 13378@cuug.ab.ca, wilcoxt@cuug.ab.ca (Terrance Wilcox 260-8100) writes:
>The more I look at that Byte article, the stranger it gets. Check out the
>other ports line. Where did the NeXT's audio ports go?
>
>Why did the tests use 8 bit color? I realize the Indigo is limited to
>8 bits, but the other machines aren't. Was it to give the Indigo a level
>playing field?
>
>I thought the Mac Quadra 950 had built-in video. Why did they buy a video
>card?

Actaully this one made sence. The Quadra had 2 monitors attached.
The internal video only supports 1.

(this appears to be a big part of the reason it got first place.
Weird...)

>The Dec had a slower version of the R3000A than the Indigo, but it kicked
>the Indigo's butt in FrameMaker. How come they say that the DEC lacks dazzle
>but the Indigo is outstanding. The DEC is faster with a slower chip!
>
>They make a big deal out of being able to double click documents to 
>launch the app and open the document on the Indigo. The same thing
>happens on the NeXT but they don't mention it.

And the Mac, come to think of it. Suns can do it too, after a fashion.

>They say the NeXT ran at speeds comparable to the DEC, but generally
>behind the pack so they can't recommend it. The Indigo is slower, but
>it's fast enough to be outstanding!
>
>Let's face it. I just don't understand the criteria.

Lets face it. They inhaled. :)

---
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

These opinions have had all identifiying marks removed, and are untraceable.
You'll never know whose they are.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: mwarren@oracle.com (Mark Warren)
Subject: Looking for NeXT business stats - units shipped, gross/net income?
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Distribution: comp
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:02:07 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.


How is NeXT doing financially? - units/month, total units shipped to
date, yearly revenues, headcount, etc....

Over a year ago (May 1991?), Upside magazine published an article
outlining the history of NeXT. There was also a sidebar with
predictions about the sales goals that NeXT needed to meet if it
wanted to survive. I seem to recall figures like 3000 machines per
month and about 250 million per year in gross income. If you recall
the actual figures, please post or email them as well.  

Thanks,

Mark

--
Mark Warren            300 Oracle Parkway, office #423a, mail #659304
warren@us.oracle.com                         Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Voice:(415) 506-4639                             Fax:  (415) 506-7292
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn)
Subject: Re: NeXT's binaries need a diet
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 08:43:27 GMT

billb@nasty (Bill Burcham) writes:
           [skipping over stuff]
> Now if we want to have a constructive discussion we could talk about  
> things like:
> 
> 1) Why isn't NeXT talking about shipping a cross-compiler so that I don't  
> have to have one of each of the target systems running NeXTSTEP in order  
> to create my fat binaries.

If I were to guess, it's because you probably should *test* your application  
on that platform, not just compile it for the platform.  The fact that code  
(cross-)compiles cleanly does not mean that you haven't included assumptions  
which cause Zero trouble on a 68040 and all kinds of disasters on a 486.

Would you trust your bank records to a database program which had never  
actually been run on the architecture that you personally happen to be  
using?  I, personally, would not.

> 2) Why doesn't someone work out a way to ship an intermediate rep. or the  
> executable image so we don't have to have fat binaries.

I think this is great in theory, but I have little confidence it would work  
out in practice.

Like #1, I suspect that the only way this would reliably work was if it was  
programmed in some brand new programming language, one that made certain it  
was absolutely impossible for the programmer to write something which would  
work on one architecture and not work on some other (perhaps radically  
different) architecture.

I do not believe that Objective C qualifies as such a language.  I am not  
optimistic that such a language will ever be written (due to bugs in the  
compiler for different platforms, if nothing else).

