Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (11/26/87)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 25 November 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 64
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Re: Lifetime of Sun B&W monitors? (3)
Correction: Need information on Electronic Publishing Systems
Buying A Sun, summary
Third-party disk vendor flame
Program that causes Sun to reboot
Looking for Sun/VME board...
Request for experience w/vectorizing boards
NFS over arpanet?
Sun EMACS, Mouse, & Function keys?
Modifying buffer allocation?
SunCore in X?
Kermit for Sun? How about Prologs?
Help for a new Sun user
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 87 15:01:56 CST
From: William LeFebvre <phil@Rice.edu>
Subject: Administrivia
This issue contains some messages that were unintentionally delayed before
finding their way into this issue. Typically, such a message was
inititally sent to "Sun-Spots-Request", and the extra work on my part to
get it into the right file at the right time caused most of the delay.
Everyone please remember that "Sun-Spots@Rice.edu" is the only address to
use for submissions to the digest. The address "Sun-Spots-Request@Rice.edu"
is strictly for administrative requests (such as add me, delete me, what
happened to my digests, etc.). Some messages intended for the digest that
were sent to "Sun-Spots-Request" are merely ignored. Don't let it happen
to you!
William LeFebvre
Department of Computer Science
Rice University
<phil@Rice.edu>
------------------------------
Date: 20 Nov 87 14:37:54 GMT
From: ray@cs.rochester.edu (Ray Frank)
Subject: Re: Lifetime of Sun B&W monitors? (1)
First of all you are making a mistake dealing with either sales persons or
local reps. It is their job to sell you something or fix something but
not to take care of problems such as you are experiencing.
Your problem with Sun monitors is a common one. We have 14 sun2's and
every one of the screens has failed in various ways more than once. We've
more or less given up on trying to salvage them.
We also have 14 sun3's that are less than a year old. We've had a monitor
go bad each month starting with August of this year for a total of four so
far. Contacting Sun about these problems was a study in frustration. But
finally, I got to talk to a Mr. Ron Skipper at Sun who acknowledged that
there were serious design flaws in the monitors. Two of the components
that failed and have been redesigned are the power supply and the neck
board. We are trying to arrange with Sun the ability for us to purchase
these redesigned components at minimal cost. Sun will let me know about
this arrangement in about a week. I trust they will sell us the
redesigned components since the fault is theirs and not the customers or
the result of aging equipment.
You can contact Mr. Skipper at 408-945-3827.
There is also a second source for monitor repairs. Dyn Service of San
Jose, 408-432-1090. They may be able to shed further light on monitor
problems.
Good luck.
ray
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 87 15:19:25 EST
From: allegra!phri!roy@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Roy Smith)
Subject: Re: Lifetime of Sun B&W monitors? (2)
> The first symptom is that the upper and lower corners of the display
> become warped [...] After that, the corners become fuzzy and out-of-focus.
> Gradually, the whole screen becomes dim and unfocused.
I'm not sure about the particular problem Matt has, but I have noticed
that after almost two years, some of our 3/50 monitors are getting pretty
yucko to look at, with many of the same symptoms Matt describes. A few
minutes diddling with the focus, size, and linearity controls under the
hood in the monitor fixed them up nicely. If you want to try this, run
/usr/diag/vid.120.pat to get some alignment patterns on the screen (it's
pretty self-explanitory).
WARNING! Do not attempt this unless you know what you are doing, and do
not work alone. You will be working near exposed high voltage (in the
10,000 volt range) which can be fatal (they don't call them killo-volts
for nothing). Also, unless you have some feel for how the various
controls work, and interact with each other, you could just end up making
it worse. There is a good reason why they make these controls hard to get
at.
I understand Sun recently had a lot of trouble with whoever they were
getting monitors from, and switched suppliers. Maybe you got yours from
the bad supplier. Maybe you should press Sun on this.
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
------------------------------
Date: 22 Nov 87 22:10:34 GMT
From: uiucdcs!iuvax!ndcheg!evan@uunet.uu.net (Evan Bauman)
Subject: Re: Lifetime of Sun B&W monitors? (3)
We've been getting this same annoying problem on our older Suns. By
'older', I mean a machine that was purchased more than a year ago. Our
newer Suns have retained their crisp monitor image.
