Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!bloom-beacon!spdcc!dyer
From: dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: the real 801 machine!  finally.
Message-ID: <4172@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>
Date: 11 Aug 89 04:08:43 GMT
References: <1668@ibmpa.UUCP> <4171@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>
Reply-To: dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 49

In article <4171@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> eli@ursa-major.spdcc.COM (Steve Elias) writes:
>can anyone hazard a guess as to the price of the forthcoming
>801 supermips risc machine from Blue?  

What machine is that?  :-)  The trade papers this week are alluding to
an entry price of about $10K for whatever machine they think they're
talking about.  I have no idea how realistic that is, since I know
nothing whatsoever about the machine other than the rumors I read about.
Of course, I'd say that regardless. :-)

>what is the price of a monochrome 70 with AIX?

You might as well get a color VGA display, although I highly recommend
the 8514 monitor+adapter.  256 color X11 is great stuff.  I think a VGA
display is just too small to run X, although I've seen it done (on the
6152 RT/Model 60).

Model 70's come in 16mhz, 20mhz and 25mhz versions.  I've had a lot of
experience with the 20mhz machine.  It's not bad, though 120mb of
disk gets small pretty fast if you're doing anything serious.  I don't
know what the current list price is, but I think you can find discounting
retailers, much to IBM's dismay.

AIX for the PS/2 is pretty good stuff.  If BSD is "Catholicism" and
System V is "Protestantism", then going to AIX PS/2 from BSD is like
a Catholic attending a high church Episcopal Mass... :-)

>what is the current IBM employee discount?  is it machine-dependent?

I have never known any IBM employees who could get discounts for
anything but the PC or PS/2 lines.  The RT family was never on the
schedule (so they claimed--this is all 2nd hand.)

>how much do used old style superslow RTs go for?
>i'd prefer to buy IBM instead of a clone 386 machine...  
>but i don't want to pay $10k for an old model slug RompT/PC.  

I answered an ad placed here advertising an old RT model 20 for $2500.
This is far, far below typical market value.  I don't know where you
could look for used RT's.  Anyone have any ideas?

You know, the "superslow" ROMP was still about twice as fast as the
Vaxstation 2000, which is molasses by today's standards, but was pretty
impressive just a few years ago.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu