From: saidin@acsu.buffalo.edu (Ainalidha Saidin)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asean
Subject: Re: Malaysia's Atom PC=M$1600
Date: 11 Oct 92 18:21:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: acsu.BvyyzF.DCE
Organization: UB

eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) writes:


>When I was in Malaysia many weeks ago I read in the papers that there are
>proposals from Uniphone and other companies for  a cheap PC for the educatioanl
>market. The cheapest on offer is Atom M$1600. 

Just before I left Malaysia just over a year ago, I had the chance to take a 
look the test lab that was to be implemented under the Computers in Education
Program(or something like that). 

The machines had V20 CPUs, 1.44M disks and a built in CGA adapter and network
cards built in. The machine was to say the least, compact. Everything is under
the keyboard. If you flip through the past few issues of Byte magazine, there
is a similar machine for sale here( with the catchy phrase "buy a keyboard 
and we'l throw the computer for free"). The machine also has a built in 
trackball. 

The proposed machine was supposed to have an EGA adapter instead and an 
increased memory from 640k to 1M. The machines also could run from either
AC or DC. The machines I saw had a converter from the wall sockets to the 
machine itself, so I assumed that they were running on DC. This was to
enable rural schools which only had electricity for parts of the  day 
to hold classes at any time as the computers could run of a car battery. 
The machine was originally intended to be made 100% locally but efforts
were hampered because the company (Uniphone I guess) could not find
any local company to make the plastic casings locally and the delay of 
the arrival of the cast for the casings ordered from Siberia (then still a 
part of USSR). 

The setup I saw was close to the real thing. There were about 10 of the 
machines connected to a 386-25 server (with a VGA adapter and 1.2M and 1.44M
disk) and ran on LANSmart (I know very little about LANs so correct me 
if I am wrong). The teacher I spoke to said that the actual lab would 
a bit different and most probably have a server with a larger hard disk and
a different LAN system. From what I read, the Education Dept also was 
developing their own user interface cum authoring system for the local
schools plus educational programs with the name Comil. The final selection
of the operating system and LAN was DRDOS and LANtastic, I think. 

>	 Why should all support staff be from KL? ;m so fed up with this
>centralisation of purchases. The contractors who got it are mostly from KL,
>the other suppliers in smaller towns cannot service PCs.
 
 Now the criticism. If support is like what the post said and what I saw,
this project is either in for a very hard time or a early death. I was not 
there really to just look but rather to help the teachers bring the LAN back
up again. What happened was that the LAN had went down and it was disrupting
the classes. Three weeks had passed since they made the first call to the 
contractors and they were running out of patience when subsequent calls 
yeilded no response. Teaching a computer class without computers was no
fun at all. The upcoming visit by the Menteri Besar in the following week
did not make things any better. My intervention was probably a breach of 
contract but since then, the lab has been closed when the duration of 
the trial run was over and the computers were taken back.

My personal opinion is that the setup is adequate and realistic. The project 
is an ambitious one, with the goal of a computer lab in every secondary 
school running under the same system. Therefore cost has to be kept to a
minimum. The syllabus also does not call for high end machines. From
what I gathered from the sylalbus, it includes basic word processing 
skills, spreadsheet manipulation skills and database skills. Programing
is limited to BASIC. The software written by the Education Ministry would
supplement other subjects. The proposed syllabus I saw was teaching 
WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBaseIII+. The contract now I understands goes
to WordPerfect instead of wordstar. But VGA would be nice :)

I am willing to answer any questions regarding to what I saw and learnt 
from my discussions with the teachers but do not accept it as anything 
official. I represent only myself.

saidin@acsu.buffalo.edu