mike@ists.yorku.ca (Mike Clarkson) (09/26/88)
I've heard that Wyse may be planning to introduce an X-Windows terminal with built-in Ethernet soon. Costs around $3000. Does anyone have any information on this ? Mike Clarkson mike@ists.UUCP Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science mike@ists.yorku.ca York University, North York, Ontario, uunet!mnetor!yunexus!ists!mike CANADA M3J 1P3 +1 (416) 736-5611
casey@admin.cognet.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom) (09/28/88)
In article <215@ists> mike@ists.yorku.ca (Mike Clarkson) writes: > I've heard that Wyse may be planning to introduce an X-Windows terminal > with built-in Ethernet soon. Costs around $3000. Does anyone have any > information on this ? I've heard rumors of some X terminals also and likewise would be interested in any solid reports. However, they better come in under $3K or they're looking at a product that just isn't going to sell. (Any manufacturers listening?) $3K is just too close to the price of certain work stations, and with the possibility of being able to run X on your favorite PC just seemingly around the corner ... I would say that for a product like an X terminal to succeed, it would have to come in at $1500 or below. (Well under the price of your favorite PC/workstation + X package.) This price may well be impossible to hit given the amount of hardware needed for such a beast. Casey
milliken@bbn.com (Walter Milliken) (09/28/88)
In article <16248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, casey@admin (Casey Leedom) writes: >In article <215@ists> mike@ists.yorku.ca (Mike Clarkson) writes: >> I've heard that Wyse may be planning to introduce an X-Windows terminal >> with built-in Ethernet soon. Costs around $3000. Does anyone have any >> information on this ? > > I've heard rumors of some X terminals also and likewise would be >interested in any solid reports. However, they better come in under $3K >or they're looking at a product that just isn't going to sell. (Any >manufacturers listening?) I don't know anything about a Wyse terminal, but Visual just gave us a demo yesterday. Their terminal lists for $1995, and looks fairly good. It did evidence a few minor display bugs, however. They have a rather nice way of handling fonts (it can get them through NFS or a special font server they supply to run under Unix). The screen is a bit small (14", 1024x800), and they currently use an interlaced monitor, which flickers visibly with some bitmaps. Performance is better than a Sun 3/50 running the souped-up R2 server (maybe twice as fast) -- not amazingly fast, but good enough to be usable. The terminal can run over SLIP (up to 38kbaud) as well as thin- and thick-wire Ethernet. The terminal can also run as a conventional VT100-style ASCII terminal running TCP/IP telnet over the Ethernet. The Visual people said a new software release was in the works, and that they would shortly have a non-interlaced monitor version of the terminal (which I would definitely prefer). If the next software release fixes the few bugs I saw, I'd say this terminal is a good buy. It's not quite like having a Sun 3/50-sized screen, but it should be reasonable as an X server for the cost-conscious. ---Walter
pda@stiatl.UUCP (Paul Anderson) (09/29/88)
In article <16248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> casey@cs.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom) writes: >In article <215@ists> mike@ists.yorku.ca (Mike Clarkson) writes: >> I've heard that Wyse may be planning to introduce an X-Windows terminal >> with built-in Ethernet soon. Costs around $3000. Does anyone have any >> information on this ? > ... > $3K is just too close to the price of certain work stations, and with >the possibility of being able to run X on your favorite PC just seemingly >around the corner ... Ummm... this is an interesting point. Here at Sales Technologies, we have a number of people all equipped with PC's and mice and EGAs... We are going to be getting into X in a big way during the next year. We also have Phil Karn's source for his PC TCP/IP package and GSS drivers for EGA's. (If you don't know the name, Mr. Karn can be found frequenting the ham-radio.packet group. The TCP code is used in Amateur Radio Packet Networks.) I suspect that a long weekend hack (or 3) is going to result in a PC-XTerminal. As a (usenet) group, we are probably far closer to having an XTerminal than industrial sources are. The big and only question that I have is "Can I get it to fit in 640k?" (The classic 10 pounds of guana (no offense intended) in a 6 pound bag] :-) :-) -- Paul Anderson decvax!gatech!stiatl!pda Sales Technologies, Inc 3399 Peachtree Rd, NE X isn't just an adventure, Atlanta, GA (404) 841-4000 X is a way of life...
ronc@fai.UUCP (Ronald O. Christian) (10/08/88)
In article <16248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> casey@cs.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom) writes: > $3K is just too close to the price of certain work stations, and with >the possibility of being able to run X on your favorite PC just seemingly >around the corner ... Well, you can buy an X server for PC-DOS now from Locus... They'll have to do some more work on it, though, before it becomes really usable. The problem is, you need a couple-thousand-dollar PC (and probably an $500-600 ethernet card), which, if you don't happen to *have* a PC, makes an X terminal pretty attractive. Ron -- Ronald O. Christian (Fujitsu America Inc., San Jose, Calif.) {amdahl, pyramid, sun, unisoft, uunet}!fai!ronc -or- ronc@fai.com Calling all Fujitsu Usenet sites! Contact fai!ronc or ronc@fai.com to establish uucp connection.