/xenix: The fifth annual TANGENT
conference
©1987 - Richard A. Bilancia - All Rights
Reserved
to be published first in the August 1987 issue of
UNIX®/World
The fifth annual TANGENT (formerly Tandy Computer Business Users Group (TCBUG)) conference is now history. The conference was held April 27th through the 29th at the Worthington Hotel, adjacent to the Tandy Towers, in Fort Worth, Texas.
This year’s conference was the biggest and most successful thus far. With pre-registrations exceeding 170 and total attendance in excess of 200, for the first time the conference exceeded the expectations of nearly every attendee. It seemed that a constant parade of industry leaders, including John Roach, Bill Gates, Seymour Merrin, Doug Michels and yours truly, had the opportunity to address the attendees. Opinions for the future of computing were freely expressed, and if even only a small fraction of these predictions come true, then we are in for an exciting next few years. More on these predictions later.
Additionally, for the first time the TANGENT board of directors permitted exhibitors to participate as an official part of the conference. It was a real pleasure being able to visit each and every booth (there were only about 20) rather than the experience of a typical Fall COMDEX.
The program. The conference was kicked off by the retiring past president, Fred Hill from Union Camp Corporation. With great satisfaction and pleasure he announced the organization’s new name, TANGENT, describing the word’s meaning with the dictionary definition of "...an intersection at a single point."
Aside from Fred Hill’s introductory remarks, most of the first day (as conference tradition dictates) was spent by speakers from Tandy covering product plans (both hardware and software) and technical support and service issues. Graham Beachum, Tandy Vice President, Business Products Division, led the Tandy presentations with a congratulation to the membership on the organization’s fifth anniversary. He also reminded us that August 3, 1987 will be the tenth anniversary of Tandy’s introduction of the original TRS-80 Model I. (Might we therefore expect some significant product announcement from Tandy on that anniversary?) According to Mr. Beachum, in the nearly ten years that Tandy has participated in the computer business Tandy has grown to be the number one IBM compatible manufacturer and retailer, and occupies first place (with a thirty percent market share) of the under $500 million small business market.
Next on the agenda was the computer industry observer and analyst, Seymour Merrin. Mr. Merrin’s presentation focused on the implications of IBM’s April 2, 1987 announcements, and he conservatively expects a fourteen to fifteen percent compounded annual growth rate for the small computer market. However, "...if a new product catches the fancy..." of the market then all forecasts are "...out the window." While Mr. Merrin’s presentation was clearly focused on the single user systems in the marketplace, in response to a question about multiuser systems he said, "...there will now be more and more XENIX®/UNIX® systems, but by 1991 or 1992 networks will take over."
One very interesting price performance comparison made by Mr. Merrin was that "...the cost of one MIP on a 386 based system is only 1½ to 3 percent of the cost of a MIP on an IBM mainframe."
Next, Mark Yamagata, Tandy’s Senior Director, Computer Merchandising, led a hardware panel discussion of Tandy’s Buyer’s (otherwise known in the industry as Product Managers). Most of this session was dedicated to Tandy’s new product plans that I’ll cover in detail below. However, Kent Roberts, Tandy’s Product Manager for the 3000 and 6000 product lines, did let us know that with both the 3000 and 6000 products Tandy has the largest installed base of XENIX® systems.
Over lunch, John Roach, Tandy’s Chairman, told us that with IBM’s recent product announcements (including a commitment to Microsoft’s OS/2) the "...issue of IBM PC compatibility is dead!" He stated that the 386 processors will yield a quantum step in computer capability that will factor into enormous growth for the entire computer industry and that "...Tandy will be there."
After lunch, Ladonna Wolmochel, Tandy’s Manager of Software Merchandising, led the software panel discussion. Aside from the several software announcements also listed below, it was made very clear that Tandy would henceforth advocate industry standard operating systems and industry standard application software packages.
Finally, day one of the presentations was concluded with a service and support presentation led by David Goyne, Tandy’s Vice President, Support Services, Bill Wash, Tandy’s Director, Computer Merchandising Services, and David Krebbs, Tandy’s Manager, Training and Support Operations.
