larry@nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) (02/01/90)
Well I can't get my Computone Intelliport to emulate an 8250 under VP/ix - which would solve one of my problems. Computone boards aren't bad, but any company who still distributes manuals with incorrect pin outs has a problem in my book.
mark.levy@canremote.uucp (MARK LEVY) (02/06/90)
pu>From: pmartin@ucqais.uc.edu (Paul Martin) pu>Orga: Univ of Cincinnati, College of Business Admin. pu>I am interested in possibly running vpix but I am a little bit leary pu>about laying out a few hundred for this product without seeing it in pu>use. My point is, would some of you who are running it, tell me how pu>well it performs? (i.e. speed, compatablitiy, load on xenix)? pu>I was really disappointed with windows/386 so I really hate to end up pu>with another dog. My configuration is SCO XENIX/386 2.3.2 running pu>on a 386DX (20mhz) with 4 megs ram, 146 meg hard drive (30meg dos, pu>16meg dos, and 100meg xenix partition), VGA card and Display. pu>Any problems with the above configuration? Can I use my DOS pu>partitions directly? VP/ix is pretty slick, but it can put a tremendous strain on the system's resources. SCO recomends 2MB + 1MB per concurrent user, over the minimum memory needed for your other software. You will find it to be slow, but not terribly so. The rest of your system will function better if you run VP/ix under nice. I have had some problems with my Maxlogic VGA card and VP/ix, in that for some unknown reason, the VP/ix session comes up in VGA monochrome. Other than that, no major problems. Regarding accessing the DOS partition, you only have read access. If you start a VP/ix session as root, you would also have write access to the DOS partition, and I believe that this is something that would be _extremely_ dangerous. You will be able to use "net- worked" (redirected) drives that VP/ix automaticly brings up on the XENIX file system. Be careful that you use the drives which are based on your home directory if you need to do any DOS piping, since tmp files would be written in the "root" (\) directory, and if you don't have write permission, the program will appear to hang. Mark --- ~ DeLuxe 1.11a18 #3019 ~ QNet 2.04a:NorthAmeriNet: Sound Advice BBS ~ Gladstone ~ MO
h_les@hlborl.UUCP (les brown) (02/08/90)
In article <90020606211361@masnet.uucp>, mark.levy@canremote.uucp (MARK LEVY) writes: > Regarding accessing the DOS partition, you only have read access. When I encountered that little hitch, I thought it obvious to change the permissions on my DOS partition (which worked fine). Am I compromising something somewhere? I do *all* my DOS stuff in and from my DOS partition. -- Les Brown try: [?]!tarpit!hlborl!h_les or: [?]!ucf-cs!hlborl!h_les "life is short, questions are obscure." (nobody important)
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (02/12/90)
In article <7369@hlborl.UUCP> h_les@hlborl.UUCP (les brown) writes: | When I encountered that little hitch, I thought it obvious to change | the permissions on my DOS partition (which worked fine). Am I | compromising something somewhere? I do *all* my DOS stuff in and | from my DOS partition. The typical DOS partition is tied to permissions on /dev/hd00. If you run a multiuser system with any non-tructed users, do not chaange permissions on hd00. Instead, use mknod to create another node with the same major and minor numbers, then give it a new owner and 600 permissions for that user. Disclamer: I thought this up myself, none of the blame or credit goes to SCO. -- bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX davidsen@sixhub.uucp ...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon
brb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson) (02/15/90)
In article <7368@hlborl.UUCP>, h_les@hlborl.UUCP (les brown) writes: > What happens is that (apparently) randomly, the keyboard on my console > locks up. Try hitting the ALT key, if that doesn't work try hitting the CONTROL key, any one of your sessions may have missed the break scancodes for these keys. I personally think VP/ix works rather well on a console, but I have quite a few questions and complaints for VP/ix use on serial terminals. I almost have the feeling that I must be the only person that has battled VP/ix through serial terminals. 1. Why are input and scancode mappings limited to 7 chars. This makes "enhanced keyboard" emulation impossible on many ASCII terminals, even if they have more or less the right number of keys. Good limits are: 0, 1 and infinity (or a reasonable facsimilie, thereof) 2. Why is there no screen refresh function for PC compatible terminals*? It's present for ASCII terminals but goes away for PC compatible terminals. Why isn't refresh in the VP/ix menu? This is rather important since there seem to be a number of problems in VP/ix video emulation for serial terminals. 3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences. Really? A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance). 4. EGA or VGA emulation with user accessible hooks would be real nice instead of the MDA emulation. 5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come with VP/ix. A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix. *A PC compatible terminal is a terminal that is capable of sending PC keyboard scancodes (make and break) instead of ASCII characters. Bjorn R. Bjornsson brb@falcon.is
allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) (02/17/90)
As quoted from <1519@krafla.rhi.hi.is> by brb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson): +--------------- | I personally think VP/ix works rather well on a console, but I have | quite a few questions and complaints for VP/ix use on serial terminals. | I almost have the feeling that I must be the only person that has battled | VP/ix through serial terminals. +--------------- I used VP/ix daily for a month on an Altos Series 1000 (well, yes, it was the console---but the Altos 1000 is *not* a PC-compatible, and its console is a serial port) via a Falco 5000 terminal. I've not seen any problems beyond those in getting the order of the escape sequences right to make the Falco expand the window to 80x25 instead of 80x24.... The 5000 was run in scan-code mode; I have not yet gathered sufficient masochism to attempt VP/ix on an ordinary terminal. [ ;-) ] +--------------- | 2. Why is there no screen refresh function for PC compatible terminals*? | It's present for ASCII terminals but goes away for PC compatible | terminals. | Why isn't refresh in the VP/ix menu? | | This is rather important since there seem to be a number of problems | in VP/ix video emulation for serial terminals. +--------------- I suspect that VP/ix terminal descriptions out of the box are about as usable as termcaps/terminfos right out of the box. I wrote and debugged the Falco 5000 description myself, and made d*mned sure it *works*. I suggest you find someone to write a *correct* description for your terminal. +--------------- | 3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences. Really? | A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance). +--------------- Don't you want ANSI.SYS for this? Or does VP/ix not handle color at all? I can't find out, since the current Altos 1000 version supports neither color nor graphics. Nor COM1/2 emulation, which I would have thought to be relatively easy. [Had I source, I might attempt it myself.] [NOTE: the 1000, not being PC-compatible, has neither memory-mapped console nor scancode console keyboard nor COM1/COM2. It comes with 8 serial ports on the mother- board and slots for two 8-port "SIO" boards or an ACPA (5 serial ports, one RS-422 multidrop port, and thick and thin Ethernet ports).] +--------------- | 5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come | with VP/ix. A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock | for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix. +--------------- Not sure I understand this one. But the Falco has some bugs in this area, and I'm not sure that any amount of coaxing by VP/ix would help. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery allbery@NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi) uunet!cwjcc.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@cwjcc.cwru.edu
brb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson) (02/20/90)
In article <1990Feb17.020846.11108@NCoast.ORG>, allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: >I suspect that VP/ix terminal descriptions out of the box are about as usable >as termcaps/terminfos right out of the box. I wrote and debugged the Falco >5000 description myself, and made d*mned sure it *works*. I suggest you find >someone to write a *correct* description for your terminal. I'm quite capable of creating these descriptions myself, thank you. The screen refresh is not there for scan code terminals. It's not documented, and assigning anything to 'k_refr' with a scan code terminal produces no effect. I've just completed a scan code addition to a terminal emulator program. A vital feature for using VP/ix is that the terminal support a properly executed "invis" (or blanking) command (via escape sequence), else with some applications your screen is going to be screwed up every now and then. > As quoted from <1519@krafla.rhi.hi.is> by brb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson): >+--------------- >| 3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences. Really? >| A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance). >+--------------- > >Don't