The owners of the dying monitors called Sun about a fix, and Sun's
response was that they would look at the screen as long as we would send a
check for some un-godly amount.
I think someone in EE called Moniterm with the hope of getting scematics
and doing the repair in-house. Moniterm refused, saying that they were
under an agreement with Sun not to give them away.
I've heard that Sun has gone to a different vendor of 19" mono screens. I
believe it is Philips.
Evan Bauman
Univ. of Notre Dame
..!iuvax!ndcheg!evan
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 87 23:14:36 EST
From: "H.David Scarbro" <ileaf!io!penguin!hds%umb.edu@relay.cs.net>
Subject: Correction: Need information on Electronic Publishing Systems
> Interleaf has an email address that requests for information or literature
> and questions can be sent to. It is:
>
> UUCP: ..!{sun!sunne,harvard!umb}!leafmail-misc!hds
> Internet: ileaf!leafmail-misc@umb.edu
In the preceeding message the UUCP address is incorrect (I was careless in
editing my signiture to produce it). The line should read:
UUCP: ..!{sun!sunne,harvard!umb}!ileaf!leafmail-misc
I hope my misteake :-) didn't cause too much grief for anyone.
H. David Scarbro UUCP: ..!{sun!sunne,harvard!umb}!ileaf!hds
Internet: ileaf!hds@umb.edu
Interleaf, Inc., Ten Canal Park, Cambridge, MA 02141
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 87 14:03:19 -0800
From: Amnon Meyers <meyers%cip.uci.edu@cip.uci.edu>
Subject: Buying A Sun, summary
************
BUYING A SUN
************
Recently I submitted a request for information about buying new or used
suns. Several people asked for results of the query, so I'm submitting
them to the bboard as well.
(1) First, I recommend the articles on workstations in general in the
November BYTE. They project that by early 1989, the workstation
standard will be 8-16 Mb RAM and 120-350 Mb hard disk.
They also speak of a current price war in workstations, begun in
earnest when the price of a diskless Sun 3/50 was lowered from $7995
to $4995. e.g., HP is expected to follow suit, if it hasn't done so
already.
(2) Sun 3/50s should be getting more available in a hurry, since many people
who have these are upgrading to Sun 3/60. The price of 3/50s is expected
to drop further. It may pay to contact large corporations or universities
for a deal.
(3) Used Sun 3/50s may be available from Sun itself, according to a Sun
representative for UCI. He says one can get a good deal on a GROUP of
machines this way, though the price on an individual machine is not
attractive.
(4) University of California employees can get a 20% discount on new Suns and
possibly other hardware. I don't know if this extends to other
universities; UC is a preferred client of Sun, and gets up to 33%
discounts.
(5) Third party vendors, e.g. Andatico, sell cheaper stuff. I'd appreciate
an address for this company.
Also, Faunt@SPAR-20.SPAR.SLB.COM says:
Apex Computer, 4500 150th Avenue NE, Redmond Washington, 206-867-1900
Attn: Jeff Bowden.
These people are willing to sell a Sun 2/120, 2MB, cartridge tape,
and 42MB disc for $4,000. They probably have other stuff.
(6) Adam Epstein says:
I'd suggest that you buy stuff like memory and disk from 3rd party
vendors. I added a Maxtor XT2190 (~140M formatted) to my Sun 3/160
for $2500, which is, I am sure, much cheaper than whatever sun offers.
I also added memory (4M from LCF) for a fraction of what Sun offers.
I am thinking about populating the LCF board on my own with all the
chips it can handle (16M). If you're willing to "do it yourself",
you'll save a lot of money.
________
I wonder if a group of sun-spot readers would be interested in buying used
Suns as a group. Please write to me at meyers@ics.uci.edu if this sounds
appealing. I will check with Sun to see if they'd be willing to ship them
to separate addresses, how many must be bought, etc.
Amnon Meyers
UCI
Irvine, CA 92717
meyers@ics.uci.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 87 22:36:20 EST
From: bzs@bu-cs.bu.edu (Barry Shein)
Subject: Third-party disk vendor flame
I'm astounded and appalled at the number of people who are scurrying
around looking for third-party disk alternatives for their Suns. When I
chat with people personally (eg. at a conference) it seems to be a major
topic of conversation "whaddya using?" etc.