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =     gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer            (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;           Troy NY    USA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: max@alias.com (Max Stevens-Guille)
Subject: Re: Byte silliness.
Reply-To: max@alias.com (Max Stevens-Guille)
Organization: Alias Research, Inc. Toronto Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 18:15:53 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.003917.13378@cuug.ab.ca>, wilcoxt@cuug.ab.ca (Terrance Wilcox 260-8100) writes:
> The more I look at that Byte article, the stranger it gets. Check out the
> other ports line. Where did the NeXT's audio ports go?
> 
> Why did the tests use 8 bit color? I realize the Indigo is limited to
> 8 bits, but the other machines aren't. Was it to give the Indigo a level
> playing field?

Hang on a second here.  The Indigo can be configured with one of four
different graphics adapters.  Only the entry level graphics is 8-bit
(with hardware dithering).  I grant you that the other graphics
boards are expensive, but if graphics is your business, you get
plenty of value for the money.

> 
> I thought the Mac Quadra 950 had built-in video. Why did they buy a video
> card?
> 
> The Dec had a slower version of the R3000A than the Indigo, but it kicked
> the Indigo's butt in FrameMaker. How come they say that the DEC lacks dazzle
> but the Indigo is outstanding. The DEC is faster with a slower chip!
>

Having used both for a wide variety of tasks (okay, mostly development),
the Indigo is markedly faster than the DEC.  Not surprising, 
considering the faster clock rate.
 
> They make a big deal out of being able to double click documents to 
> launch the app and open the document on the Indigo. The same thing
> happens on the NeXT but they don't mention it.
> 
> They say the NeXT ran at speeds comparable to the DEC, but generally
> behind the pack so they can't recommend it. The Indigo is slower, but
> it's fast enough to be outstanding!
> 
> Let's face it. I just don't understand the criteria.
>

I don't know why all you guys are so surprised.  Byte has been
unbelievably inconsistent in it's technical coverage since about 1987.
My favorite to date is a comparison of the 386-40 and the 486SX.  In
it, they claim that while they're both about equal in performance 
(you had to work hard to get this from the article) the 486SX is a 
better bet for the long term.  Users of "less demanding applications"
such as solid modeling and 3D graphics, might save some pennies and
buy the 386-40.

Need I say more.  It's your $4.50.

Max
 
> Terry Wilcox
> 

-- 
Max Stevens-Guille      Research & Development      __
Alias Research Inc.     110 Richmond St. East,     /
Toronto, Ontario,       CANADA  M5C 1P1           /         Alias 
max@alias.com                                    /   \      Research
vox: (416) 362-9181     fax: (416) 362-0630     /     \_    Incorporated
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: axel@tumbolia.sta.sub.org
Subject: Re:  DEC's alpha is "way fast" according to WSJournal
Organization: 
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 13:39:55 GMT

As this is my first posting to this group, I hope, it will come
through ...

So far, everybody in this group obviously is convinced, that the
future lies in 64 bit-architectures. I wonder how Motorola could
come to the conclusion that 64 bits don't improve performance
that much (a German computer magazine said that thorough
statistical analysis had shown that the performance increase could
be estimated at around 1.5%) -- and the 68060 is going to be a 32-bit 
microprocessor (in good ol' 680x0 tradition).

Is this just another indication that Motorola has lost the micro-
processor race against Intel and other competitors?

Just wondering...

Axel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
aseibert@tumbolia.sta.sub.org| The will to be stupid is a very
NeXTmail welcome             | powerful force.

seiberta@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (please no NeXTmail here!)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
From: david@postman.gr.osf.org (David George)
Subject: Re: Where are they now?
Organization: OSF RI Grenoble
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:22:47 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.094233.60912@cc.usu.edu>, slhw4@cc.usu.edu (Jason Hunsaker) writes:

|> What ever happened to Steve Wozinak (sp?) co-founder of Apple?

Left retarded after a plane crash Steve gave all his money away to
pop stars and is currently working on a low component count 2 bit
microcomputer.

|> What ever happened to Nolan Bushnell, original founder of Atari?

Sometime Byte contributor is an aquarium stockist for OcTUS, in San Diego.


how the mighty are fallen,


David


"They were like lamps, they didn't just fade away but burnt at full brightness
giving an extra burst before flicking out" - Deighton

:-) for the humor impared

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy