From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Subject: Re: PC Unix/Xenix vendors
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 19:00:47 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

According to adams@pdv2.fmr.maschinenbau.th-darmstadt.de (Adams):
>microSPARC by Ti integrates ALL onto ONE dice. Period.

Even the hard disk?  Please enumerate what "ALL" means.

>RTFM!

Read The Friendly... what?

>>And common peripheral boards for the ISA bus are
>>so cheap you can practically give them away.
>
>Right. Some vendors give necessary peripheral interfaces away
>all on a mother board. Why should I pay additionally for SCSI, 
>ISDN, UART ? 

Because when you need eight serial ports, Sun will charge an arm and
a leg, because they're the only ones with an inside track on the
development of peripherals for their own custom busses.  Or are
third-party serial boards a thriving market in the Land of SPARCs and
I haven't heard about it?

>>PC UNIX rides that wave of good and cheap hardware, 
>
>Given price/performance ratio a GSX board by SUN is competitive to
>video cards of a PC. 

But most people don't need the performance.  I don't care if a Ferrari
has good price/performance if I can't afford it.

>>   Local bus video [...]
>
>One more patch.

Yes; but so what?  You'd be surprised how much good engineering looks
like a kludge if that's what you're expecting to see.

>NO. It is the add-on policy. To set up a competitive workstation
>for CAD [...]

CAD is always highest-of-high-end.  Talk more typical usage, please.

(And you really don't need to write "NO" in all caps...)

>>>Do not forget, that clone makers start to focus on SPARC meanwhile.
>>
>>You mean they're beginning to consider diversifying, in addition to
>>maintaining the continuously profitable PC clone industry.
>
>Margins are narrow.

But with the volume involved, narrow margins are still enough.
Besides, wouldn't _you_ rather buy a computer with a low margin?
I would.  It means more bang for the buck for us buyers.

>>>Window NT is targeted to processors like Mips R3000/R4000 and DEC/alpha.
>>
>>And the 486.
>
>Window NT developments are done on R3000, as Olivetti provides a
>special development station for Windows NT at better than usual
>conditions. All I know about Windows NT on 486: It is said to be
>unusable slow.

Oh, now _there's_ a good reason to sell Intel stock.  NOT!
There is _no_way_ that Microsoft will pass up the huge market that
the 486 presents.  If NT is too slow, Microsoft will speed it up.

>There was one demonstration of a beta system [...]

Yes, a _beta_ system.  As in, _not_ ready for sale... _yet_.

>>>Next versions of OS/2 will be based on a mciro kernel, and IBM sees
>>>OS/2 just as one step into distributed computing (DCE) and propose
>>>their PowerRisc therefor.
>>
>>OS/2, microkernel or no, will run on the 486 for the forseeable future.
>
>OS/2 development is done by IBM, and IBM told the world, that 
>OS/2 is regarded to be an "intermediate step to Distributed Computing
>Environment (DCE)" (Hope to have cited correctly.)

What, you have the impression that DCE won't work on a 486?
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
  "you make me want to break the laws of time and space / you make me
   want to eat pork / you make me want to staple bagels to my face /
   and remove them with a pitchfork" -- Weird Al Yankovic, "You Make Me"
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,biz.sco.general,comp.unix.sys5.r3