DTACK GROUNDED, The Journal of Simple 68000/16081 Systems
Issue # 28 - February 1984 - Copyright Digital Acoustics, Inc
YES! A real, honest Trash-68 as specified at the end of page 16 in our newsletter #10, printed 20 months ago. Who woulda believed it?
It comes from Britain via the labs of Uncle Clive himself. Sinclair plans to introduce the model this spring via mail order ONLY (wait until he gets our bill for preparing his business plan - mutter, mumble), in Britain only. By summer he hopes to have ramped production up to 20,000 a month, at which time the little gem may be introduced in the U.S.
It has 128K, a 68008, two (tape) waferettes, and four applications packages (ominously, no BASIC was mentioned). The "retail" price (mail-order, remember) is expected to be in the $500 - $600 area, less CRT. Hot diggety! You know, we have always admired Uncle Clive. Let's hope he can get production levels up to the point where you and us can each buy one. We think it would make a perfect mass-market vehicle for a "polished" HALGOL.
"The price for Inter68 is $50, not $40 as stated on p.22 of issue #27... the Jul/Aug issue of the "Journal of Pascal and Ada" reports Sage II compilation rates of 1200 lines per minute when using floppies and 1300 lines per minute using RAM disk (no list files were produced). Inter68 compiles 2000 lines per minute using floppies and well over 5000 lines per minute using RAM disk... May I suggest that you seriously consider advertising in JPA?" Thomas W., Munich W. Germany
DTACK GROUNDED advertise in a PASCAL/ADA rag? We are struck dumb. Make that speechless, we've been dumb for a long time now.
We passed your performance figures along to a local Sage dealer who has been bugging us about how wonderful
the Sage and the p-system operating system of SofTech's is, and he immediately decided that Inter68 was not real PASCAL. In fact, he decided he didn't know anything about it despite the 8 pages or so that we have devoted to it.
The real kicker is that he then demanded to know whether you were unfairly running at 12.5MHz. Apparently he is unaware that if one claims to be the fastest (and he did claim that the Sage was), one cannot count cycles. "Fastest" is an absolute, not a relative.
Thomas W., whose address is on the front page of issue #27, has announced the availability of FORTRAN to run under Inter68. The package costs $40 and requires an Apple II, the Apple PASCAL and FORTRAN package in addition to a DTACK board (size unspecified, but probably the same required by Inter68) and Inter68 itself. We hope that Thomas will send us more information or perhaps a review by one of his fellow Germans - the potential user community in this case is so small that it may be difficult to get a truly independent review. (How many DTACK/PASCAL folks are also interested in p-code FORTRAN? Put another way, how many FORTRAN fans are gonna want to learn PASCAL and be willing to put up with p-code?)
(We might have the wrong guy - we lost the original announcement - but the European Area DSEx Herr Direktor will get your check to the right W. German without fail.)
It's true! Kindly Uncle Jack has resigned, "for personal reasons." His successor is already lined up. It is an interesting coincidence that Apple's Markulla and Commodore's Trameil departed immediately after their respective companies reached $1 billion in sales (yes, Commodore sold over $1 billion in calendar 1983!). We hereby declare that our prediction of future sales of Commodore's new product, written before Trameil departed, is hereby null and void. (Have you noticed how Apple's profits have held up now that Markulla is gone?)
Get rich, page 2. 32-bit micros, page 12. 16081 math chip, page 19B. Mackintosh, page 12B. Transportable assembly language, page 5B. HALGOL pages 8B, 16B, 17B. Mail page 20B. IBM ennui, page 2. Pricing policy (other) page 7. DSEx report, page 17. REDLANDS page 24 (honest).
Since we are not permitted to criticize UNIX, not being a regular UNIX user, please turn to pages 14-17 of Dec '83 Dr Dobbs and see a regular UNIX user criticizing UNIX more severely than we have.
You want the bad news? O.K., here is the bad news. You may have read about all the micro manufacturers standardizing on UNIX System 5, right? That's the one which, among other things, permits two users to modify a file simultaneously. Oh, yes, the bad news: Western Electric has just signed a contract with Digital Research to develop System 6, which happens to be file-compatible with - we do not make these things up, folks - CPM/86.
You see, AT&T is about to emerge from federal restraints which prevented it from competing in the computer business, including the personal or home computer business. What do homes have? Why, telephones. Who has the address list of all those home phone owners? You know darn well who. Who wants to lease a computer, for a low monthly sum, to all those folks who now use phones? You know that one too.
What you might not know is that AT&T has (in part) reached the same conclusions that your FNE has regarding the future of the mass-market UNIX system, and is covering its bet with CPM/86 compatible UNIX System 6. Why else the pact with Digital Research for System 6, we ask?
(A story predicting AT&T's home/personal computer strategy was printed in Sept '83 DATAMATION on page 70. The author assumed that housewives were going to use UNIX to re-calculate recipes. Sure.)
We sense that 99% of the PCs are being purchased for purely three-piece suit purposes. Others, including several of you readers, have told us "Not so!", suggesting vistas of PCs in laboratories, PCs in schools, etc. Well, the editorial staff at Softalk magazine, the IBM edition, agree with us. The last three months one turns to the back of the magazine to read "Softalk presents the bestsellers" and sees 1-2-3 with its usual 36+% of the market, then two word processors, a data base management program and a communications package in the next four places. One sees Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is not really a game, as the highest-rated non-business software package in tenth place (and dropping) with 3.6% of the market. There is only one game (Zork I) in the Dec. list and it is in a three-way tie for last place with 1% of the market.
If you read the editorial material accompanying the bestseller list, you will immediately notice a sense of frustration on the part of the editorial writers. Last month they wrote about a spreadsheet, two word processors, a data base system and a communications package. This month the same. Two months ago the same. Next month, the same. WHOOPEE, HOW EXCITING! Two quotations from the Dec. bestsellers column:
"The overwhelming business orientation of the pc can be deduced from the weakening sales of Home Accountant Plus, which earlier was one of the leading software sellers. Inasmuch as no home finance package has come forth with a serious challenge to H.A.P., its relative weakness must be attributed more to the business orientation of the computer than to diminishing popularity or strengthened competition."
And: "1-2-3 is so strong, its market share is larger than that of all American car manufacturers combined. 1-2-3 is so dominant, it has a larger share than Standard Oil before it was broken up. 1-2-3 has a bigger market share of spreadsheets than IBM has of mainframes."
PCs in laboratories? Education? We will agree, but only after adding the phrase "all seven of them". Just turn and look inside the back cover of Softalk AND LOOK AT WHAT IS SELLING! The number of PCs being used by persons not wearing a tie and a vest is statistically insignificant.
For our obligatory harangue about the virtues of assembly language mass-market application programs, we turn to a December '83 issue of INFOWORLD. Volume 5, issue 51 to be exact. In the table of contents, under SOFTWARE, we find "Infoscope: A blindingly fast data-base manager". BLINDINGLY FAST? We like it already. So we turn to page 55, and right off we read, "'No higher-level languages spoken here,' laughs Jeff Garbers, a software designer for Microstuff." More:
"To illustrate Infoscope's speed, Garbers cites an advertisement taken out recently by another data-base-manager publisher. The ad claims that the competitor's product can alphabetically sort 1000 records in 59 seconds and boasts that this is five times the speed of dBASE II.
"'We can sort the same records in three seconds," Garbers states bluntly."
So why do we need a fast data base management program? "According to Garbers, the simple user interface and quick response time allows you to work with Infoscope data in an improvisational manner... 'you can explore,' he says."
Look, the three-piece-suit environment is a time-is-money environment. No manager in his right mind wants to wait unnecessarily for an answer. The key word in that last sentence is "UNNECESSARILY". If ALL the UNIX folks agree that they will bust their operating system, then the managers have no choice but to use some other operating system like MS-DOS. The managers have done that. If the managers want a fast integrated spreadsheet they have no current choice but to buy 1-2-3. SOME of them (ahem!) appear to be doing so.
And now we have a data-base program written by a guy who doesn't like HLL, and which sorts in three seconds what dBase II sorts in five minutes. O.K., P-code fans, go compete against that program with PASCAL. Write your PASCAL in C to keep Ma Bell happy. Write the C in COBOL to please the data processing managers. Write the COBOL in Ada to meet mil specs. Oh, yes: good luck! You're gonna need it.
You might have noticed that we did not give you the date of INFOWORLD Volume 5, Issue 51. That's because each edition of INFOWORLD has TWO dates. Also, two issues of INFOWORLD can have the same date and yet not be the same issue. Confusing? It sure as hell is!
(INFOWORLD places a later date on the store copies to give them a longer "shelf life". This stratagem will fool only, well, fools.)
Ben used to write a newsletter covering the small computer industry. Lately he has teamed up with some other venture capital guys and formed the "Sevin-Rosen" investment group. They are the money folks behind Compaq, Lotus and now an outfit in Santa Monica called "Deckhand" or something similar. Compaq is the quintessential PC clone, Lotus publishes an obscure spreadsheet called 1-2-3, and "Deckhand"? Well, it's like this:
Apple stole multiple windows - and a lot of employees - from Xerox's PARC. After filing the serial numbers off, Apple presented the concept as its own invention in LISA. Although sales of LISA and all those multiple windows have been, um, disappointing, lots of folks are excited about multiple windows. So Microsoft and Digital Research are battling with multi-window software packages. There is just one little problem: as of now the total number of applications programs which run with either the Microsoft package and the Digital Research package is - TADAA! - zero.
Being an ex-newsletter writer Rosen is quick to pick up on trends, so Sevin-Rosen raided the programming staff
of a computer outfit in Santa Monica and set them up as "Deckhand". "Deckhand" has its own multi-window software package (DesQ) AND there are four applications for it.
Some of the other venture capitalists are getting tired of Rosen getting most of the ink and a larger share of the profits than those others would like. A bright person might want to take advantage of that fact. How?
You CAN, you know. Provided you are a good programmer, willing to go honey-dipping, and know how to approach a venture capitalist. All you have to do is write the next best-selling PC program. No, not next-to-best, the next, best. Since the fourth largest selling PC program will be a communications package, the third largest a data-base manager, and the second largest a word processor (soon word-processor cum spelling checker cum dictionary cum thesaurus) that means that you have to write an integrated spreadsheet and knock off 1-2-3.
How can you do that? Simple. 1-2-3 does not make use of hardware math superchargers, so it is a whole lot slower (when recalculating all the cells) than a spreadsheet that DOES. Using that 8087 socket doesn't sound so original? No, but nobody is taking advantage of that socket yet in a spreadsheet. Besides, our suggestion doesn't stop there.
You should not only make use of an 8087 for calculating most of the transcendentals, you should ALSO use a Nat Semi 16081 for performing the simple dyadic functions, such as A = B * C because it is 2 1/2 times faster than the 8087 (when working with the 8088, which is what we are talking about now). We remind you that the three-piece-suit marketplace is a time-is-money marketplace, and that 2 1/2 times speed advantage is IMPORTANT! Also, you will want that 2 1/2 - 1 edge over the unimaginative dummies who will just use the 8087.
If you will write an integrated spreadsheet in assembly and using BOTH the 8087 and the 16081, you are ALMOST a wealthy person. The final step is to know how to approach a venture capitalist. We happen to know how to do that, but we know that you won't believe us. So let us establish our credentials:
In 1968 the company in which we owned 45% of the stock was acquired by a conglomerate. The wedding was blessed by a Beverly Hills-based brokerage house, which naturally got 5% of the action. The final papers were signed in the north-of-Wilshire private residence of an assistant in that brokerage house, who oddly enough happened to collect works by the very same sculptor favored by the big cheese at the brokerage house.
In 1973, that same (former) assistant was living in the Soho district of London. Yes, the one in England. He was living there because he owed at least $600,000 that he couldn't pay. We know because $300,000 was owed to us. It seems that one heckuva recession hit in 1972, and the conglomerate suddenly became spectacularly unprofitable. No sweat, they had a long-term credit arrangement with a bank consortium. Then the president of the conglomerate pulled a truly momentous boner: he violated the credit agreement by buying another company for cash. That placed the conglomerate in technical violation of the credit agreement and the banks immediately pulled the plug. The stock dropped from $42 to $1, and that assistant happened to be holding our "put".
In 1973 the Soho district of London was where the high-priced call girls lived. We suppose an expatriate relative of the late, former Shah of Iran is living in that north-of-Wilshire former residence of that former assistant these days.
During the signing ceremony at that north-of-Wilshire residence in 1968 we were handed an original piece of sculpture to examine. It was bronze, about ten pounds as we recall. It was the lower torso of a woman, from the navel to halfway down the thighs. One of the thighs was lifted radically upward and a little way out, prominently displaying the genitalia. This is actually a famous piece of (modern) sculpture. We have seen photos of it in art books. That's books, plural. (It seems that modern sculptors cast about 50 numbered "originals" before destroying the mold.)
The above story is true. Now let us tell you the correct way to approach a venture capitalist with your entirely original idea. You say to him:
"How would you like to yank some hair out of Ben Rosen's nose?"
In early Dec, IBM's chief financial officer (Allen J. Krowe) stood up in front of some New York financial analysts (probably the same bunch Scully lied to a month earlier). He proceeded to make some uncharacteristically (for IBM) specific predictions for the coming year, 1984. Among other things, he predicted that IBM's shipments of personal computers would triple in 1994. Oh, yes: IBM has NEVER been known to deliberately lie to financial analysts. (Usually they just don't say much.)
Apparently all the financial analysts interpreted the IBM spokesman's words as meaning that sales of the PC
would triple in 1984. They believe more than 800,000 were shipped in 1983 and that lBM is predicting shipments of 2.5 million PCs in 1984. Now, those analysts are a lot smarter than we are but we interpret IBM's chief financial officer's prediction differently. We believe he was speaking of combined sales of PC, PCjr and Peanut.
If OUR interpretation is correct, pressure on the makers of PC clones will NOT be due to ready availability of the PC. (We trust that ALL of our readers understand that the continuing shortage of PCs is opening the door for those clones.) Pressure on the makers of the clones will come from the makers of other clones! There are too many of them. A store which already carries the Chameleon, Compaq and Eagle mostly won't be interested in carrying yet another brand - and there are MANY other brands, with more appearing daily.
Apparently IBM intends to refer to both of its new low-end models as the PCjr. We insist that they are sufficiently different to warrant differing names, so we will continue to refer to the littlest one, the one without a disk, as the Peanut. We don't think that IBM is going to sell many Peanuts, judged by mass-market standards. PCjrs MAY sell well, if they prove to be useful at home for persons who have PCs on their desks at work.
It might be well to keep in mind that the only personal computer that IBM has yet introduced which has done well in its ORIGINALLY TARGETED marketplace is the PC/XT. And the PC/XT is a minor variant of a computer which was originally targeted at the Apple II as a 16K cassette-based home computer. The success of Peanut and the PCjr is yet to be proven. We don't think the success of Peanut will EVER be proven.
The old doggerel goes, as you proceed through life, my friend, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole.
It would be a good idea to keep in mind that the continuing and increasing success of the PC is based on the fact that the computer is USEFUL in a business environment. The business environment is a TIME-IS-MONEY environment, and it always WILL be. Given a choice of several prettily-packaged but functionally equivalent application software, the one which runs fastest will be the one that sells into this market.
The businessmen who are buying 1-2-3 do not know about the wonderful theory behind HLLs such as maintainability and transportability nor do they give a damn how hard it is to find good assembly language programmers. They just want to get the job done, NOW. There really IS an opening for a faster integrated
spreadsheet, and it really IS a good idea to include a 16081 math chip with that package in addition to the 8087.
How did managers get along without these tools in the past? They had lots of high-priced flunkeys called middle managers to do the work. 1984 is the year when middle managers will begin to line up at the unemployment office. The lines will get longer in 1985. In 1990 there won't be any middle managers.
Back in 1972 DATAMATION asserted that the number of payroll programs written actually exceeded the number of computers that had been sold. That was BPC (before personal computing). Lots of folks out of those old-fashioned data processing environments still think in that implied fashion. Reader John B is especially vociferous in asserting that it is simply not possible to program, in assembly, the massive number of applications programs that will be needed for the massive number of personal computers being sold.
WHAT massive numbers of programs? The IBM PC market needs ONE integrated spreadsheet, ONE data-base manager, ONE communications package, and TWO word-processing packages (WordStar and a WangWriter emulation - MANY secretaries and typists have been trained on a WangWriter wordprocessor). John B has it EXACTLY BACKWARDS: as more and more software-compatible computers are sold, there will be FEWER programs needed. The realities of the mass marketplace, will expel inefficient programs.
While everybody has their eyes on the hardware marketplace waiting for the shakeout to eliminate everybody but Ford, Chevy and Chrysler exactly such a shakeout is actively in progress behind their backs in the software marketplace. And it is driving the staff at (IBM) Softalk magazine nuts.
John B asserts that the office of the future is turning into silicon (true), that integrated office software will be needed (true), that such software is highly complex (true) and that, therefore, the silicon office MUST be programmed in HLL because the vast number of assembly language programmers that would otherwise be needed are not available (totally false). He even asserted that it was impractical to program such a complex program in assembly.
Sigh. First, the silicon office CAN be programmed in assembly. It HAS been. The CBM 8096 (that's the Commodore 8032 like we have but with an extra 64K of bank-select memory) was the largest-selling small business computer in England a while back because of an integrated office software package called (surprise?)
Silicon Office. That's about a 56K object code assembly language program. That's a non-trivial program, done COMPLETELY in assembly.
Secondly, we only need enough assembly language programmers to write ONE American-version "Silicon Office", NOT "thousands of programmers" because only ONE program will succeed in the evolving mass marketplace, and that is the one which works best, meaning fastest in that TIME-IS-MONEY environment.