On the morning of day two at the conference, after the necessities of the TANGENT annual business meeting and election of new officers, Doug Michels, Vice President from the Santa Cruz Operation and William Krause, President from 3Com, separately led us through a detailed status report on the state of the multiuser and network markets. Doug started out paying the TANGENT attendees a very nice compliment by stating that "...this group is the most sophisticated multiuser group in the world!"
Over lunch, the distinguished founder and Chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, shared his visions for the computer industry for the next decade. I, as well as many other attendees, were very pleased to hear him predict that XENIX® would be a very significant and strategically positioned product for Microsoft for the next several years.
After lunch, and for the rest of the afternoon, several concurrent problem solving and discussion sessions were held. Some of the topics included:
Intermediate and Advanced XENIX® Communications Accounting MS-DOS Scripsit (Tandy’s Word Processor) Desktop Publishing |
On the final morning of the conference, after the introduction of TANGENT’s new officers (including the new TANGENT President, Jim Foy), Paul Brainerd, the President of Aldus Corporation, shared his views on the desktop publishing industry. Thereafter, John Esak demonstrated TANGENT’s special interest group forum on CompuServe. Finally, yours truly concluded the formal presentations with my views on the current state of the XENIX® marketplace and how that is likely to affect current Tandy users, particularly those currently committed to Tandy’s 6000 product line.
The announcements. Many hardware and software announcements were made by Tandy on the first day of the conference. However, only those that would likely be of interest to Tandy XENIX® users are mentioned here. There is now available a no cost upgrade (number 700-3037) for XENIX®/286 users on the Tandy 3000HD. This upgrade will provide support and drivers for Tandy’s disk cartridge systems (Bernoulli boxes), both ten and twenty megabyte versions. Tandy will be introducing a 386 system sometime in the second half of 1987. No specifics were given. A laser printer is close to being officially announced. Most likely it will be HP LaserJet compatible. The Tandy 6000 will continue to be offered in the 1988 computer catalog. Unify software support for Tandy 6000 owners will likely be transferred to Unify Corporation. The Ryan McFarland COBOL compiler, version 2.1, is now available as an upgrade (number 700-3350) for Tandy 6000 owners for $99.95. RealWorld accounting software (version 4.0) is now available for Tandy 3000 owners via Tandy’s Express Order program. Open Systems/Harmony accounting software will soon be available for Tandy 3000 XENIX® owners. In the near future all software will be distributed in dual formats: both 5¼ inch and 3½ inch format diskettes.
But probably most importantly for Tandy 6000 owners was the announcement of a new low cost upgrade of XENIX®. Version 03.02.00 of XENIX®-68000 for the Tandy 6000 is scheduled to be available in the third quarter of 1987. Tandy’s third major release of the operating system will include many added features such as: disk cartridge (Bernoulli box) support in both the ten and twenty megabyte formats; support for high resolution graphics; the ability to format media while in multiuser mode; support for more than one megabyte of RAM (up to six megabytes); auto reboot capability after a hardware reset or power failure; auto screen dim on the console after twenty minutes; correct handling of the new Daylight Savings Time; a more friendly version of ’mail’; and a new version of the C shell.
The exhibits. As I mentioned above, this was the first year that there were formal vendor exhibits as part of TANGENT. While twenty exhibitors displayed their wares at the conference, not all of them are yet involved in the Tandy based XENIX® arena. The exhibitors that offer an array of hardware and software products for the XENIX® operating system on Tandy equipment included:
DLP Company (Cincinnati, Ohio) Microlite Corporation (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) The Santa Cruz Operation (Santa Cruz, California) The Small Computer Company (Washington, DC) Snapp Ware (Cincinnati, Ohio) Softa Corporation (Seattle, Washington) Telexpress, Inc. (Willingboro, New Jersey) Trac Line Software, Inc. (Hicksville, New York) Two-Way Data Transfer (Venice, California) |
Several of the strongest supporters of Tandy hardware and the TANGENT organization are individuals that earn their livings from supporting Tandy products. This particularly applies to the Tandy XENIX® arena. Many of these companies are one or two person operations that don’t have large advertising budgets, so I’d like to highlight the products from four such companies. It so happens that each of these companies is owned and operated by an individual currently on the TANGENT Board of Directors.
