Risc System/6000

[Adam W. Feigin]

In article <10307 at hoptoad.uucp> gnu at hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>>    . . . POWERstations and POWERservers . . .
>
>I like the way they adopted the Sun Marketing naming convention
>(SPARCstations and SPARCservers).

Well, since they licensed the graphics technology from SGI, and they
call their machines the "POWER Series" and IBM is going after Sun and
their SPARCstations/servers, its natural that IBM should call their
machines in this manner.

>
>>                          . . . a complete system starting at $12,995.
>
>Including OS and window system?  Manuals?  Ethernet?  Compilers?  In
>the original RT/PC announcement a few years ago, the lowball price
>didn't even include a keyboard or monitor, which cost $thousands!  One
>analysis showed that if Sun had charged as much for Unix as IBM, they
>could've thrown in the workstation for free!

Correct. The base price does NOT include OS & Window system or
ethernet (I assume that you get manuals & compilers with the OS, but I
could be wrong, and I certainly wouldn't put it past IBM NOT to
include them, and charge extra for them, as they have a nasty habit of
doing). I did notice that in the glossy that the 3-button mouse and
keyboard are marked as "optional products".. Nice, very nice, looks
like IBM is up to their old tricks again. They never learn, do they ??

(BTW the price sheet I have show the OS + X-Window System at $2000)

>Also, one breakdown I saw was that this system only has four slots --
>and all of them are in use.  No expandability.

I'm not sure about this, but the base system comes with a 120MB
DBA ("Direct Bus Attached" -- whatever that means) disk; I dont know
if you need a slot for a controller, but if you want to add more disk,
you gotta buy a controller. Lets not forget a slot for ethernet
(optional), a slot for graphics (you really dont want to see anything,
do you ??, you can just watch the blinkin' lights...)

>>               Documentation is available on a 5.25-inch compact disc
>> (CD-ROM) that may be accessed from the user's POWERstation or from a
>> network POWERserver.
>
>At extra cost

Of course !!

It will be a cold day in hell when the temperature is below freezing
when IBM gets serious about the Unix/Workstation market.

-- 
Internet: adam at ncifcrf.gov			Adam W. Feigin
UUCP: {backbonz}!ncifcrf!adam		    Senior Systems Manager
Mail: P.O. Box B, Bldg 430	National Cancer Institute-Supercomputer Center
      Frederick, MD 21701		Frederick Cancer Research Facility