(TWO wordprocessing programs are currently dominating the PC software marketplace because there are lots of folks familiar with Electric Pencil and its descendents (e.g. WordStar) and also lots of folks trained to use the Wang office products of which WangWriter is typical. Not surprisingly, sales of WangWriter (a dedicated word processing machine) have dropped way off lately because of competition from personal computers. Everyone at Digital Acoustics refers to the office Eagle II as "the word processor" as in, "can I use the word processor now?" One can purchase six Eagle IIs for the price of one WangWriter.)
We were not kidding earlier about you having an opportunity to become rich. 1-2-3 is not an optimal integrated spreadsheet since it does not make use of the 8087. That is going to prove Lotus' undoing one day when somebody else gets smart and yes, that WILL cause Ben Rosen some discomfiture. dBase II is a grotesque antique sitting there just waiting for somebody to knock it off (somebody may just HAVE). The two word processors are less vulnerable because they are ALREADY written in assembly, as good wordprocessors always have been. We don't know anything about the communications package.
Maybe you P-code enthusiasts can program a doughnut-formula program for your local doughnut shop?
The last outfit to try and make it big with Pascal was Apple Computer with a product called LISA. You all know how well LISA is selling.
[The following conversation with P-code Charlie is fictitious.]
PcC: Is that CBM 8096 STILL selling well in England?
FNE: Better than you might think. The British mags still carry large ads for the machine.
PcC: So what IS selling well in England?
FNE: The Victor 9000 in its Sirius guise and an obscure personal computer made by an outfit called IBM seem to lead the pack these days in the business market for small computers.
PcC: AHA! Both those machines use 8088s, and therefore are not compatible with the 6502 code that SILICON OFFICE is written in. So Bristol Software locked themselves out of the emerging 8088 marketplace by writing their integrated software package in 6502 code! What (if anything) is Bristol Software selling these days?
FNE: Actually, they're selling SILICON OFFICE for the Sirius and the IBM PC. And it's still written in assembly, so it still runs fast.
PcC: But assembly isn't transportable!
FNE: Apparently Bristol Software doesn't know that.
Tandy has a new personal computer called the Model 2000. Monroe, until recently a part of Litton Industries, has a new System 2000. The Tandy machine uses the Intel 80186 and so does the Monroe. The Tandy machine has 400 X 640 graphics and so does the Monroe. SAY! You don't suppose...
There is a lot of this going around. The new Leading Edge PC clone is the same machine as the Sperry PC clone. Neither company makes the clone; Mitsuwhatchamajigger in Japan makes it.
When two companies sell the same machine the price is the same, right? Well, no. It seems the Monroe name is worth about $700 (or 23% more) than the Tandy name. We don't know how much more the minicomputer folks at Sperry think the Sperry name is worth, and frankly we don't care.
(Actually, the Monroe machine includes a Z-80 card and the Tandy machine doesn't.)
TODAY IS DEC 26, and wow, look at the bargains being advertised in the L.A. Times. One of the bargains is a big ad offering LISA for sale for $5495. The ad is from an authorized Apple dealer, namely Computique, formerly Olympic Sales. To the several persons we know of who paid $9995, congratulations! To the rest of you: look for LISA at WAY under $5000 (discounted) before a year has passed. In fact, you may see LISA at a LIST price under $5000 before a year has passed.
It appears that those persons who suggested, upon LISA's introduction, that the computer was overpriced and could be sold for $6000 were correct.
Q: Does the Grande have the "zero page" fix like the static board has?
A: Yes.
Q: Is the Grande fully socketed?
A: Yes, but the only sockets we guarantee (warrantee) are the ones we sell with DRAMS in them. On the other hand, we don't do anything silly like drill holes in the unpopulated sockets. Commodore really did that for a while over two years back. Honest.
Q: Is the Grande set up to use 256K DRAMS?
A: No. The second-generation 256Ks are not yet available, and WON'T BE at practical prices for two years. We don't know what the timing of those parts will be or how much bypassing will be required.
Q: Can the Grande be expanded beyond one megabyte?
A: Yes and no. Only one piggyback expansion board can be installed, so the basic board is indeed limited to a megabyte. But the expansion port permits up to another 15 megabytes to be installed IF DRAM expansion boards were available - and they aren't, yet. There's nothing hard about making memory expansion boards, each with its own piggyback board so that each is good for another megabyte.
But we do not make such expansion boards now nor do we have immediate plans to do so. When it comes to memory expansion boards, we let the marketplace guide us. Remember, we did not offer 128K expansion boards for the static RAM systems until some folks waved genuine coin-of-the-realm under our nose.
We pay (no pun intended) CLOSE attention to coin-of-the-realm. We also ignore idle inquiries.
Q: Has PHASE ZERO fixed their Apple-68000 cross-assembler to work with the Grande?
A: The PHASE ZERO cross-assembler actually runs entirely on the Apple. You don't need a 68000 board at all, so which one you have is irrelevant. The Applesoft file UPLOAD probably will not work with the Grande, but we have never - not once - used UPLOAD. If you remember that the PHASE ZERO assembler tacks eight extra bytes onto the front end of the object code, you will be all right.
Suppose that you have a PHASE ZERO object file on disk 2 assembled to run at $2000 on a DTACK board. These two lines will get the code into the 68000, using either UTIL4 (static board only) or UTIL7 (both static and dynamic RAM boards):
200 PRINT CHR$(4);"BLOADCODE.OBJ,A$5FF8,D2"
210 CALLQ:REM07 002000 6000 1800
Note that we load the code 8 bytes lower in memory than we send the code. This strips off the extra 8 bytes. The person writing the lines above is supposed to know that the code was assembled to run at $2000 in the 68000 and that there are 6K bytes ($1800) to send. If you don't know where the code is assembled to run and how big the file is, just execute line 200 and drop into the monitor. 5FF8.5FFF will print the address (4 bytes) and the code size (4 bytes).
Actually, we ordinarily execute line 200 (for instance) followed by:
210 PRINT CHR$(4);"BSAVECODE.O,A$6000,L$1B00,D1"
This gets the object file on the destination disk in D1 without those extra bytes. All of the demo software we provide was prepared in this manner.
