Product
Review
More than aToy but No Bargain ByMike Burgard
Amiga 3000UX offersSVR4on an outdated chip without theAmiga PC's capabilities
ommodore is hardly a name you expect to hear bandied about in the UNX workstation market. Yet. Commodore is positioningits Amiga 30001X-stocked with UND( System V Release 4 from AT&T,Open Look, and Ethernet suP port-as a niche workstation alternative. Despitethe good intentions,Commodore missesthe markwith the Amiga 3000UX of its small,14inch colormonitot because limited software supply, poor price/performance,and no UNX-toDOS utilities. Commodoremakes it clear that the Amigais not going head to head with IBM, Hewlett-Packard,or high-end Sun Microsystemsengineering workstations.Instead,Amiga is targeting individualusers, the university market, and "large becauseof its port of SVR4,the quantitydevelopment market." Paul Caulkin,UND( programs manager for 'TV'eare positionCommodoreexplains: ingttre Amiga 3000tX for the large inhousedeveloperthatwould rather have standalonemachines than terminals on eachdeveloper'sdesk." As a billion-dollar company, Commodorehas a large network of users and dealers.But to competein the lower end of the UND( workstation market, Commodorehas to offer a sizableprice break or solidvalueadded features:the Amiga offers neither.The availablesys3000UX temconfigurationsare too expensiveand thestandoutthird-party products normallyassociatedwith the Amiga PCnarnelyjazzy graphics and strong video support-arenot available for the UNX Amiga.Commodorepromisesthat multimediaproductswill be availablen 1992. The base system comes with a 100-
megabytehard drive and Ethernet card, but no monitor, and costs $4,998.Although this price seems reasonable, UNXusers needmore than the basesys tem to satisf routine disk andmonitor re quirements. They need the 3000IXG, the reviewed plafform, which had a 20G megabytehard dish EthernetCard,TIGA graphics adaptor,multiscanningmonitor, and a price tag of.$7,773.Comparethis against Sun's $6,995SPARCstationIPC with its lGinch color monitor, 207 megt bytes of disb eight megabytesof memo ry, and 3 1/2-inchfloppy drive. Compact and Quiet The Amiga 3000UXis an attractive machine.The systembox is compact,cleanb
designed,and resemblesa small-foo@rint PCjammedto tlregills.Insidethe 2Gpound system box are four proprietary expansion slots, two floppy drive bays,up to 18 megabytesof RAM, a power suPPlY,and a 68030processor.The Amiga also sup ports 100to 400megabytesofhard disk. The location of the floppy bays repre sents efficient use of space,but makes the Amiga 30001X a difficult machine to work with at the board level. When our test unit died, the technician had quite a chore getting at the system memory. The fan and hard disk maintain an extremely low ambient noise level in comparison to any machine-UNX or DOS. Inside the Amiga is a Motorola MC6803032-bitprocessorrunning at 25
Commodore's entry into the UNIXworkstaiion market,the Amiga 3000UX,comes with AT&TUNIX SVR4,OpenLook, and Ethernet support-but it doesn't havethe speed,software, or UNIX-Io-DOS utilitiesthat most usersdemand.
1991 75 UNIXWORLD DECEMBER
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is a with MSDOSbecauseAmigaDO-S createo system operating The 800pixelsis r" Jriiu.r.ing 1008bv Amigu'A coprocessi" Jisplav MHz anda 68882math coprocessor' T"rihe t"";;ft gener.^*.in."frv whole color samepriceasthe the a $754BridgeBoard dsii;o h.*. tlte Amigaone as .",,ii"tiJr"t #;;;J:such the with board TIGA mustbe PurU"fti"a the Nextstation ii* A-high-resolution ffi;il;. anoP ;";d;;"dd-in^board' also is Comresolulion 218 aPPlications' DoS Jiri'i6l+uv did not .#;d i; t"" Amiqai Problems'You TIGA the Utf"tttnately' the gu"lur1,'1. ii"". sovoumusthave ;;il;; UNX simul:,tiil;'il'iil;;oir.' ut*'*gt' ;;;i;th thesYstem' the U;";';;-" A*igaDbS and emulator' the overshadow wouldn't DoS a ".'lio."..ot i6*rere ;;. fiX'*"^ir"i.' wtrictragain-increases in compan- ffi;;;M iirtix "'rit" n igu'totherProblems'with eiline is that the Amiga ."i^"ittt" e.ga, especially iil;;ii;; standard comes machine' G-ig" Next or Sun " ;;t .on,o iob'otxit themachine.Y"Y YTI^I of on-board -'ir,"""d+-t"t goat' keyboardis alsoa weak therfiveor ninemegaoytes DOSand-UNX is your monitor with workout.A monochrome
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math coprocessor,and the one megailvt" "i"ia"" RAM contribute to making the machine responsive.but Commoposldore has deliberately tried not to which in markets in A-igu ;ilth" o"iio.tnu"." ii the major evaluationcrii ; ; i ; . H " * " v e r , S P E C m a r k sh a v e be shown even the 68040processorto IPC' the in chip SPARC .io*"i "'ih;i. tft* ttte i; doubt that the Amiga is
ouickenoughto handlecommontasKs .'".tt u. aoltment creationandeducawith scrollour exPerience il;;;;. t9!l: utiliti"s X using and i"g'i'o.u-""tt us-tttenmigais on parwith a slow386 SCOOpenDesldop' ilu.t in" ru*nning StandoutServiceand SuPPort rrp TheAmigawastruly easyto set and you leads brochure g"liu*itg. A color
throush the cable connectionsand setuo.t"-p. in an almostsimplisticmanner' Ifitft utt the operating system software p."1oad"d,you can have a login prompt *iittir "t.i,it 30 minutes of opening-the the b;;;. Th" plug-and-plavaspectsof users' many to Amiga make it attractive T6e Amiga also comes with an outgoes standing support policy: if anything year' first the in machine tlre *ith *r"ne We charge' of free it 6o*itoaot" *itt fix i" have a technician uP in the ;;;;;bb Uootao.tt of Montanawithin 24 hours a set of RAM chiPsdied' when "'iiocumentation stands out from the manuals take you small Three tvpi.uf.
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rttu.ti""., and frequent illustrations' ftt" *uin efe.f UND( manual Pages and canbe accessedwith the ;;; ";il not r.n.ornrnund. Commodoredoes set' documentation SVR4 full a ofter ""iit" e*i!" draws a fiercelv loval folsee lowins in the PC world and we can iire cnliact".istics of a soundlybuilt mapacks Itrl".bui"t -d small,the Amiga sup and space tight "loiof.vstem into a service best the of one *ittt o"ii.-it suaranteesin the business' --f* to, Commodorehasn'tgiven us a convincing reason as to whY it Put ffiii on trt" I*ist And we haven'ta clue' iil"emiga eO00lXis a soundhardware present Uo* toofing for a home' At its compared rtf." fi o-t*iaes no attraction or io-in"*p"n.iue Suns,SPARCclones' multime of lack l""n G*tttutions. The also leavesthe Amigahol;i;;;ftd; i"*. gtt if you like a mystery andare I *iffirgt" ri;k $7,000,give it a trY' Mike Burgard is a regular -riaiewerforlJND(woRLD Editor<t-lnrge and a data sys' a clrnmer' managerfor temsinformation in Montana' cial Printing com'PanY