phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (09/06/88)
In article <665@super.ORG> rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) writes: >P.S. Personal opinion: Somebody oughta be able to make a pile of dough > by bundling together and selling amigas as 'X terminals'. I hope > somebody does. In order to be a reasonably usable X terminal, it would need an Ethernet interface. Those are still rather expensive, even for the 2000. And to put one on a 500 would cost even more, because one would need a Zorro II slot. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) (09/07/88)
In article <1859@kalliope.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: > In article <665@super.ORG> rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) writes: > >P.S. Personal opinion: Somebody oughta be able to make a pile of dough > > by bundling together and selling amigas as 'X terminals'. I hope > > somebody does. > > In order to be a reasonably usable X terminal, it would need an Ethernet > interface. Those are still rather expensive, even for the 2000. And to > put one on a 500 would cost even more, because one would need a Zorro II > slot. Dale Luck's X port for the Amiga uses Ameristar's Ethernet product. The package costs the same as equivalent HW/SW in the PC marketplace, eg Sun PC-NFS. Ameristar has shown a combo 2-8 mByte memory board/Ethernet interface for the A500; it most assuredly DOES NOT need Zorro II slots. > > William LeFebvre > Department of Computer Science > Rice University > <phil@Rice.edu> Rick Spanbauer Ameristar Technology
papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (09/07/88)
In article <1859@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: |In article <665@super.ORG| rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich) writes: ||P.S. Personal opinion: Somebody oughta be able to make a pile of dough || by bundling together and selling amigas as 'X terminals'. I hope || somebody does. |In order to be a reasonably usable X terminal, it would need an Ethernet |interface. Those are still rather expensive, even for the 2000. And to |put one on a 500 would cost even more, because one would need a Zorro II |slot. I don't think so. I believe that Ameristar showed at Siggraph a slap-on-the side A500 ethernet card that it was rumored COULD list for less than $300 according to a friend that was there. If this were to be true, one could get an Amiga-based "X terminal" for a little over $1000. Rick, are you there to give some details? -- Marco Papa 'Doc' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= uucp:...!pollux!papa BIX:papa ARPAnet:pollux!papa@oberon.usc.edu "There's Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Diga!" -- Leo Schwab [quoting Rick Unland] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (09/07/88)
In article <1560@sbcs.sunysb.edu> root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) writes: >In article <1859@kalliope.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: >> In order to be a reasonably usable X terminal, it would need an Ethernet >> interface. Those are still rather expensive, even for the 2000. And to >> put one on a 500 would cost even more, because one would need a Zorro II >> slot. > > Dale Luck's X port for the Amiga uses Ameristar's Ethernet > product. It would have to: there is no other Ethernet interface for the Amiga, is there? > The package costs the same as equivalent HW/SW in the PC marketplace, > eg Sun PC-NFS. True, but that price is high for this purpose. I understand that Visual is coming out with an X terminal, called the 640, for around $2000. It has a higher resolution screen and will probably cost less than a 2000 + Ameristar board. That was my point: an Amiga-based X terminal might not be cost effective when compared to the new X terminal products that are certain to appear in the near future. Of course, you are getting an entire workstation for that extra money........ > Ameristar has shown a combo > 2-8 mByte memory board/Ethernet interface for the A500; it most > assuredly DOES NOT need Zorro II slots. This I had not heard. I knew that Dale Luck had shown X running on a 500 with an Ameristar card, but not having actually seen it I didn't know how the card was connected to the 500. Marco Papa mentioned that an ethernet card for the 500 might go for as low as $300. If this is true, then 500 + ethernet card might very well make a cost effective X terminal. I realize that the soon-to-be-released version of Amiga-X is just version 1, but I sincerely hope that Dale adds color capability in one of the next few versions. Because although the Amiga might be questionable as a monochrome X terminal, it would make an incredibly cost effective (and fast) COLOR X terminal! William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) (09/08/88)
In article <1859@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: >In order to be a reasonably usable X terminal, it would need an Ethernet >interface. Those are still rather expensive, even for the 2000. And to Oh, i don't know, there has been an awful lot of discussion over getting X and/or NeWS to run well over serial lines. My (limited) understanding leads me to believe that people really want to do this, and what people want they will somehow get. I have read that 9600 baud gives an acceptable X performance, as long as the server (i.e. the 500) is doing a lot of work. So xserial (heck, there's even a mailing list) is not out of the question. You can't ship bitmaps back and forth and do well, but if you have some xterms running and are shipping characters to them they will go over as bytes, which is not too bad ... ron
vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (09/08/88)
In article <12017@oberon.USC.EDU>, papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes: > I don't think so. I believe that Ameristar showed at Siggraph a > slap-on-the side A500 ethernet card that it was rumored COULD list > for less than $300 according to a friend that was there. If this were > true, one could get an Amiga-based "X terminal" for a little over $1000. There is strong pressure (from employees, unions, legistatures etc) for requiring detachable keyboards on all pcs/terminals bought henceforth. This puts the 500 at a strong disadvantage. -Nath vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu
perley@einstein.steinmetz (Donald P Perley) (09/09/88)
In article <877@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) writes: >There is strong pressure (from employees, unions, legistatures etc) for >requiring detachable keyboards on all pcs/terminals bought henceforth. This >puts the 500 at a strong disadvantage. Although the keyboard is attached to the computer, the computer itself can be move about your desk to suit your typing posture (not so good in your lap). The main problem, I think, from a strain point of view, is terminals where the keyboard is fixed in relation to the display, and/or rigidly fixed to the desk. Can you say adm3? how about 029? Rules could still be worded so as to disallow the 500, but I think it's keyboard mobility is acceptable. That may not hold if it's tied down with an expansion box. -don perley