Last issue we told you about our sales policy. This month we are going to tell you about somebody else's. The product to be discussed is real, the pricing ratios are real and the product plugs into an Apple II computer. But we have slightly changed the numbers (without changing the ratios) to disguise the product.
This product is nationally advertised, is sold in (some) retail stores and has a list price of $1500. Retailers pay $1000 for this product. We will suppose that you are a retailer who has purchased several of these devices for resale. One day someone comes into your store and thumbtacks a notice on your bulletin board. It seems the company which makes this gadget is giving a talk to the local Apple computer user's club and is offering a 30% discount on their product at this meeting - and 30% off $1500 is, um, $450 for a net price of $1050.
You (the retailer, remember) suddenly find competition only $50 more than YOU paid for that gadget! And they are advertising on YOUR bulletin board! Now, we KNOW how YOU feel about this. What we don't know is how our other readers feel. So, let's ask them:
THE TRUE PRICE OF THIS PRODUCT IS:
[ ] $1500
[ ] $1050
[ ] $1000
[ ] THIS IS CRAZY!
Those who checked the latter box are wrong. The fact is, the above (completely true) scenario is how the real world works. We at Digital Acoustics, who place one price and one price only on our products, are the ones who are crazy
In the last issue we told you we had an OEM customer who had spent $300,000 with us in the preceding year. What is an OEM customer if we have one price? One who pays $50 less per system (Grande) because he doesn't need manuals and demo disks and such. Yes, we DO offer the same terms to our other customers, so we continue to have just one price. Crazy, man!
Because we try hard to bring stuff to you as quickly as possible, our little rag has about as short a lead time as ANY (roughly) monthly publication. That means we personally do all the editing and don't take an extra two weeks for somebody else to carefully proof and format this newsletter. The result is a higher number of goofs than would otherwise be the case, but the shortest lead times around. Despite this, there are times when we are running nearly two issues ahead of you - even if you are a paid subscriber in the U.S.
While the Nth newsletter is at the printers, you will have finished reading issue N-1 and we will already be writing issue N+1. Imagine the lead times at a professionally produced, slick national magazine with advertisements. The editors will COMMONLY be working at least 4 months ahead of the reader. At least.
The reason we bring this up is a misunderstanding we had recently with a member of the editing staff of UNIX REVIEW. We have written in this newsletter that UNIX REVIEW did not carry anything of interest to the person who gets dirty hands on a UNIX keyboard. Well, that happened to be true of the first couple of issues, which were the ones we read most carefully.
There are now more issues out, and the last couple DEFINITELY DID have some stuff about the user. Evidently the magazine has changed its focus. Or expanded its focus as it added more staff, maybe. And remember that the editorial staff is working about four issues ahead of the readers, including your FNE. So that editorial staff member has probably seen SIX issues in progress with user-related material and doubtless thought your FNE was a dunderhead, which is true. But what we wrote was correct at the time we originally wrote it.
Nevertheless, it continues to be true that UNIX buyers are honchos shopping for a piece of gear to chain 32 peons to, and that UNIX users are mostly involuntary types who have been chained, during working hours, to a UNIX machine whether he/she likes it or not. No person not already familiar with UNIX could possibly read the tutorial on a UNIX text editor in the most recent issue of UNIX REVIEW and conclude that UNIX was desirable. (Some folks who ARE familiar with UNIX are gonna take strong exception to that last sentence. Sigh.)
About 18 months after we told you that UNIX is unsuitable for the mass personal computer marketplace, INFOWORLD has come out with a cover story on the subject. While IW has not whole-heartedly adopted our viewpoint, they are a lot closer than the "UNIX IS COMING!" stuff that prevailed a year to a year and a half ago. IW asserts that 1984 is the year when UNIX will be placed before the mass-market public. We think it arrived in 1983 and has already been rejected.
Read the IW cover story yourself. It's the issue of a little kid framed in a huge floppy disk labeled UNIX. (Good luck running UNIX on a floppy disk, kid!) We will only mention one little item from the story, and that is the assertion that MS-DOS is migrating towards XENIX, which is UNIX less the 5 megabytes of useful utilities. The story by John Markoff asserts that IBM is moving away from MS-DOS (= PC-DOS) for that reason. You see, XENIX almost equals UNIX whose rights are owned by AT&T, and IBM and AT&T are headed for a shootout.
We mention this because others have pointed out Microsoft's public announcement that their MS-DOS (written in assembly and VERY popular) is headed towards UNIX (written in C for the chosen few), via XENIX. That public announcement was made at a time when Mini-Micro Systems magazine seriously predicted that Microsoft was going to sell THREE BILLION DOLLARS' worth of XENIX licenses in 1983 - and all the gurus (we ain't a guru) were shouting agreement.
Under such circumstances, if Bill Gates believed those predictions or even PART of them - and he evidently did - NATURALLY MS-DOS would be publicly announced to be moving towards UNIX, er, XENIX. Also checkbook balancing programs and recipe computing programs (the ones which tell you to use 2.333333333333 smidges of a seasoning for 7 people).
As soon as Bill Gates realizes that MS-DOS moving towards UNIX (er, XENIX) means bye, bye IBM, MS-DOS will execute an IMMEDIATE right turn. The trouble is, Bill doesn't catch on as quickly as he used to. Either he is getting senile or he is surrounded by too many yes-men. The last guy who said no to Bill happened to be the (then) president of Microsoft, Townes by name. Shortly after saying "no" to Bill, Townes was no longer employed by Microsoft. Bill Shirley, formerly personal computer sales manager for Radio Shack, now fills Townes' former position.
It is rumored that Shirley's mantra is "Yes, Bill. Yes, Bill. Yes, Bill..." No, the rumor does not assert that he is chanting to himself.
Another writer who has privately been highly critical of OUR opinion that UNIX is unsuited for the mass computer marketplace has finally noticed, in print yet, that those UNIX systems which are available (Fortune, Wicat, Tandy 16 etc etc) are not successful. But he thinks it's the price tag that is holding back buyers. Wrong. It is the 1200 page manual that inhibits the mass-market purchaser.
