The SparcBook 3XP is a powerful workstation in a small package
Doug Tamasanis
If you're looking for a lot of computer in a small box, look no further than
Tadpole's SparcBook 3XP
. This full-featured mobile workstation boasts an 85-MHz microSPARC II processor, dazzling graphics, built-in stereo sound, a generous
array of I/O ports
, a removable hard drive, and the popular Solaris operating system.
Cramming all these features into a portable computer doesn't come without a price, however. There's no internal floppy drive, the screen is too small for a multitasking system, battery life is short, and it costs more than most mid-size sport sedans. Despite these drawbacks, the 3XP is a powerful workstation squeezed into a very small package.
Under the Hood
The 7-pound 3XP includes a 340 MB, 520 MB, or 810 MB removable hard drive; up to 128 MB RAM; an internal 14.4-Kbps fax modem; slots for two type I or II or one type III PCMCIA cards; and a three-button pointing stick--all in a magnesium alloy case.
Thanks to a Weitek Power 9100 graphics accelerator and 2 MB of video memory, the 3XP can display 256 colors in two different modes. In native mode, the 3XP supports accelerated graphics at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. In virtual mode, graphics are not accelerated, but the resolution is 1280 by 1024 pixels.
The quality of the Sharp active-matrix TFT (thin-film transistor) display is excellent, but a 9.4-inch screen simply isn't large enough for a Unix multitasking environment.
The Test Drive
Installing Solaris and starting up the system for the first time is easy, all you have to do is enter your IP address, time zone, root password and user account information. The entire process takes about half an
hour, which is a notable feat by Unix standards. We were disappointed to find that the 3XP doesn't come with any man pages or a C compiler.
The keyboard is well laid out and is adequate for short-term use. The right and left Meta keys are not mapped by default, so you must assign them manually with the
xmodmap
command. We found the pointing stick well designed, with the buttons located near the thumb's natural resting position. Pressing the right button is awkward, however.
An LED display just below the screen indicates the battery's charging status, as well as the activity of network connections and the presence of PCMCIA cards. Under normal use, we averaged only 88 minutes of operating time with the internal battery.
In terms of performance, there is no noticeable difference between the 3XP and a comparable desktop workstation. With its 8-KB data cache and 16-KB instruction cache, the 85-MHz microSPARC II processor achieves a SPECint92 rating of 64 and a SPECfp92 rating of 54.6
. In spite of this, the 3XP runs surprisingly cool, never feeling more than warm to the touch even after 10 hours of continuous operation. The battery charger, however, grew quite hot after a 90-minute recharge.
The system software includes a powerful set of system management tools known as the NCE (Nomadic Computing Environment). By far the most useful feature of NCE is its save-and-resume capability. NCE saves the entire contents of main memory in a disk partition, then restores the system to its previous state when you power up again. The whole procedure required about 32 seconds on our 64-MB machine.
One caveat: You can't change the system configuration when the 3XP has been powered down in this manner. You must perform a regular system shutdown to make such changes. Also, we discovered that moving the 3XP during the save procedure can cause an unrecoverable loss of data. In fact, Tadpole advises against moving the 3XP at any time while it's operating; it must first be put into sleep mode. T
his is an unusual restriction for a portable computer.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
SparcBook 3XP............$12,000
Tadpole Technology, Inc.
Austin, TX
(800) 232-6656
(512) 219-2200
fax: (512) 219-2222
BEST FEATURE
The 3XP is well equipped for I/O and includes a 26-pin Ethernet port; 50-pin Fast (10 MBps) SCSI-2; an ISDN port; line-level audio in/out; a stereo headphone jack; two 8-pin RS-232 serial ports; connectors for an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor; and a parallel printer port. Unfortunately, there are no software drivers for the ISDN port.
photo_link (43 Kbytes)
photo_link (20 Kbytes)
The Tadpole 3XP RISC-based portable runs Solaris and boasts numerous I/O ports, including SCSI-2 and Ethernet.
Doug Tamasanis is a BYTE senior technical editor. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
dtam@bix.com
.
RISC for the Road
