Aucbvax.1790 fa.info-micro utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!CSTACY@MIT-AI Wed Jun 17 01:12:20 1981 INFO-MICRO Digest V3 #49 INFO-MICRO AM Digest Wednsday, 17 June 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 49 Todays's Topics: Xerox Star, Smalltalk, Professional Software - LOCKSMITH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 May 1981 1311-EDT (Wednesday) From: Gregg.Glass at CMU-10D (N680GG60) Re: xerox star Does anyone know anything about the xerox star other then what was in the times and fortune mag. i.e. what kind of processer, memory size etc. Greg ------------------------------ Date: 8 May 1981 2121-EDT From: LLOYD (Brian P. Lloyd) Re: NCC '81 I have just returned from NCC '81 and thought that I would describe what I saw and heard. Surprisingly there were few new and/or interesting items. The item of greatest interest was 'Star', the new "office product" from Xerox. Star is wonderous to behold with its bitmap display, mouse, keyboard, and 8Mb of winchester. With a pricetag of $16,000 it had EVERYONE's attention. I felt that price was a bit too awesome and investigated. Indeed, the price for a Star was $16K, **BUT** in order to make it work you had to buy an Ethernet file server (approx. $20K). If you wish hardcopy as well, you have to buy a printer server (approx. $25K). Oh well... In spite of the price, Star is an interesting product. It is not intended as a general purpose computer system: in fact it is not even user programmable. It IS one of the first non-DP-person oriented "office of the future" products that I feel has a chance to succeed. Am I right? Time will tell. Xerox has certainly expended significant resources to develop Star (to the point that they make no profit on the sale of a Star). In any case it bears attention. I also got a chance to see Three Rivers' PERQ. This is a user programmable device with a bitmapped display, 12 or 24Mb winchester, a fast processor that executes P-code directly, and Ethernet support for local networks. I was very impressed with the quality of the display, but couldn't tell too much about it otherwise. Three Rivers' documentation and literature was nonexistant. Convergent Technologies displayed their new Word Processing software at the Alanthus booth. Convergent has also just become licensed to use Ethernet so I think that we will see them on the Ethernet bandwagon soon. Since I work for Alanthus, I will not comment further (I'm prejudiced--I think we had one of the best booths there). Perhaps some of the people from this list who visited me there will comment on how Alanthus and Convergent looked. 5 1/4" winchesters abounded with Corvus displaying a nice range of disks for most of the popular home computers and operating systems. There was one mini-winchester that was conspicuous by its absence; Irwin Industries. Irwin was supposed to display their 10Mb 5 1/4" winchester drive with integral cartridge tape backup but didn't get the drive working in time (hearsay). United States Design Corp, the company designing the controller for the Irwin, claimed that they had their electronics done in time for the show but Irwin didn't come through with the drive. All in all I was somewhat dissapointed. There really didn't appear to be anything new. I am reminded of the audio industry where you get the same old product with a new faceplate and more chrome each year. Perhaps next year will be better. Brian Lloyd ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 1913-EDT From: Sarah Rolph Re: smalltalk at NCC Did anyone go to the session The Public Release of Smalltalk 80 at NCC in Chicago? ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 1981 03:45-EDT From: William E. Blue I believe there was a comment in this mailing list about the LOCKSMITH people declaring bankruptcy due to the lawsuits from various software manufacturers/distributors. Since Dave Alpert (President of Omega, the people who distribute LOCKSMITH) is a friend of mine, and also sysop of the NIAUG PMS in Lake Forest Illinois, I checked with him about the possible validity of this story. His response: Msg# 7536 on 05/25/81 at 13:35 (17) Subj: Alive and WELL!!, To: !Sysop and all From: Dave Alpert, Chicago IL Omega Software and Locksmith are alive and well and NOT in litagation with anyone. The rumors are great publicity but none are true. In fact, we are marketing a new product (much less controversial than LS). Ads have been placed and accepted in various magazines. The ball is now in the hands of thoses who can solve the back-up controversy. I hope they attack the problem by employing one of the many ways available to both allow the user multiple copies and prevent their distribution by the pirates. Locksmith is only intended to allow the legitimate user to make back-up. It, by itself, is not in violation of any law. Those who use it are if they use it to distribute illicitly any copyrighted software. This is not different than using the COPY program on the APPLE DOS master to copy PIE 2.0 from Programma and giving it away or selling it. You don't sue APPLE for that, you go after the pirate. Anyway, let the rumors fly. People who want to find us can by calling 312-648-1944. End msg #7536 ------------------------------ End of INFO-MICRO Digest ************************ ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.