Most of the readers of this newsletter are not typical members of the mass personal-computer marketplace. You will please give us credit for knowing this? UNIX is in fact a suitable operating system for full-time computer professionals, especially full-time programmers. Since many of you readers are in that latter category, UNIX may be the perfect operating system for YOU! Too bad you can't personally afford to buy a good UNIX-based machine - yet.
But even when hardware prices drop to $1.87 for a good UNIX-based machine, that 1200 page manual is going to keep UNIX a system suited exclusively for full time computer professionals.
As of today, UNIX has the additional handicap that the purchaser and the user are not the same persons.
Having passed 12K of object code, HALGOL was becoming somewhat unwieldy to work with. Also, it was IMPOSSIBLE for TWO persons to work with the code. So, we broke the code up into four groups and arranged matters so that each of the four groups could be assembled independently of the others. And, by 'freezing' all but the last file of the disk, it is now possible for two persons to work on debugging and extensions to the code simultaneously.
Each disk contains a number of text files of source code, each of which "chains' to the next source file in the sequence. The first file on each disk, in general, contains some global "equates", a jump table to the important routines on the disk, and some other equates adapted from the jump tables on the other three disks. It is these jump tables which permit separate assembly of each of the four disks.
The first disk contains the floating point and transcendentals as printed in REDLANDS in issues #15 and #16. (They have been re-assembled and slightly modified.) Also, the first disk contains the floating-point print routine printed in issue #13, modified for use with the 62-bit FP format, and the numeric input
routine printed in issue #24. Along with a few miscellaneous tables, that comes to a little over 4K object code. The first disk contains mostly mature code which will change infrequently. As other portions of the HALGOL code achieve mature status, they will migrate to the first disk.
Incidentally, a 143K Apple II diskette can hold source code equivalent to about 7 or 8K of object code.
The second disk contains HALGOL run-time code. Pages 23 thru 28 of issue #17 contain some typical run-time code which is almost identical to the code we are still using. The second disk also includes the code used to LIST the run-time code along with some utility (or library) functions common to the LIST code.
The third disk contains the screen editor - something a lot of you Apple types have never used or seen - plus a bunch of library (or utility) routines that are used during program entry and editing.
The fourth disk contains the cold and warm start entry points plus the parsing code for the HALGOL commands and functions.
This reorganization took three weeks to accomplish, including improving the documentation (mostly the comments in the source listing but also a document listing the above information in much greater detail). It is now possible for a person with a 28K DTACK board to enter, list and run a HALGOL program. (If you have less than 28K, forget it!)
As Bruce C. wrote a few issues back, writing a real, honest programming language is not a simple task. In fact, he predicted that we would not be able to bring it off (a reasonable prediction assuming your FNE is the only person working on the language). Sorry, Bruce, we cheated. That is, we have a full-time computer science graduate whose sole duty is to implement HALGOL. AND, now that we have some hardware stuff out of the way for the time being, WE (your very own FNE) are getting OUR hands dirty on the code too. (Make that VERY dirty; we have actually skipped some NFL playoff games! That's clear proof that HALGOL has a high priority at Digital Acoustics!)
Incidentally, the combination of a relatively inexperienced programmer who is a computer science graduate (him) plus a very experienced, especially in assembly language, programmer with no knowledge of computer science seems to be working well. Both of us are happy with the way the project is going and we think YOU will be too, as soon as we can LOAD and GAVE a program and we have the LET (formula) function working. That's when we will send you your last free diskette.
HALGOL includes much more sophisticated methods of redirecting the output to various devices, methods which are nevertheless simple to use. (The PR#1 and PR#0 that the Apple uses are unbearably crude.) It's like this: HALGOL provides three kinds of output, LIST, PRINT and SYS, or console output. Upon a cold start, all three are directed to the CRT. If you want to list your program on the printer, SELECT LIST 1 will direct program listings to device 1, the printer, instead of device 0, the CRT. Printed data and system output will continue to go to the CRT. If you want to re-direct listings to the CRT, key SELECT LIST 0. Unlike the Apple, hard copy is not duplicated on the CRT.
You can also SELECT PRINT #, either as a command or as a function (within a program). The device selected for printed data has no effect on where the system output (console) or where listing will go. Similarly, the SYSOUT can be selected: SELECT SYSOUT #.
So far only devices #0 and #1 (CRT and hard copy printer, respectively) have been implemented. We suppose it should be possible to print to a serial port or to a disk as well.
If you do not understand what we mean by system output, prompts and error messages are sent to the system output.
We will later implement SELECT INPUT. At the moment the keyboard is the only INPUT device, and will continue to be the cold-start default input device in the future. Other input devices? Why, a serial port comes to mind, no? If INPUT and PRINT can be selected as serial ports, a communications package could be written in HALGOL rather than assembly. (And to think that we have been unjustly maligned as being opposed to high level languages!)
How do we direct different kinds of output to different devices? Well, we have three 32-bit registers in memory called LISTER, PRINTER and SYSOUT. Each contains the address of the device driver code for the particular kind of output. To print a character we first make sure that the address contained in the register named PRINTER has been moved to scratch address register A5. Then we place the character to be printed in D7 and JSR (A5). Nothing to it.
If you have been paying attention, you will probably have wondered whether we have three separate sets of utility routines (such as HEXPR), one for each kind of output. Nope. We have an additional 32-bit register
in memory called ACTIVE. When the LIST command is executed, the first thing that happens is that we MOVE.L LISTER,ACTIVE. The PRINT command and each PRINT function begin with MOVE.L PRINTER,ACTIVE. The system prompting and error reporting routines begin with MOVE.L SYSOUT,ACTIVE.
All of the output drivers simply move ACTIVE into scratch address register A5. Like we said, nothing to it. Right, Bruce?
Since all commands and functions ASSERT the appropriate ACTIVE device, there is never a necessity to concern oneself with RELINQUISHING ACTIVE, and we don't.
