🚀 go-pugleaf

James Dehnert (zeke@esosun.UUCP) wrote:
: 
:   Given the recent history of NeXT ( overnight OD droping, NeXT Dimention 
: problems, No current upgradability for the stations, no word on the future 
: of the cube, the ADB upgrade policy ( i.e. sell your old box and buy a new 
: one ), no low cost color for the cube, no synchronous SCSI, and I'm sure 
: there is more ) all i can say is that given the choice now of a NeXT or 
: SUN, I would go with the sun, and I bet a large amount of people will begin 
: to purchase the new SUN's over the NeXT's.
:   I for one am sad to see it.  I still love my cube, even though It seems 
: to be at a dead end.  If the cube dosen't live on I WILL buy one of these 
: SUNs to replace it, unless NeXT can get on the ball and make me believe that 
: they will have the horsepower, and that I won't have to sell my whole 
: system every time I want the new and improved feature, like ADB od sync SCSI.
: 
:   What does everybody else think?  Any comments from NeXT?  I didn't think so.
: 

Sorry, can't agree with you here, at least not totally.  Despite the small
numbers of Nexts, and the brief time they've been around, there is already
a ton more usable PD software available than there is for X.  

The buyers of the Cube got shafted, true.  But computer technology is a moving 
target at the best of times.  If you plan for continious upgrades by making
the whole system modular, you can usually extend things for 1 generation.  
Then something you hadn't anticipated comes up.  

Example.  Suppose that Next came out Next week with a dec Alpha CPU daughter
board upgrade -- a cute 4 x 4 card that plugged into the 68040 socket.  
Now all your memory is too slow, your disk is too slow, and so on.

Still, there are areas where Next blew it.  For stuff that attaches more 
options are in order.  E.g.  X windows users like three button mice.  (Our 
stardent not only uses all three buttons, but uses chords, and button
control, shift, alternate combinations.)  I would dearly like a keyboard with 
pageup/down keys.  Monitors.

I was talking to Kubota Pacific the other day.  Our present Titan 3000 is soon
to be an orphan.  They will continue to make parts for it, and support it in
terms of repair, but there is no upgrade path.  We bought this machine three 
years ago.  

The Titan (An 80 MFlop machine) is a backplane/board machine.  So it would 
seem to be reasonable to replace the cpu boards.  Nope.  Backplane is running
right at the limit now for memory transfer.  

So sell your cube/slab and buy the latest and greatest.  Like cars, computers
depreciate 30% on being driven out of the showroom.

Now you know why it's called 'cutting edge' technology.

The change to ADB is a nuisance,
--
=> Sherwood Botsford                   sherwood@space.ualberta.ca <= 
=> University of Alberta         Lab Manager, Space Physics Group <=         
=> tel:403 492-3713                             fax: 403 492-4256 <=