you want ANSI.SYS for this? Or does VP/ix not handle color at all? ANSI.SYS supports ANSI color escape sequences. The terminal emulator I was working on supports ANSI color escape sequences. VP/ix does not support color for serial terminals. >+--------------- >| 5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come >| with VP/ix. A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock >| for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix. >+--------------- > >Not sure I understand this one. But the Falco has some bugs in this area, and >I'm not sure that any amount of coaxing by VP/ix would help. Some programs check the BIOS data area for the presence of an enhanced keyboard. This is indicated by bit 4 at 40:96h and is supposedly set at boot time on real machines. For serial terminals this bit is off no matter what sort of keyboard you have, after all how is VP/ix to know (actually there might be ways once VP/ix starts seeing your scan codes). Anyway some programs that do check for an enhanced keyboard will look the other way when an extended scan code comes their way. It goes without saying that the remedy for this is simple once you've found out what's going on. Too make a long story short, the terminal emulator is now working more or less like a charm. But better documentation and support for VP/ix would have helped a lot. My complaints stand, and there is no refresh. Bjorn R. Bjornsson brb@falcon.is
mark.levy@canremote.uucp (MARK LEVY) (02/20/90)
To: h_les@hlborl.UUCP (les brown) hP>In article <90020606211361@masnet.uucp>, mark.levy@canremote.uucp hP>(MARK LEVY) writes: > Regarding accessing the DOS partition, you only hP>have read access. hP>When I encountered that little hitch, I thought it obvious to change hP>the permissions on my DOS partition (which worked fine). Am I hP>compromising something somewhere? I do *all* my DOS stuff in and hP>from my DOS partition. I am hesitant about writing across the partition boundries, but then I don't know if damage could result. I do know that the VP/ix manual says to _NEVER_ run VP/ix as root, which would allow you to write to the device. Mark --- ~ DeLuxe 1.11a18 #3019 ~ QNet 2.04: NorthAmeriNet: Sound Advice BBS ~ Gladstone ~ MO
perry@bluemtn.uucp (Perry Minyard (3MTA3)) (02/23/90)
In article <90022010211903@masnet.uucp> mark.levy@canremote.uucp (MARK LEVY) writes: >To: h_les@hlborl.UUCP (les brown) > >hP>In article <90020606211361@masnet.uucp>, mark.levy@canremote.uucp >hP>(MARK LEVY) writes: > Regarding accessing the DOS partition, you only >hP>have read access. > >hP>When I encountered that little hitch, I thought it obvious to change >hP>the permissions on my DOS partition (which worked fine). Am I >hP>compromising something somewhere? I do *all* my DOS stuff in and >hP>from my DOS partition. > > I am hesitant about writing across the partition boundries, >but then I don't know if damage could result. I do know that the >VP/ix manual says to _NEVER_ run VP/ix as root, which would allow >you to write to the device. > >Mark I've got SCO Xenix 2.3.3. running with 2 drives. Drive 0 is an 80 meg seagate ST-4086, and and Drive 1 is a 20meg ST-225 formatted with MS-DOS. I never did any special partitioning to the Drive 1; it existed before I even installed Xenix on my system. I just added the line: D /dev/hd10 to my vpix.cnf file. I had to go into /dev and change the permission to give myself write access to the device (/dev/hd10), .... actually I just changed the owner of it to me. (its my home system and there are no other users). Anyhow, I've been able to read and write to my 20 meg drive without any problems. -Perry Minyard ..!emory!bluemtn!perry
john@beaudin.UUCP (John Beaudin) (04/08/90)
Do I have to get another version, or is there some fix? The custom install loops at some point. Thanks.
kemp@convex1.convex.com (Phil Kemp) (04/10/90)
john@beaudin.UUCP (John Beaudin) writes: >Do I have to get another version, or is there some fix? The custom install >loops at some point. Thanks. I just finished installing VP/ix 1.1 on an SCO UNIX system. The documentation seems to infer that it is for Xenix only. (And you're right, the custom installation does some funny things.) If you look at the Upgrade package you will see that references to Xenix apply equally to UNIX System V. (I received a base VP/ix and an upgrade as well.) After a bit of patience I was able to get it up and running. I talked to SCO support and they verified that there is one version (1.1) for both Xenix/386 and UNIX 3.2/386. By the way I heard that an upgrade to version 1.2 is available to registered owners of 1.1. ( No cost as well ) SCO, care to comment? PK Phil Kemp CONVEX Computer of Canada Ltd. Voice:(403)-278-1788 UUCP:kemp@convex.com