tss@lanl.gov (Timothy S Sullivan) (01/01/90)
I am using an HP9000/520 workstation for data acquisition. It runs HP-UX 5.23, has 2Mb RAM, and 125Mb of disk. I would like to install a version of emacs on it. The questions are: Given its limitations, is GNU emacs a sensible thing to try to install? Is there another version that would make more sense? Is there someone out there who has already done such a thing? Where can I obtain an HP 1/4" cartridge tape with the appropriate emacs on it? (The machine is not on the net.) (As a reference note, I have not installed emacs on any machine before.) Since the machine is so old, replies are not expected to be of general interest. Please send replies to: Tim Sullivan tss@lanl.gov Thanks.
walter@hpsad.HP.COM (Walter Coole) (01/05/90)
This might be of general interest, so I'm posting it anyway. We have had a number of 500 series machines and several people were interested in porting GNU emacs, but were stopped by a number of features, not having an alloca() was one and I recall a problem with Little-Endian/Big-Endianness. We eventually found JOVE (John's Own Version of Emacs) which isn't as rife with features as GNU, but generally works quite well. I beleive it is generally available in the standard archives. Performance is quite adequate on a 500, although not as fast as a newer machine. Not an official response.
montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (01/05/90)
In article <770019@hpsad.HP.COM> walter@hpsad.HP.COM (Walter Coole) writes:
We have had a number of 500 series machines and several people were
interested in porting GNU emacs, but were stopped by a number of
features, not having an alloca() was one and I recall a problem with
Little-Endian/Big-Endianness.
Lack of alloca() should not stop a GNU Emacs port, since the Emacs source
comes with both C and assembler versions. I'd be real surprised if little-
vs. big-endianness was much of a problem either. That code is isolated, and
there is a BIG_ENDIAN define in the machine-dependent include files (m-*.h).
--
Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com)bdale@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee) (01/18/90)
I have a tape in my desk with a port of GNU Emacs v17 to the s500. We ran it for about three days on a 550, then gave up because the load time was intolerable. The bits came from somewhere in Holland, I'd have to unload the tape and look at a Readme to remember where, though. What happens is that you're left with the C code working fine, but needing to load all of the lisp code every time you start up Emacs, unlike the normal situation where you load the default lisp code as part of the build process, then dump and "undump" to get an executable image with the list structures pre-loaded. You really don't want it. I still have a 550 that I work on at times, and it hasn't been worth loading the tape for me. Bdale