jrg@Apple.COM (John R. Galloway) (03/17/89)
I would ideally like to have both a color and monochrome tube on my
workstation (color is essential (not to mention fun) for some applications but,
due to its slight fuzzyness I prefer mono for just text work). The latest
crop of wonderfully fast workstations however are all built on SBC technology
and hence seem to have only one graphics subsystem (unless you get a much
more expensive server model with a bus which I would like to avoid). What
to do? Well how about having 2 workstations, one color, one mono, and have
them behave as if they were a single unit? How would this work?
option 0:
have two keyboards and mice, this is not behaving like a single
workstation and is not acceptable.
option 1:
put the keyboard and mouse on A and write a X(trans)porter utility
that puts a thin vertical bar on the B side of A and the A side of
B so that when you move the mouse between the tubes you must go
through the transporter. Each copy of the Xporter communicates
over its own channel with its other copy. The A side on exit
grabs all keyboard/mouse events on exit and sends them to the
B side who (translates) and then puses events. The B side on exit
just informs A that the mouse is back and then does nothing. The
A side on entrance just releases the mosue and keyboard.
option 2:
same as above excpet there is a digitally controled A/B port switch
through which the keyboard and mouse are T-ed to both of the
systems. Now Xporter just throws the switch and the keyboard and
mouse are then really on the other systme.
option 3:
the mouse and keyboard are connected in parallel to both systems.
Xporter works as before but instead of passing events to its
partner it just throws them away so only one set of clientss see
anything. In this instance the A and B sides are completely
symetrical.
do any of these work? what about when the focus does NOT follow the
mouse and is set manually (very necessary for debugging a graphics
application where you want the keyboard to stay in the debugger window).
Also with all this cross machine traffic having a private net between
the two would be very nice (especially if you end up running color
clients on the mono systems and mono ones on the color to get the
client and server on seperate CPUs). However again the SBCs do not
seem to offer such. Making one of the systems diskless and paging
off of the other would of course add to the local traffic. Perhaps
a second lance chip (and thin-net port) would be much easier to add
then a second graphics subsystem (how about it vendors?).
apple!jrg John R. Galloway, Jr. contract programmer, San Jose, Ca
These are my views, NOT Apple's, I am a GUEST here, not an employee!!chuck@melmac.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) (03/17/89)
In article <27426@apple.Apple.COM> jrg@Apple.COM (John R. Galloway) writes: >I would ideally like to have both a color and monochrome tube on my >workstation (color is essential (not to mention fun) for some applications but, >due to its slight fuzzyness I prefer mono for just text work). The latest >crop of wonderfully fast workstations however are all built on SBC technology >and hence seem to have only one graphics subsystem (unless you get a much >more expensive server model with a bus which I would like to avoid). What >to do? Well how about having 2 workstations, one color, one mono, and have >them behave as if they were a single unit? How would this work? Why not just buy a machine which allows multiple heads? You can buy a Sun-3/60 with both the resident mono frame buffer and add a color frame buffer, both on the motherboard, and plug in two monitors. There is a program called "switcher" which lets you switch between the two, and a program called "adjacent_screens" which lets you switch just by sliding the mouse off one edge of a head and on to the next. Chuck Musciano Advanced Technology Department Harris Corporation (407) 727-6131 ARPA: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com