143 lines
6.4 KiB
Groff
143 lines
6.4 KiB
Groff
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VAPORWARE
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Murphy Sewall
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From the April 1990 APPLE PULP
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H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
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$15/year
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P.O. Box 18027
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East Hartford, CT 06118
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Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
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Permission granted to copy with the above citation
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Whatever OS You Like.
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DEC's next generation of RISC stations are designed to run
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MS-DOS, OS/2 with 80387 extensions at 80386 speed, and
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Macintosh software at 68030 speed as well as Unix System V.
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Downloadable microcode makes emulating virtually any
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operating system possible. RISC engineering manager, Tom
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Furlong, has been quoted as saying "By the time IBM is
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actually shipping the new RS/6000's we will have announced
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and shipped our new generation of machines."
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- PC Week 12 March and InfoWorld 19 February
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Motorola 68040 Computers are NeXT.
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Not one but three new models are expected soon from NeXT
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(see last October's and November's columns). A 32-bit color
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and two monochrome models will be built around Motorola's 33
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MHz 68040 CPU and will have a new Canon erasable optical
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disk with a 20 millisecond access time (much faster than the
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present, very slow, optical drive). NeXT may become the
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first manufacturer to offer more models than there are
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applications. - PC Week 12 March
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Entry Level Mainframe.
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Engineers at IBM's Boeblingen, West Germany laboratories
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have designed a 370 mainframe processing chip set. Only
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five one half inch by one half inch CMOS chips are needed to
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deliver over 30 MIPS. Luis Arzubi, director of the Essex
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Junction, Vermont laboratory where preproduction samples are
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being manufactured and tested is quoted as saying "We will
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try to move it into a product as soon as possible."
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- InfoWorld 19 February
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More IBM Hardware.
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Introduction of a notebook PC designed (and perhaps
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manufactured) for IBM by Ricoh is said to be imminent. Big
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Blue plans to ship a new high end graphics accelerator card
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to use with Windows 3.0 or OS/2's Presentation Manager next
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year. PS/2 users will have to upgrade to a future PS/2
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model or wait for add-on products for current systems if
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they want to take advantage of the extended Micro Channel
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functions introduced on the RS/6000 RISC computers (see
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February's column). If a 27 MIP RS/6000 isn't fast enough
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you'll soon be able to double performance simply by
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replacing the 25 MHz CPU with a 50 MHz one (no other changes
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required!). - PC Week 19 March and InfoWorld 5 March
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HP LaserWriter Clone.
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HP will ship a Macintosh compatible Laserjet III by the
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beginning of summer. The $2,395 (list) Laserjet III with 2
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Mbytes of memory plus $695 Postscript cartridge and $275
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Appletalk interface will cost about $1,000 less than Apple's
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LaserWriter NT. - InfoWorld 26 February
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Window's 3.0 - Another Month, Another Delay.
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Developers of new software designed to run under Windows 3.0
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are starting to get a bit testy (see last November,
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December, February, and March columns). Microsoft now
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promises delivery by May 22. Sources in Redmond also are
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hinting that the end-user version of OS/2 version 2.0, the
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long awaited 32-bit operating system (see last September's
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column), won't make it out the door until next year.
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- InfoWorld 12 and 19 March
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Navigating Around a Hard Disk.
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Beta testers are favorably impressed with Lotus
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Development's new version (2.0) of Magellan which is
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scheduled to ship this month. Customizability is the most
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noteworthy improvement. Users can rearrange function keys
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and design their own control menus, dialog and message
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boxes. Other new features include Zip data compression from
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Pkware, an ASCII editor, and 23 additional file viewers
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(including five which support graphics -- PIC, GIF, TIFF,
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PCX, and DRW formats). - InfoWorld 19 March
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Over the Speed Limit.
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In spite of the fact that Intel doesn't plan to ship a 20
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MHz version of its hybrid 80386SX CPU for several months,
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several PC makers already achieve 20 MHz by pushing 16 MHz
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chips beyond their certified clock rate. On the one hand,
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Intel cautions that performance can't be guaranteed beyond
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the certified clock rate. Intel's product marketing
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manager, Jim Chapman, notes that some chips may tolerate the
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higher temperatures associated with increasing the clock
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rate, but 16 MHz chips "do not perform consistently at 20
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MHz." On the other hand, users report few problems, and
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standard benchmark software indicates performance comparable
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to the 25 MHz Model 70 A21. - PC Week 5 March
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Microsoft C Version 6.0 Lacks C++ Compliance.
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Microsoft will replace C Version 5.1 with 6.0 by the time
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April's showers bring May flowers. Version 6.0 provides a
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programmer's workbench (8 Mbytes of hard disk space are
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recommended) but still lacks C++ compliance and 32-bit
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support. A new Unix derived "make" facility automates most
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program building tasks, and compiler optimization has been
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enhanced. - InfoWorld 19 March
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Hidden Apple 2 Clone?
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The custom I/O chips in the new Mac IIfx are rumored to be
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literally Apple //c's on a chip complete with a 65C02 and
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DMA controller. - InfoWorld 12 March
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Apple IIgs Meets IBM Display.
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At least two firms are developing VGA display cards for the
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Apple IIgs. One has lots of fancy graphics features, but is
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expensive, the other won't cost nearly as much but does
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little more than permit VGA monitors to be used with a
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IIgs. - found in my electronic mailbox
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Higher Net Speed.
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The National Science Foundation partnership demonstrated
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their new 44.736 mbs (million bits per second) wide area
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network technology at Net '90 last month. Traffic on the
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NSF-Net backbone has increased from 194 million packets in
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August 1988 to 2.5 billion packets last February. Growth
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continues at a rate of nearly 15 percent per month. The
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44.736 mbs (also known as "T3") links will replace the
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current 1.544 mbs (T1) backbone later this year. An
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increase to one gigabits per second is planned for 1992 (see
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last October's column), and initial planning for a terrabit
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(that's a trillion bits per second) backbone is underway.
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- InfoWorld 19 March
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R.I.P. PC-DOS.
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By summer's end, IBM will have withdrawn as co-developer of
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the DOS operating system. All future versions will be
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solely MS-DOS (versions shipped with IBM hardware may
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continue to be labeled "PC-DOS"), and IBM's PC-systems
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programmers will devote their exclusive attention to OS/2.
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- PC Week 19 March
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