Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU!dbfunk
From: dbfunk@ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU (David B Funk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Apollo DN2500 shown at Seybold Conference
Message-ID: <8909240058.AA00678@icaen.uiowa.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 89 00:19:50 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Iowa Computer Aided Engineering Network, University of Iowa
Lines: 48

WRT posting: <622509938.750000.ALBRECHT@CALIPH>

> Last night, Apollo unveiled their new low-end UNIX workstation to
> the public.  The DN2500 workstation will be available in Q4/89 with
> a base price of $3900 for the following configuration:

Actually the first public showing of the DN2500 was at the ADUS conference
in New Orleans on Tuesday night (9/12).

> o  1 serial port
> o  1 parallel printer port (some doubt whether there is even one!)

The DN2500 has no parallel printer port but 3 serial ports ala the DN3500.
IE there is one DB25 socket on the machine but you can add the optional
expander "pig-tail" to use all 3 ports.

> Limitations of the DN2500:
> 
> o  No color, ever!
> o  No ESDI disks (ever?)
> o  no apparent way to add additional serial or parallel ports
> o  no internal cartridge tape possible
> o  little or no internal bus slots (unsure, but box is very small)

True, no color, no ESDI disks, no internal add in capability beyond the
memory "sim" sockets and the SCSI disks. There is one AT-bus slot but that's
where the network controller goes, and it's not optional. However, you can
connect up external SCSI devices, Apollo currently provides support for disk,
C-tape, M-tape (?), and V-tape. In the sr10.2 GPIO package there is support
for user written device drivers to talk to external devices on the SCSI bus.
Thus you could add any SCSI device that doesn't conflict with an Apollo device.
The bottom line is that this was designed for the lowest cost for a general
usage machine.

We are a "seed" site for the DN2500 and have had one for about a month.
So far, it has worked with everything that we've hit it with (except for bugs
in the beta-1 sr10.2). It feels like 80% to 85% of a DN3500. IE based upon various
benchmarks, the CPU speed, disk speed, display update speed all seem within
80% to 85% of comparable things on a DN3500 with the same amount of RAM (8mb)
and a 348 FA disk. For the price, this is good performance.
You may wonder how a 20MHZ 68030 cpu (DN2500), which is exactly 80% of a 
25MHZ 68030 cpu (DN3500), can have a thru-put of better than 80% for
some operations. The answer is that they were able to design out some hardware
delays when they left behind all the baggage needed to support the AT-bus I/O
for general devices. Thus connections between CPU, memory, display hardware,
and the SCSI controller are tighter and for some kinds of operations are faster.

Dave Funk