From: timbol@netcom.com (Mike Timbol)
Subject: Re: Here's some Advocacy for you.
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 03:18:46 GMT

In article <BzF7DJ.19H@news.iastate.edu> jws@iastate.edu (James William Shoemaker) writes:
>>>    OK, How do you explain that NT will unseat UNIX on these same platforms
>
>
>>                           ...If applications weren't important,
>>        we wouldn't be using Intel based PC's.  The R4400 is 
>>        much better in terms of bang-for-the-buck, and NT licenses
>>        these platforms by virtue of delivering, along with the 
>>        NT kernel, a slew of applications.
>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>	From Where??????????

NT on MIPS (or Alpha or Clipper) should be able to run Win16 and DOS
binaries (within limitations).  The applications just magically appear
because they already exist.

>>        I don't think it takes a great stretch of the imagination
>>        to imagine a point--in the near future--where you can purchase
>>        a nice R4400 based PC (single processor, 16 megs of ram, video,
>>        etc) for about the same price as a high-end brand-name PC
>>        clone--and dropping from there.  NT has been demoed on MIPS.
>
>	And OS/2 on POWER.

???

>>        If anything, this *alone* gives NT and OS/2MACH a good reason
>>        for existance.  How much do you think the pentium is going to 
>>        run when released?  >$1000, chances are (at first).  
>
>	Around the same price as the inital offerings of the 486 CPU.

I think the point is that it will be expensive.  How many people had
an i486 when they first came out?  For most people, it took two-three
years or so.

>>        We've been arguing SMP for awhile now, but I think that all
>>        sides of that argument can agree that next to the possibility
>>        of these very fast chips finally becoming available to the
>>        end user (end users do not run UNIX, period) is more important,
>>        in the short term, than SMP.  
>
>	Moving to a new platform would be fine with me, except for the reason
>I am running OS/2 instead of UNIX: APPS.  I require the ability to run Intel
>apps.  In fact OS/2 gives me better ability to run DOS apps.  I have several
>apps that do not work under newer versions of DOS (Setver doesn't help) and
>With OS/2 I can boot the version they require.  Can NT do that?  on MIPS?

I believe that you require the ability to run *DOS* apps.  And NT will be
able to do that (again, with limitations).  I fully expect that OS/2-Mach
will be able to do this as well, on whatever platforms they port it to.
Of course, your particular apps seem very odd, or very old, so they may
not work.  (I think MS said NT would emulate Win 3.1 and DOS 5.0).

>	NT on MIPS may be successfull, but it won't replace INTEL machines
>for the same reason very few people changes to OS/2 1.2 Inability to run 
>existing DOS apps.  Your arguement against NEXT..... can be used against
>NT on MIPS.  Sure a simple re-compile of the code will work just fine
>from INTEL to MIPS.  At work we have code that won't go from SPARC 1 to
>SPARC 2.  Also, I agree this will be minor but I think it will be significant
>Will ALL software developing houses want to go out and buy $????? MIPS 
>machines to develop for this splinter sliver of a market.  Even if they 
>can cross-compile from INTEL to MIPS they will still need to have machines for
>testing, integration, support.........

The fact is that many existing applications won't need a recompile at all.
They won't run as fast as they would if they had been recompiled, but they
should work.  Not all software development houses will go out and buy
lots of MIPS machines, but some will.  Say you have a big company (Lotus,
Borland, Corel, WordPerfect, etc...); say they need a dozen MIPS machines
-- that's the cost of about 2 programmers for one year -- a significant
amount, but not too much.  The fact that some companies *ALREADY* do it
proves that it's not much of a problem.

>				JWS

     - Mike
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy