🚀 go-pugleaf

Wow, Sun and DEC fighting in the workstation market.  Who'd've ever thought?

# 1)	Byte ordering is reverse of ALL other MIPS based machines.
#	Binaries are NOT compatible.

Well, waitaminute.  There is no ABI for MIPSCO as yet; binaries from an Ardent
are not going to run on a MIPSCO M1000.  Heck, binaries from a SysV MIPSCO box
don't run on a UMIPS 4.3 MIPSCO box.

So while this point is valid for binary data files, if by "binaries" you mean
binary code files, either a.out or *.o, then this point is etherial since there
is nothing to be binary-compatible WITH.

# 2)	Ultrix is propritary, and differs from the MIPS OS offerings
#	considerably. If you like Ultrix on your VAX, perhaps
#	you will like it on your MIPS box. But if you come from
#	any other unix environment it is quite a change.

As Mike Khaw pointed out, Ultrix is no more or less proprietary than SunOS or
UMIPS.  I'm sure that if somebody actually _wanted_ to license Ultrix for their
non-Digital hardware, some arrangement could be made.  BTW, I'd like to buy a
copy of the SunOS port that was done for the Compaq during the RR development.
What's that?  You say Sun isn't in the software business and that if I want
SunOS I've got to buy some Sun or Sony hardware?  Funny thing, that.

Ultrix is not that much of a change, really.  It's enough like SysV that most
SVID code compiles, and it's enough like BSD that most BSD code compiles.  And
it's enough like SunOS that most SunOS users would feel quite at home.  Note
that I don't particularly _like_ Ultrix (or SunOS), I'm a BSD purist.  But as
of 3.0, Ultrix is enough like BSD that I no longer pine and whine for 4.3.
(I'm in research, not product; I get to say things like "I don't like Ultrix"
and they don't fire me.  Neat, huh?)

# 3)	3100 has a max memory size of 24Mb RAM, 1Gb disk.

This bothered me at first, too.  But then I realized: "hey! it's a
workstation, not a compute server."  Fastest damned workstation _I've_ ever
used.  It gives the Ardent Titan stiff competition as a color X11 server.
Of course, Ardent isn't done optimizing their server yet, so eventually
their custom hardware will blow the 3100 away, X11-wise.  But the 3100 has
just a dumb 8-bit frame buffer, and it _screams_.

In fairness to the 24MB/1GB limitation -- there aren't many things I want to
do that need more than 24MB of RAM or 1GB of disk, and of those, they are
better run on a DECWRL Titan :-).

# I have talked to one user of the 3100, and he was very unhappy that
# his code (100+K lines of fortran) ran on their VAX, their Sun, their
# SGI IRIS, and etc., but after considerable effort it is still not
# running on the 3100. 

This is surprising.  Granted, for VAX/Ultrix you can get a VMS-compatible
FORTRAN compiler, while I believe the 3100 compiler is from MIPSCO.  But I
would have thought that the MIPSCO compiler would be as VMS-like as possible,
since that's what Ardent and Sun and everybody else is doing with their
FORTRAN compiler.  But I readily concede this point -- I don't like FORTRAN
anyway.

# If you decide to buy a MIPS based processor, stick with one that is
# STANDARD comforming. Why make your life difficult. If you don't like
# the ISI, after a bit, you can go with someone else (MIPS, Ardent,
# etc.). If you don't like the 3100 upgrade choices, you're stuck with
# an OS AND processor change.

This is just silly.  Which STANDARDs?  As I said above, the a.out and *.o file
format is different on almost every MIPS-based machine I know of.  If someone
wants to compile something on an Ardent and run it on an ISI or SGI to prove
me wrong, go for it.

If you get a 3100 and don't like it, your options are about the same as if you
bought an ISI or SGI or SPARC machine and didn't like it -- you tell your
software vendors that you want to switch architechtures or hardware vendors or
whatever, they tell you what your options are.  Then you tell your hardware
vendors what you want to do and watch them fight it out.  Am I missing some-
thing important?

# **** This opinon is clearly mine. Sun would prefer you buy a SPARC
#      based system.:>!                                              ***

What you said.  The above (non-quoted) opinions are clearly mine; I have no
idea what I'd say if I were speaking officially for DEC.  If anyone quotes
any of the above, please include this paragraph.
--
Paul Vixie
Work:    vixie@decwrl.dec.com    decwrl!vixie    +1 415 853 6600
Play:    paul@vixie.sf.ca.us     vixie!paul      +1 415 864 7013