Acorn has for a long time been trying to penetrate the business sector. However, the company's success has not been notable until now (remember the Acorn Business Machine and the Cambridge Workstation?). This time Acorn is attacking the growing market of super-micros and small mini-computers. The machine with which they are doing this is the R140 UNIX Workstation.
Before describing the R140 I will give a brief history of UNIX. It all started many years ago when people first realised that computers were to play a major part in the everyday life of the future. A pioneering multi-user operating system called MULTICS was developed for the new breed of practical computers. Unfortunately, it was too advanced for the hardware of the time and was not widely used. Several years later a team working for the Bell Corporation (now AT&T) converted MULTICS to a single-user system which they called UNIX (UNI for one as opposed to MULTI for many). Unlike earlier operating systems which were hand coded in machine code, UNIX was (and still is) written in a new high-level language developed specially for the job. This language is none other than C. The use of a high level language means that UNIX can easily be ported to any computer, regardless of the processor it uses. Contrast this with something like RISC OS which is only for Archimedes type computers, or even MS-DOS which while included on many different computers will only run with an 8086 processor, or similar.
The major drawback of UNIX is the size of system needed to run it. A typical UNIX-based computer will need several megabytes of RAM and tens of megabytes of disc storage. This has tended to restrict UNIX to mini and mainframe systems in the past. Now though, the increase in power of micros has made UNIX a viable proposition for small systems.
At first sight you might think that the R140 is an ordinary Archimedes 440, the only visible difference being the stickers on the front panel and the keyboard. Indeed, the similarity continues inside. The most obvious change is the inclusion of a larger hard disc drive (about 56Mb). This extra storage is mostly used by the UNIX system software. The R140 also uses a faster version of the MEMC chip (the device that controls memory access) which will allow for future speed improvements, although it offers no advantage at the present time. The only other change is a slightly redesigned podule backplane which avoids possible problems that were discovered while developing the Ethernet podule described later.
Seeing the similarity between the 440 and the R140 you might expect Acorn to offer an upgrade path. However this will not be the case, more I suspect for marketing strategy than technical reasons.
When you first turn on the R140 you are presented with the standard RISC OS Desktop, the only difference being a UNIX icon that appears on the iconbar along with the resident applications. At this point the computer can be used as a normal RISC OS-based Archimedes. A partition is set up on the hard disc making 3Mb available to this mode of operation.
Clicking on the UNIX icon brings up a warning that RISC OS is about to be shut-down and UNIX started. At this stage you can use the mouse to perform a number of diagnostic functions, or you can acknowledge the message which will cause UNIX to start up.
The first thing to strike you when UNIX is started is the total loss of colour. The friendly RISC OS Desktop display gives way to a few lines of black and white text asking you to log on. UNIX insists that you log on as a known user before giving access to any part of the system. It is actually possible to log on more than once, and it is even possible to have two users logged on simultaneously, one using the R140, and the other using another computer as a terminal, this being connected to the R140 via the serial port or the network.
As UNIX has its basis in early mainframe operating systems, many of the commands offered are quite obscure. For example, the command to list the files in a directory (equivalent to *CAT) is 'ls'. The operation of most commands can be modified by a number of single letter qualifiers placed after the command name.
To make the use of UNIX commands easier, the system features an entire on-line user guide. This is invoked by typing 'man Supplied with the R140 is a window system and desktop developed by IXI Limited. This is similar to the RISC OS window system, and allows the same tasks to be performed. One interesting feature is that the layout of the control areas of a window can be changed. For example, you can move the scroll-bars to the opposite sides.
The IXI Desktop manager is again much like that of RISC OS. However, instead of having an iconbar, icons can be placed anywhere on the screen. Furthermore, at any point, a chosen window can be reduced to an icon, and then reopened when needed.
The floppy disc drive of the R140 can read several different formats, including those used by the majority of other UNIX systems. However, most UNIX systems will use a network, and an Ethernet interface is available for this, either with the R140, or as a later upgrade. Ethernet is a system providing similar features to Acorn's Econet, but much faster. It is a standard system used by most UNIX installations. From a user's point of view, the R140 supports Sun's NFS system which extends the hierarchical directory structure so that each computer's entire disc contents is contained as a sub-directory in a 'Super-directory'. This means that any computer on the network can read a file from any other just by specifying the computer to use in the pathname of the file.
In terms of sheer volume, the documentation supplied with the R140 is impressive. There is a total of six manuals, a lengthy release note and a licensing agreement, all supplied in a box separate from the main hardware. The first three manuals are the standard RISC OS Welcome and User Guides as supplied with RISC OS, and the new BBC Basic Guide to be supplied with 400 series machines.
The other three manuals are dedicated to the UNIX system. The first of these is a Welcome Guide which explains about the machine and UNIX, and how to get it all set up and started. The UNIX User guide is much bigger and more comprehensive than the introductory work. This manual covers the main features that an average UNIX user will need while using the R140. The final manual explains the IXI Window and XDesktop system, and includes the actual IXI software which must be installed from floppy initially. What none of the manuals cover at all are the vast number of commands offered by UNIX, or the use of the supplied C compiler. This may sound like a major omission, but remember that UNIX is totally standard, and therefore any UNIX manual or text book will do. As most users will not need this information Acorn decided to recommend a suitable manual rather than supplying one.
With UNIX being a fairly stringent standard, the one thing that does set machines apart is their performance. Table 1 gives the average result of a number of standard UNIX benchmark timings for several UNIX systems. (The lower the value, the faster the speed). The approximate price is also given for reference.
Only the 80386-based top of the range Sun is faster than the R140. Indeed, the R140 is twice as fast as the £30000 VAX mainframe.
I have deliberately not mentioned application software for the R140. This is because no software is supplied. However, the UNIX standard ensures that, in theory, all UNIX software can be ported to the R140. Needless to say, things are not quite so easy in practice, although the current R140 software catalogue does include packages to perform most common tasks, such as word processing and database management.
The standard R140 costs £3500 (ex. VAT), or £3949 with the Ethernet podule. These prices do not include a moni-tor. The Ethernet podule is also available separately for £449 (ex. VAT), and a hardware floating point co-processor and SCSI interfaces are promised in the future. The latter will allow additional hard disc drives to be connected, along with tape streamers etc. Acorn has decided to market the R140 through UNIX dealers, rather than the company's existing dealer network. They say that this is so that the machine can be given the support it needs, and so that customers can see it in comparison to other systems.
WINDOWS AND THE DESKTOP
FILING SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS
DOCUMENTATION
HOW DOES IT COMPARE?
Table 1
Computer: R140 VAX 11/780 SUN 3/50 SUN 386/250 APPLE MAC II Benchmark: 1.6 3.3 2.2 0.9 1.7 Price: £4500 £30000 £5850 £12105 £7500 APPLICATIONS
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY