Aucbvax.1647 fa.apollo utzoo!duke!mhtsa!eagle!ucbvax!LYNCH@USC-ISIB Fri Jun 12 09:12:58 1981 Star/Mesa The Star is almost useless to any of us who are doing computer science R&D unless we can program it as we see fit. The applications that Xerox has seen fit to release at this time are indeed quite nice but do not justify the cost ($20K with software if you buy 50 or more of them in a year's time -- they give a nice discount for volume buys (about 25% off)). We asked Xerox to include Mesa. They said OK. They have not yet quoted a price to us however. We also asked for the microcode. Thye said Not at this time. The Mesa release was contigent upon us buying a lot of them (like 50-100). They are still confused about where their marketplace is. If commerical orders do not flow in rapidly in the next few months then they might be much more interested in turning it into a "programmer's workstation" that would suit us. WEe have also asked them to include much more memory on the Star. They admit it can be done but that they are trying to build even smaller confiturations of it (it currently comes with 384 MB). Dan ------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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.