We simply LOVE the enormous quantity of factual information which can be found in Mini-Micro. In the Dec '83 issue on page 66 we discover that the number of single-user microcomputers DECLINED in 1983. The number of dedicated word-processing microcomputers (including our two Eagle IIs in our judgement) DECLINED in 1983. On the other hand, professional workstations showed modest growth in 1983 and multi-user systems showed stronger growth in 1983.
In the future, the former two categories are predicted to show continued decline, with the number of single-user systems declining almost to zero by 1988. In contrast, multi-user systems are predicted to show astonishing gains in the 1985-1988 time frame. The operating system for these multi-user systems, the ones showing astonishing gains? Why CP/M, of course. Yes, CP/M and NOT CP/86 or CP/68K or MS-DOS or even UNIX.
Let's see now: Mini-Micro is directed to an audience of folks who market multi-user systems but who HATE microcomputers like the IBM PC because they can't make any money off them. You don't suppose that this influenced those predictions a tad, do you?
(We just KNOW that about half of our readers will believe that we are making this up. Nope. Check page 66, Dec '83 Mini-Micro Systems magazine.)
Some of you may be wondering by now why Mini-Micro is so screwed up so often. Simple. Mini-Micro is a SALESMEN'S magazine (saleswomen too few in this area to be statistically significant). You strip the bullshit away from a salesman and all you have left is a tiny piece of lint. Salesmen lie as a matter of course; it's part of their job. We once spent a memorable hour at a table next to five real-estate salesmen early one Friday evening. In that time, they went through five rounds of drinks - on empty stomachs. With each round, the deals got larger and their voices grew louder. By the time we were ready to leave, the deals were up to
the $350,000 range (in 1976 dollars) and there were LOTS of those deals. When we called for our check, the waitress leaned over and whispered, "The big shots behind you are keeping separate checks!"
You will find no one at Mini-Micro magazine who is the least bit contrite over that ridiculous prediction that Microsoft was going to sell $3 BILLION in XENIX licenses in 1983 because that was salesmen's bullshit. Salesmen never worry about getting caught in last year's lie because they are busy pushing NEXT year's lie - such as sales of single-user micros dropping to near-zero by 1988.
Some of the stuff in Mini-Micro is actually correct. The trouble is, there is no way (strictly within the context of the magazine) to separate the bulishit from the stuff that is correct - and that, friends, means the salesmen are doing their job properly.
(Do you realize how many folks believe anything and everything they see in print?)
This is being written on Dec 29. By the time you are reading this, the Jan Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show will be over, and Commodore will have introduced two major new products. One will be the $695 Z8000 UNIX (well, COHERENT) machine. The other will be a machine midway between the C-64 and the new $69S UNIX machine, with lots and lots of built-in software via ROM. Don't be surprised if the $695 UNIX machine is introduced at $995. Remember, the C-65 was introduced at $595. Kindly Uncle Jack DOES like to skim a little cream before going to the REAL price.
Aside from "lots of ROM" we don't know much about the midrange machine except to agree with somebody's prediction (Uncle Jack's?) that it will outsell the C-64, which means that Commodore's sales and profits will continue (for a while) to double yearly. That means that 1994 is the year Commodore's sales surpass the Fortune 500 level. (Scuttlebutt says Apple is planning several hundred layoffs. Will Apple be the company on the Fortune 500 list that Commodore displaces whenever the Fortune editors get around to acknowledging Commodore's success?)
The cheap Z8000 UNIX machine will sell several tens of thousands of copies in the next year or so. Not the next month, the next year. By Uncle Jack's standards, that is a failure. It will attract a small band of fanatical followers, as the SuperPET has. (The SuperPET is another Commodore failure.) This small band will be the gullible chumps who think running UNIX (COHERENT) on floppy disks is a great idea, especially for less than $1000.
The nation's suicide rate will increase dramatically toward the end of 1984 as all of the micro industry pundits who have been claiming that high prices were the only reason UNIX was not becoming popular auto-defenestrate.
Several persons have asked us, including one of Digital Acoustic's employees, what is to happen with the Apple III now? We thought we explained that to you in the last issue.
The Apple III has been set up as an independent business unit so that its profitability, whether positive or negative, can be easily monitored. If the business unit continues (?) to be profitable, then the Apple III will continue to be sold. If it is unprofitable, the plug will be pulled. It is that simple.
The presence or absence of other products of the Apple Computer Co. is irrelevant. Profits are relevant. Setting up a product as an independent operating unit is a very obvious (to business persons) signal that the time has come for a product to make it on its own - or else. The person who will make the decision has absolutely no emotional attachment to the computer, having arrived at the Apple Co long after the development and introduction of the III was history.
Surely you do not think that the Apple III will last (be manufactured) forever? Surely you do not think that ANY product will be manufactured forever, especially a COMPUTER?
In reply to our request for discussions of strings, we get a 13-page hand-written tutorial on the subject. (Fortunately, the author's handwriting is legible!) The author is Faithful Freeloader Tim L of Richland, WA. There is only one problem: Tim mentions fixed length strings only to dismiss them. The remainder of his tutorial is a discussion of the many ways of fighting the garbage collection problem.
(We just went back into those 15 pages to find a quotation to back up the above point. It seems Tim did not dismiss fixed strings, he just sort of slid by them.) Well, IEEE Spectrum magazine doesn't think it is possible to have string functions without garbage collection either. If we did not have TWELVE YEARS personal hands-on experience with a BASIC with no garbage collection we might agree.
Tim is no dummy though - he DOES point out, accurately, that a BASIC program is, in part, a collection of strings. And as the program is edited, "garbage" is indeed collected. The same is true of HALGOL, and a strategy is indeed required to collect the garbage in the program itself. (Make that semi-required. The major portion of the garbage is eliminated in real time as the program is edited.)
Tim does not mention owning a specific personal computer and so he may not know that Applesoft has a fatal, as in crash your program and burn your data, bug in its garbage collection routine. He may also not know that one of the more advanced techniques he mentioned to speed the process of garbage collection is standard equipment in our CBM 8032. And he obviously either does not know or does not appreciate that the problem can be avoided altogether when running a program.
Here are the principal arguments against fixed strings:
And if those arguments do not convince you then check Wang's growth and earnings for the past 12 years and consider that they did it on fixed strings. One of the cute little things Wang did along the way was to rip the office word-processing market away from IBM. Not only did they do it but they did it PERMANENTLY, making it stick. That's why one of the two leading word-processing programs for the IBM PC is an emulation of WangWriter, NOT an emulation of an IBM system. (And to think that some folks think you can't compete with IBM!)
Jan '84 BYTE magazine has a very good survey article on 32-bit microprocessors, beginning on p. 134. Considering the author draws his paycheck from Nat Semi, we were braced for a somewhat biased report, but that proved not to be the case. On the other hand, he chose to avoid performance comparisons entirely - and that happens to be our PRIMARY interest in 32-bit microprocessors (is there any other reason to go to 32 bits?) We find ourselves in full agreement with about 98% of what the author wrote, so let's discuss that other 2% briefly.
On p. 144 the author points out that the Nat Semi 32032 is fabricated using 3.5 micron design rules and contains about 70,000 transistors. (That happens to be almost identical to the Motorola 68000, which came along nearly four years earlier. Didn't we say something in the back of issue #4 about Nat Semi being a dollar short and a day late?) He then asserts that the device runs at 10 MHz and that faster devices are planned for 1984. The 32032 is, in fact, a 6MHz device. 10MHz versions are only available at Nat Semi's Fantasy Island franchise - ask for Mr. O'Rourke. FASTER than 10MHZ in 1984? Ho ho ho!
This is related to the next item: the author's flat assertion that all of the 32-bit microprocessors will outspeed all of the 16-bit generation. As a matter of fact, both the 12.5MHz 68000 and the 10MHz 68010, both of which are in quantity production, will comfortably outrun the 6MHz 32032, a part which is not yet in production.
(The alert reader will have noticed that Nat Semi does not offer 8MHz versions of the 16032 nor discuss 8MHz versions of the 32032 - a clear signal that 6MHz is in fact the top of the speed curve at this time. Remember, Motorola has sold 4,6,8, 10 and 12.5MHz versions of the 68000. It appears that 10MHz Nat Semi devices will have to await a major shrinkage of the mask, to 2.0 - 2.5 micron design rules. That is by no means a simple change.)
Also, remember the T.I. 9900 - a 16-bit microprocessor that is a BUNCH slower than the popular 8-bit micros. General Instruments and an obscure company named National Semiconductor ALSO made 16-bit micros that were notably slower than the 6502 and Z80. We suggest that there is no historic evidence to support the author's assertion that all 32-bit micros are faster than all 16-bit micros - and point out that we have offered a specific example where this is not the case.
We'd like to know more about Inmos' Transputer. It is apparently a non-von machine dedicated to multiprocessing using data-flow concepts to utilize parallelism (where possible) in (mostly) sequential programs. The problem is, every microprocessor that
has deviated from von Neumann design principles has proven to be a flop in performance - and yet, in each case, the deviation was for the express goal of INCREASED performance! You don't suppose there really IS such a thing as a free lunch, do you?
3 Jan '83
"Attention: The Publisher
"Dear Sir,
"A copy of your Dec '83, issue #26 has been referred to my attention because of your article "The Busted Tricycle." We are very sorry that you did not promptly receive the information you requested. I am enclosing that data and, even though late, hope it will restore your faith in AMD, no matter what your position may be on the 286 vs. 68000 issue.
"My compliments on DTACK GROUNDED and best regards."
ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES
Daniel F. Barnhart
Manager, Marketing Services
Dan, did you know this year is 1984?
Courtesy of Dec '83 80 MICRO (page 262) we learn that one Steve Wozniak asserts that Mackintosh will arrive in November, cost $1200, and boggle everybody. In case you don't remember Steve, he is the failed rock concert promoter who tried to kid you that the US Festival featured a 50-50 mixture of rock and technology. In the next column we learn that IBM is prepared to upstage everyone by selling 100,000 Peanuts before XMAS. We will have to rely more heavily on 80 MICRO in the future for factual information. A $1200 Mackintosh! WOW!
The Wall Street Journal is suggesting that Mack will come in at $2,000 to $2,500 - the last figure more than double Steve's, as reported by 80 MICRO. Some folks think the WSJ is more reliable than 80 MICRO in matters which have a dollar sign in front.
Since the views to be presented here are contrary to the true facts listed above, this MUST be the falsehoods dept. First, let us define our version of a vanilla Mackintosh: 68000 CPU, 128K DRAM, two 3.5 inch Sony microfloppy disks, one parallel printer port, a
serial port and a mousehole WITH a monochrome monitor and four or five applications programs, something a mass-market personal computer needs these days.
Please take particular note that we are including TWO, not one (or zero) floppy disks and we are including the CRT in our basic configuration. One can get lower prices by leaving out the floppies and the monitor but the resulting system would not be very useful.
Before estimating Mack's price tag, is there something already on the marketplace similar to that configuration? There are some similarities to the Trash 80 Model 2000 that Tandy just introduced. Both are true 16-bit machines. Both have good graphics, although the Tandy has a larger CRT, 11 inches vs. 9 inches. The Tandy costs $2995 and did NOT require a substantial development cost for software. Apple DID have a VERY SUBSTANTIAL software development cost. The Tandy disks hold more data but are conventional 5 1/4 minifloppies, which are further down the learning curve where cost is concerned. If we were just comparing the 2000 and Mack, we would have to say that Mack would be priced higher, perhaps by $500 given management with similar pricing practices. That puts Mack at $3495.
There is a new machine from England which is an even closer match to Mack. The Apricot is a true 16-bit transportable machine with an 8086, 256K DRAM, a high resolution monochrome monitor and two Sony 3 1/2 inch microfloppies. It includes the printer port, a mousehole AND a built-in modem, not just a serial port. Again, Apricot's makers did not need a large investment in software. Price: $3190. That would put Mack at $3540 in our judgement, given management with similar pricing practices.
However, the only management with pricing practices similar to A