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Aucbvax.6323 fa.works utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Sat Feb 27 11:05:51 1982 victor 9000 >From David.Anderson@CMU-10A Sat Feb 27 11:03:30 1982 I have some information on the Victor 9000, mentioned recently by Tom Wadlow. This comparison of the IBM PC and the Victor 9000 comes from the Silcon Gulch Gazette. The IBM info comes from IBM's Billion Dollar Baby, by Isaacson and Juliussen, available for $450 from Future Computing in Richardson, Texas. The Sirius/Victor data came from Victor, available in Chicago at (312) 539-8200.

THE VICTOR 9000 The Sirius Machine is well worth looking at. One of the sages of the computer industry said to us, "Chuck [Chuck Peddle, creator of the 6502 and the Pet] has done all the things IBM should have done." We think IBM did lots of things right, but let's compare: Like the IBM machine, it uses a 16-bit, 8088 as its CPU. Like IBM, Sirius has a detachable keyboard. In fact, it has five keyboard options (typewriter, word processor, programmer, etc.) IBM offers a video monitor as an option (a necessity for most useful information processing). The 9000 comes with a green phospher screen that is tiltable and turnable - not just a monitor with a handle on the top. The 9000 has a graphics mode with an 800 x 400 resolution! IBM offers, at best, 640 x 200.

132-CHARS x 50-LINES OF TEXT! If you get tired of skinny paragraphs and lines running off the tradi- tional 80-character x 25-line display, you can switch to the Victor's 132-character x 50-line display, complete with fully legible upper and lower case characters, with descenders. (That, alone, is enough to sell it to us word-junkies.) IBM's character display matrix is 9x14. Sirius' is 10x16 or 16x16. The character set is loaded into user-accessible RAM, so, if ya don't like what you see, ya can change it to suit your palate. Unlike IBM, the Sirius unit does not currently support color (a decision that was debated long and hard), but the system has all the hooks to add color later. Our impression is that they felt that (a) their marketplace is the business market, to which color is less useful than for home and educational computing, (b) it's very difficult to do really useful things, in an information sense, with color, and (c) hi-res color monitors capable of supporting those great graphics and 132x50 text displays cost lots!

1.2 MEGABYTE FLOPPY DISK DUET The 9000 comes with dual 5 1/4 " single-sided floppies, like the IBM. Unlike the IBM, which can store 163K [per drive], the Victor system packs 1.2 megabytes into those two on-line minifloppies.

CP/M-86 & MSDOS Like the IBM pc, the Victor system offers both CP/M-86 (available right now - IBM's is expected soon), and Microsoft's also-IBM DOS. Unlike IBM, both MSODS and CP/M-86 come with the system - CP/M is an option with IBM. And there is the usual package of support software, e.g. a VisiCalc clone (VisiClone?) called VictorCalc from Image Systems, a Select editor, etc.

THE FUTURE IS VERY SOON Oh, yes, Victor will almost certainly be offering a Winchester and an SMD interface before the end of '82, and very probably a medium-speed networking facility (say, 1 to 2 megabit bandwidth). We suggest that Vic- torites also watch for a C compiler and a UNIX operating system licensed from Bell Labs as yet another 1982 option (installed and supported by one of the best unixizers in the business).

ORANGES AND APPLES - HOW MUCH? The Victor/Sirius system with dual floppies (1.2M), screen (80x25, 132x50 and 800x400), 128K of memory (that's minimum), MSDOS and CP/M-86 lists for $4995, a price that might be haggled once the supply pipe begins to fill. In this apples-with-oranges comparison, an IBM system with dual floppies (326K), screen (80x25 and 640x200), 48K of memory and MSDOS is $3525, available from list-price-only dealers.

from: Silcon Gulch Gazette, January 1982, page 2, by Jim C. Warren, Jr.

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