Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (05/15/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Friday, 13 May 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 85 Today's Topics: Re: X11 & suntools on a Sun 3/60C (multiple screens) Re: Sun 100U Video Problem Impressions of the LaserWriter II NTX printing tex dvi files on a sun laserwriter Enhancements to suntools bug in f2p and f2ps identifying suntools -- I lied Looking for Sun APL Recommendations for dot matrix printers? Send contributions to: sun-spots@rice.edu Send subscription add/delete requests to: sun-spots-request@rice.edu Bitnet readers can subscribe directly with the CMS command: TELL LISTSERV AT RICE SUBSCRIBE SUNSPOTS My Full Name Recent backissues are available via anonymous FTP from "titan.rice.edu". For volume X, issue Y, "get sun-spots/vXnY". They are also accessible through the archive server: mail the request "send sun-spots vXnY" to "archive-server@rice.edu" or mail the word "help" to the same address for more information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 10 May 88 15:12:03 PDT From: Gumby <salzman@bytor.rdl.com> Subject: Re: X11 & suntools on a Sun 3/60C (multiple screens) OK, got the answer!! Thanks to those who replied. Basically what I've found out is that the documentation is WRONG! I negelected to mention in the posting that I had tried what the man pages said, and it didn't work! Many people replied telling me to read the man pages.... And I quote the man page from suntools (SunOS 3.5): 1. Invoke suntools in the color plane group by running ``suntools -8bit_color_only -toggle_enable''. This starts suntools on the default frame buffer named /dev/fb but limits access to the color plane group. [this is ok] 2. In a shelltool, run ``suntools -d /dev/bwtwo0 -toggle_enable -n &''. This starts suntools in the overlay plane that is accessed by /dev/bwtwo0. [WRONG, not on a 3/60C, maybe on a 3/110!. You need to use /dev/bwtwo1 not /dev/bwtwo0]. 3. In a shelltool run ``adjacentscreens -c /dev/fb -l /dev/bwtwo0''. ... [again /dev/bwtwo1]. What I've found out about frame buffers is this (and maybe I should've been paying more attention to this stuff in earlier discussions): /dev/bwtwo0 - b/w frame buffer. this doesn't work unless you go ahead and get a second monitor and (possibly) pop some chips into the board /dev/bwtwo1 - overlay plane frame buffer. this is the one to use for doing the dual screen stuff. /dev/cgfour0 - 8-bit color /dev/fb - defailt fb (virtual frame buffer, both overlay and color from what I gather). Now as far as using this with X11: You can use this with X11, but not directly. Lets say you've started suntools with % suntools -8bit_color_only -toggle_enable You can't just run % xinit -- Xsun -dev /dev/bwtwo1 Xsun is buggy and that comes back with an error (can't find display or something). The way to do it is to start another suntools desktop: % suntools -d /dev/bwtwo1 -toggle_enable -n & from shelltool in your first desktop and then % adjacentscreens -c /dev/fb -l /dev/bwtwo1 and from a shelltool in the OTHER desktop % setenv XDEVICE /dev/bwtwo1 % overview -w xinit -- Xsun [other options] >& x.out To make it even easier, use a shell script to start X and call it from a file like ".suntools.x11" and start the second suntools with % suntools -d /dev/bwtwo1 -toggle_enable -s ~/.suntools.x11 I've got all this stuff set up from my suntools rootmenu so I can start X, NeWS or another suntools with adjacentscreens with the click of a mouse button! Fun stuff!! * Isaac Salzman - Sr. Systems Analyst * Research & Development Labs (RDL) * 5721 W. Slauson Ave., Culver City, CA. 90230-6509 * AT&T: +1 213 410 1244, x118 * ARPA: salzman@rdlvax.RDL.COM * UUCP: ...!{psivax,csun,sdcrdcf,ttidca}!rdlvax!salzman ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 23:31:02 EDT From: Skip Montanaro <steinmetz!montnaro@uunet.uu.net> Subject: Re: Sun 100U Video Problem Reference: v6n76 >From: cvbnet!cvedc!exc!markh@sun.com (Mark A. Holm) > >I have recently acquired a Sun 100U and it has a video problem. Its >horizontal retrace does not quite reach the top. This results in losing >the top 10-15 raster lines + the part of the screen it scribles across. >Does anybody have schematics or can tell me what the fix for this problem >is? In Sun-spots volume 4 issue 13 there is a follow up by Mark Murray >(MKM@WASHINGTON.ARPA) on some video fixes that he posted. Unfortunately >that is my oldest issue and I cannot seem to reach Mark at the above >address. If somebody could send me a copy of the original article or tell >me how to get in touch with Mark, it would be greatly appreciated (I know, >I know, I'm the only idiot with a hard copy archive that old.;^) > >Mark Holm ..tektronix!ogcvax!cvedc!exc!markh >Exceptions ..sun!cvbnet!cvedc!exc!markh >126 NE Grant Phone (503)648-8307 >Hillsboro, Oregon 97124 Messages only until after 6:00 PM Mark, From v4n4: Date: Mon 27 Jan 86 17:57:25-PST From: Mark Murray <MKM@WASHINGTON.ARPA> Subject: Sun 100 video problem fixed We have a number of Sun Microsystems workstations with the model M17P114H/2101 Philips monitor, better known as the old Model 100U, and several of these units have been exibiting the following symptoms of video circuitry malfunctions. Within the top inch of the display, horizontal lines extending the width of the raster wipe out video information to the extent that the unit is extremely difficult to use. Several weeks ago I replaced the following components on the video deflection board of one of our units, and the problem has not reappeared, although a minor side effect has been a very slight warp in the shape of the raster. 