From: utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!pdh@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: Re: Radio Shack 8080's escaping in Soviet diplomatic pouches... Article-I.D.: hplabs.487 Posted: Fri Jun 25 12:00:15 1982 Received: Mon Jun 28 06:26:53 1982 Think not just of Radio Shack when you talk about what technology the Soviets can make or obtain. Right now, today, ANYONE can go out and buy, say, a SUN Workstation and a disk, which would give the user lots of power (68000 10MHz), very high level graphics (1K x 1K, and FAST), network capability (3Mbit ether), and all of this in a very portable box! I'll wager that about 10 or 15 of these toy, all linking and talking on their network, could do justice to 95% of the applications on a shuttle. All it would take is a little beefing up of the durability of the system and (her's the catch) the right software, and poof... all the power you could ask for for about $300K.... Granted, it's probably more than a notion to get 15 SUN stations out of the country, but you can bet that it's possible, if difficult. Again, as I said in an earlier message, though, it's the software in this case that counts... Peter