MEGLAN@rcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (DWIGHT MEGLAN) (09/12/89)
We have just received a VAX8000 workstation as a donation from DEC (can you say tax write off?). For those who don't know what that is (was?), it is a 3D workstation developed jointly by DEC and Evans&Sutherland which was released in early 1988 and within a couple of weeks of its introduction the two companies had a major falling out and it was yanked from the market. Through a long and drawn out process, we have managed to get one donated (we have almost zero funds right now for capital equipment and are in very bad need of some number crunching power) and we would like to make the most of it. I'll be writing a couple 3D animation programs to analyze and display human motion (our lab does clinical and research evaluations of human gait in 3D using 6 camera VICON system, I already have alot of stuff running on a MicroVax), but mostly we'll be using the 8250 cpu in the 8000 for number crunching. I know that writing software specific to the 8000 is a dead end, but we feel obligated to do at least a few things to use its capabilities. Does anyone have an 8000 or know someone who does ? Any pointers on software which is available for it would be most helpful (I'm not too optimistic about there being any but it's worth a try :-) Also, how compatible (or more appropriately incompatible) is the HPWS windowing system in the 8000 with DECwindows ? The preliminary documentation I've seen (the computer showed up with no documentation !) says that HPWS is based on X windows. Thanks for any information... ____________________________________________________________________________ What is the world coming to when people are obligated to include disclaimers with everthing ? In that spirit, anything expressed here was not said by anybody. Period. Dwight Meglan, Phd-in-training/Research Engineer Ohio State University Hospital Gait Analysis Laboratory 1054 Dodd Hall 471 Dodd Drive Columbus, OH 43210 USA (614)293-3808 Email: meglan%gait1@eng.ohio-state.edu
mitch@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Mitch Collinsworth) (09/12/89)
In article <3009@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu> MEGLAN@rcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (DWIGHT MEGLAN) writes: > We have just received a VAX8000 workstation as a donation from DEC (can >you say tax write off?). Contratulations, I guess. >Does >anyone have an 8000 or know someone who does ? We've got 4 of them :-(. >Also, how compatible (or >more appropriately incompatible) is the HPWS windowing system in the 8000 >with DECwindows ? The preliminary documentation I've seen (the computer >showed up with no documentation !) says that HPWS is based on X windows. The biggest problem with them that I see is that DEC has halted further development effort on them already. The last version of VMS that HPWS works with is V5.0-2. And they didn't even bother to tell me. I upgraded our cluster from V5.0-2 to V5.1 and when I booted the first one, HPWS wouldn't come up. I had to call CSC to find out that you can't do that. So now I have to maintain a separate LAVc at V5.0-2 just for the VS8000s. And that requires a separate boot node because a VS8000 can't be a boot node for a cluster :-(. As to the HPWS .vs. DECwindows question, the first thing to note is that since DECwindows doesn't run on versions of VMS prior to V5.1, you've already got one source of aggravation - there is no version of VMS at which you can run both window systems! I haven't done any programming on either one yet, so I can't tell you how different they are there. I'm passing your note on to someone here who does have programming experience with both, including porting software from HPWS to DECwindows. He should to be able to give you some idea of how painful that is or isn't. -Mitch Collinsworth mitch@squid.tn.cornell.edu