1. C413 2.2uF, 100V, AL Electrolytic 2. CR406 BY208/600. Replaced with ECG 558. 3. R541 31 ohm, 1/2 W resistor 4. Q403 MJE 182 NPN transistor 5. Q404 MJE 172 PNP " On item 1, if you can find these at a 105 degree C rating, as opposed to the 85 degree C rating (the original design), you should get them. I was only able to locate the latter. On item 2, I was told that this diode is no longer in production by its original mfr, Amperex, so I crossed it with the Sylvania ECG 558. It may be possible to find other sources. Keep in mind that a) some of these parts are hard to find, and b) you may run into minimum order requirements. We are also considering installing a small fan to draw heat away from the video board. Hope it helps. Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com, montanaro@ge-crd.arpa) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 12:15:46 EDT From: Chuck Musciano <chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com> Subject: Impressions of the LaserWriter II NTX Recently I posted a request for information concerning the new LaserWriter II NTX printer from Apple. Several people were kind enough to reply, and here is a summary of their impressions. NOTE: hereafter, "NTX" is the LaserWriter II NTX, and "LW" is the original LaserWriter/LaserWriter Plus. o The NTX uses a 16 MHz 68020, with 2 Mbytes of RAM (expandable to 12 Mbytes) and 1 Mbyte of ROM. Interfaces include serial ports, AppleTalk, and the Apple Desktop Bus. A SCSI port allows up to 7 hard disks for font caching. There is a rumor that parallel i/o is possible through the SCSI port. o The NTX is definitely faster than the LaserWriter or LaserWriter Plus. Although based upon the new Canon engine which is still 8 pages per minute, it has a better version of PostScript, allowing it to more closely approach 8 ppm for complex print jobs. o The paper tray is much larger (about 200 sheets). There is also support for 8.5x14 (legal size) sheets. The printer automatically reconfigures itself to support the current paper size. There is an envelope feeder, and manual feed is still provided. o The NTX allows sheets to emerge on the top, face down, or out the side, face up. The top paper tray is the default, and the side route is used if a little paper tray is folded out. Several users were completely unaware of this side tray (let's read those manuals out there!) and offered various flames about the reversal of pages caused by the top paper route. o The NTX is significantly quieter than the LW, and one person used it as a deskside printer. o The print quality was better, with darker blacks. o The toner cartridge is different from the LW, so you can't use your old ones. The new cartridge is supposed to be good for 1000 sheets more than the old one. We get about 4000 sheets on an old one, so I would put the new ones at 5000 sheets each. o One user ordered the printer with 8 Mbytes of RAM, but only got 2 Mbytes due to the "phony memory shortage". o Most everyone seemed to feel the NTX was a big improvement over the LW, in terms of speed. Here at Harris, we obtained an evaluation unit from Apple, and beat on it for about a week. Here are some jobs we ran, along with print times on the NTX and our LW Plus. All jobs were printed at 9600 baud. Jobs are described in more detail below. The "wire time" is the time required to push the bytes down the serial line at 9600 baud, and is the lower bound on the print time. Job Size Wire Time LW II NTX LW Plus Speedup screen 262564 4:33 4:52 4:53 1.0 150dpi.ps 258419 4:29 4:43 4:45 1.0 150dpi.r.ps 258419 4:29 4:54 41:48 8.5 graphics.ps 54277 0:57 1:34 4:28 2.9 paper.ps 135348 2:21 4:32 11:48 2.6 pic.ps 348248 6:03 6:18 10:40 1.7 text.long 42148 0:44 2:11 2:43 1.2 viewgraph.ps 46924 0:49 1:17 3:29 2.7 The jobs were: screen typical Sun screendump, using screendump and pssun 150dpi.ps A 1152x900 image, scaled to 150 dpi by Frame Maker (WYSIWYG doc-gen package) 150dpi.r.ps The same image, rotated 90 degrees graphics A collection of line drawings, included rotated text, many filled circles, and a variety of lines paper.ps A 14 page, two column technical report, with 9 figures, set in Bookman, which forced font scaling on the fly pic.ps A 3D view of a surface composed of 7400 filled triangles with hidden surfaces removed text.long 1000 lines (16 pages) of straight ASCII text viewgraph.ps More graphics and such, including various boilerplate to make viewgraphs look good The speedup of 150dpi.r.ps is amazing, but I suspect that the transform code in the NTX recognizes 90 degree transforms and special cases them. A 37 degree rotation took more than 8 minutes on he NTX, and about the same time on the LW. The improved font scaling, and extra memory for font caching helped the paper.ps job, and raw compute power made the difference in most other jobs. In the case of text.long, the print engine is the limiting factor, since 16 pages should take about 2:08 to print. Some jobs were i/o bound on the wire, and I cranked the NTX up to 19200 to see the difference. The screendump printed in just 2:30 on the NTX at 19200, but improved to only 3:20 on the LW. Overall, this is a nice printer and a definite improvement over the LW. Chuck Musciano Advanced Technology Department Harris Corporation (407) 727-6131 ARPA: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 15:39:22 EDT From: bdrc!jwc@mcnc.org (Joan Curry) Subject: printing tex dvi files on a sun laserwriter Reference: v6n74 The filter we use, which works fine, came with the Unix TeX distribution tape. It is called dvipsf, and its files are in the subdirectory tex82/TeXdevices/mitdrivers/dvi2ps of the main tex directory. I did have to make one change in the source to make it work: in the file applef.c, in the function resync, buf is a pointer to a struct stat but it's never set to point to anything before the call to fstat so a segmentation violation results. The fix is trivial once you see the problem. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 14:18:33 EDT From: libes@cme-durer.arpa (Don Libes) Subject: Enhancements to suntools Recent messages from sunspots indicate people are making modifications to the suntools program itself. In particular, Juergen Wagner (gandalf@csli.stanford.edu) said that he modified suntools so that ^Q^R in the background would refresh the screen (v6n68). Steve Beaty (<cinelli!ciocc!beaty@relay.cs.net>) provided a patch to allow dynamically changeable backgrounds (v6n72) (although as posted, it was buggy since the function root_set_background was not designed to be called more than once - after a dozen or so calls, suntools will run out of memory and die). I hacked up suntools several years ago (SunOS 1) so it would provide some nice things. For example, you can define menu entries which are activated by typing things into the background (rather than with the mouse). I have updated it so that the base is SunOS 3.5. I added some other stuff plus Steve's hack (fixed), which I thought was cute. Here is the README file that comes with it: BRIEF DESCRIPTION 1) Keys typed into background can select menu entries. 2) Tools may be run setuid(0) by holding shift key down while menus are brought up (or keys are typed into background). 3) User may change background dynamically. 4) User may change background cursor dynamically. 5) User may specify primary menu title (non-walking menus). The one incompatibility introduced is that the 9 numerical fields in the .suntools files are now ignored. However, these are of dubious value anyway since they are incomplete, contradictory with the command line, and their effect is better achieved by using the -W tool arguments. [[ The remainder of the message contained a in-depth description of these features, but was tool long for a digest. Interested individuals can retrieve the entire text of this message from the archives. It is stored as "sun-spots/enhanced-suntools" and is 10183 bytes in length. It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the host "titan.rice.edu" or via the archive server with the request "send sun-spots/enhanced-suntools". For more information about the archive server, send a mail message containing the word "help" to the address "archive-server@rice.edu". --wnl ]] This package is available via ftp from cme-durer.arpa. The file is called pub/suntools.shar.Z Don Libes Bldg 220, Rm A-127 National Bureau of Standards Gaithersburg, MD 20899 (301) 975-3535 uunet!cme-durer!libes libes@cme-durer.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 15:32:41 PDT From: david@sun.com (David DiGiacomo) Subject: bug in f2p and f2ps [[ A copy if this message was sent to the programs' author. --wnl ]] There is a minor bug in the f2p and f2ps utilities distributed with fig 1.4. In main, the variable "objects" is not initialized, which generally causes a segmentation violation later. The fix is to insert the following as the first executable statement in main() in f2p.c and f2ps.c: bzero((char *) &objects, sizeof objects); P.S. Fig is a bit smaller and faster if compiled with the appropriate floating point flags, e.g. -fsingle -f68881 /usr/lib/f68881.il ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 16:33:13 PDT From: jqj@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu Subject: identifying suntools -- I lied Oops. In a recent posting to sun-spots I included the wrong code for identifying a csh running under suntools. The incantation I actually use is: if (! WINDOW_ME ) then # suntools endif Code I gave was from my .login and used to decide whether to run suntools in the first place! Egg on my face. ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 88 18:45:11 GMT From: quirk@hubcap.clemson.edu (Chris Reynolds) Subject: Looking for Sun APL I'm looking for an version of APL (preferably public domain) that will run on a Sun 3. Any help would be appreciated. Chris Reynolds uucp: ... !gatech!hubcap!quirk CS Dept, Clemson University inet: quirk@hubcap.clemson.edu phone: (803)656-{2639,3444} ARPA: QUIRK@TECNET-CLEMSON.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 May 88 15:14:33 PDT From: forward!jdgaye@sun.com (Dennis Gaye) Subject: Recommendations for dot matrix printers? Does anyone have some useful recommendations for Dot Matrix Printers that work well on Sun-3's and/or 4's? I have heard the Okidata 193 plus may be a viable canidate in terms of cost, standard drivers in SunOs, and reliability. Please respond little r or to me directly and I will offer a synapsis If someone else is interested. ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************