DLP Company is owned and operated by Lee Penn. Lee’s company offers a wide variety of products to support XENIX® users, such as: computers, cables, print buffers, terminals, modems, switches, hard disks, printers, networking hardware and software, SCO XENIX® products, and Tandy computer systems and software. Lee publishes a catalog of his products, so if you’re interested you can write him at 6798 Wetheridge Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45230 or call him at (513) 232-7791.
Tom Podnar of Microlite Corporation, 1021 Sutherland Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15204, (412) 771-4901, also offers a wide variety of Tandy XENIX® based hardware and software. While Tom’s offerings center around desktop publishing and presentation graphics hardware and software (Tom was very kind several months ago to send me a copy of his "xroff" implementation of "troff" for the Tandy 6000 and the HP LaserJet+ which I have fallen in love with), he offers other unique products. These include: the Radio Ranch, Inc. (Polo, Illinois) X-Drive streaming tape backup unit for the Tandy 6000; several hard disk upgrade kits for the Tandy 6000; and a unique two megabyte memory card for the Tandy 6000.
Why would you want a two megabyte memory card for the 6000 when the maximum usable memory is only one megabyte? First of all, Tandy has entered into a distribution agreement with Microlite and when version 03.02.00 of XENIX®-68000 for the 6000 is available you will be able to install this board to gain the benefits of additional memory. In the meantime, this additional memory can be used in place of disk based swap space (like Bob Snapp’s original product described below) or in place of disk space as a temporary mounted file system just like the RAMDISK products available in the MS-DOS world.
Bob Snapp of Snapp Ware is probably the most talented and knowledgeable XENIX®-68000 person around. He has built a successful business by providing real solutions for Tandy users since the early TRS-80 Model I days when he started out with a series of BASIC interpreter enhancements. Since that time he has provide similar enhancements to BASIC on the Model II/12 running TRSDOS® and for "mbasic" on XENIX®-68000, as well as the first expanded memory boards for the Tandy Model 16 and 6000 (which I’ve owned for a couple of years) with the first software to allow swap space to be implemented in memory rather than on a hard disk.
More recently, Bob Snapp has announced more products to expand the capabilities of the Tandy 6000. One of these is the Model 12000. Through extensive custom hardware modifications a Tandy XENIX®-68000 system can be modified to become a fifteen user system with up to seven megabytes of addressable memory (most used as swap space in memory). The other recently announced product is SCSI hard disk support for XENIX®-68000 utilizing Tandy’s disk cartridge (Bernoulli box) interface card allowing for up to 1.2 gigabytes of on line hard disk storage! Bob Snapp can be reached at 3719 Mantell Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236, or (513) 891-4496.
If you need to optimize performance of your Tandy 6000, take a look at the memory and disk expansion products available from Microlite and Snapp Ware--they are both excellent products from committed vendors.
As you might suspect with a name like Telexpress, Inc., Jesse Bornfreund offers a series of communications products for XENIX® based systems. Additionally, however, at TANGENT Jesse showed me a sophisticated XENIX® spooling utility called "XPD" and fast, easy to use, menu-driven user interface for system administrators and end users that for beginning users takes the difficulty out using XENIX®. Telexpress, Inc. can be reached at P. O. Box 217, Willingboro, New Jersey 08046, or (609) 877-4900.
Conclusion. Once again, I had a great time at the 1987 TANGENT Conference. I’ve been attending since the second one in 1984. However, I was quite surprised to find that many long term Tandy computer users that came to the conference for the first time this year had previously not heard about the organization.
Accordingly, if you are a Tandy computer user TANGENT welcomes your membership and I strongly recommend it. While the annual conference is the annual highlight of the organization, there is a great deal to otherwise gain by becoming a member; including, most importantly, a network of users with common interests, concerns and objectives.
For more information about TANGENT membership contact:
Kate Titsworth
% TANGENT
P. O. Box 17580
Ft. Worth, Texas 76102
You’ll be glad you did! (P.S. Tell her you read about TANGENT here.)