Product
Review
More than aToy but No Bargain ByMike Burgard
Amiga 3000UX offersSVR4on an outdated chip without theAmiga PC's capabilities
ommodore is hardly a name you expect to hear bandied about in the UNX workstation market. Yet. Commodore is positioningits Amiga 30001X-stocked with UND( System V Release 4 from AT&T,Open Look, and Ethernet suP port-as a niche workstation alternative. Despitethe good intentions,Commodore missesthe markwith the Amiga 3000UX of its small,14inch colormonitot because limited software supply, poor price/performance,and no UNX-toDOS utilities. Commodoremakes it clear that the Amigais not going head to head with IBM, Hewlett-Packard,or high-end Sun Microsystemsengineering workstations.Instead,Amiga is targeting individualusers, the university market, and "large becauseof its port of SVR4,the quantitydevelopment market." Paul Caulkin,UND( programs manager for 'TV'eare positionCommodoreexplains: ingttre Amiga 3000tX for the large inhousedeveloperthatwould rather have standalonemachines than terminals on eachdeveloper'sdesk." As a billion-dollar company, Commodorehas a large network of users and dealers.But to competein the lower end of the UND( workstation market, Commodorehas to offer a sizableprice break or solidvalueadded features:the Amiga offers neither.The availablesys3000UX temconfigurationsare too expensiveand thestandoutthird-party products normallyassociatedwith the Amiga PCnarnelyjazzy graphics and strong video support-arenot available for the UNX Amiga.Commodorepromisesthat multimediaproductswill be availablen 1992. The base system comes with a 100-
megabytehard drive and Ethernet card, but no monitor, and costs $4,998.Although this price seems reasonable, UNXusers needmore than the basesys tem to satisf routine disk andmonitor re quirements. They need the 3000IXG, the reviewed plafform, which had a 20G megabytehard dish EthernetCard,TIGA graphics adaptor,multiscanningmonitor, and a price tag of.$7,773.Comparethis against Sun's $6,995SPARCstationIPC with its lGinch color monitor, 207 megt bytes of disb eight megabytesof memo ry, and 3 1/2-inchfloppy drive. Compact and Quiet The Amiga 3000UXis an attractive machine.The systembox is compact,cleanb
designed,and resemblesa small-foo@rint PCjammedto tlregills.Insidethe 2Gpound system box are four proprietary expansion slots, two floppy drive bays,up to 18 megabytesof RAM, a power suPPlY,and a 68030processor.The Amiga also sup ports 100to 400megabytesofhard disk. The location of the floppy bays repre sents efficient use of space,but makes the Amiga 30001X a difficult machine to work with at the board level. When our test unit died, the technician had quite a chore getting at the system memory. The fan and hard disk maintain an extremely low ambient noise level in comparison to any machine-UNX or DOS. Inside the Amiga is a Motorola MC6803032-bitprocessorrunning at 25
Commodore's entry into the UNIXworkstaiion market,the Amiga 3000UX,comes with AT&TUNIX SVR4,OpenLook, and Ethernet support-but it doesn't havethe speed,software, or UNIX-Io-DOS utilitiesthat most usersdemand.
1991 75 UNIXWORLD DECEMBER