Sun is now, roughly, a $1B company. They use standard industry interfaces.
Yet the offers I see for third-party disks are few and far between. I
can't be the only one, everyone on this list seems to be rolling their
own. Their good fortune attests to the relative ease of doing this but
it's obvious they're wasting their own good time figuring out wierd magic
to feed diag or newfs and other tricks. It's also painfully obvious that
the folks who are taking their money are acting like they're doing them a
favor and not showing the slightest interest in providing tech support
(I've seen this myself when calling around).
What gives? Is Sun not big enough? Do these guys figure they're going to
sell their 750MB SCSIs to IBM/PC customers? Are they just taking us for a
ride by cleverly acting like they can't or won't help support their disk
drives? I find it hard to believe that a frontal assault by CDC (eg)
couldn't net them enough to finally get out of the deep red they've been
in (oops, getting vicious :-)
Do these vendors have old volume contracts with competitors stipulating
exclusion from selling to Sun customers, so they do it kind of sub-rosa?
I dunno, it's really strange, are there any manufacturers on the list who
might offer some insight?
I've gotten a few offers for Sun third-party disk drives, but they usually
seemed like whacko configurations that they may have fallen into for a
custom job and figured they'd try to retail. Usually ridiculously priced
also, sometimes higher than Sun (I'm not all that upset about Sun's prices
as they do provide reasonable support, I expect they'll follow industry
trends very soon, and sometimes I really don't need all that support for a
random small disk [more like 20 or 50 random small disks] on workstations
which could run diskless if troubles arose).
-Barry Shein, Boston University
P.S. In case anyone missed the point I am randomly flaming third-party
disk vendors, not even flaming, just wondering out loud.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 87 08:39:44 PST
From: dean@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Dean Okamura)
Subject: Program that causes Sun to reboot
The following program causes reboots on our Sun computers. Is this a
bug or is there a known way to prevent these reboots?
--- Dean
/*
** COMPUTER BUG
** Program That Reboots Computer
** MACHINES
** All SUN computers.
** DESCRIPTION
** A Bus Error and Automatic Reboot can occur under the following
** conditions:
**
** 1. Two programs communicate using FIFOs (named pipes).
** 2. One program removes FIFO directory entry.
** NOTES
** The FIFO directory entry is renamed to ".nfsDDD", where "DDD"
** is zero or more decimal digits.
**
** The program example uses system calls because it was first
** noticed while running a user interface and an application
** that communicated with FIFOs.
**
** Please do not brush this example aside because the idea of
** removing an active FIFO is dumb. It shows how a legal
** command can eventually cause a reboot.
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];
{
int fd, i;
char buf[80];
/* create FIFO */
system("/etc/mknod FIFO p");
/* display FIFO I-nodes */
system("ls -li | grep ' prw'");
/* use FIFO and pre-maturely delete the directory entry */
fd = open("FIFO", O_RDONLY | O_NDELAY);
system("ls -li > FIFO; rm -f FIFO");
while (read(fd, buf, 80) > 0)
printf("%s: %s\n", argv[0], buf);
/* close FIFO and exit program */
close(fd);
exit(0);
} /* fireboot */
------------------------------
Date: 20 Nov 87 14:21:24 GMT
From: turk@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Matthew Turk)
Subject: Looking for Sun/VME board...
Hi, I wonder if anyone can help me find out if there exists a Sun/VME
board with the following characteristics (or even similar):
two 12-bit D/A converters, 130 kHz
about 8 digital I/O channels
able to handle up to 3 daughter boards w/ 16-bit D/A's
This describes a Macintosh board that is used to drive a special display
monitor -- but I'd like to find something comparable for the Sun. Any
suggestions? (P.S. The Mac board costs about $1300!)
Please respond to me directly.
Matthew Turk
turk@media-lab.media.mit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 87 08:53:44 est
From: mlijews@nswc-wo.arpa
Subject: Request for experience w/vectorizing boards
Does anyone have any experience with those vector boards which can be
attached to Sun's, such as from DSD Systems, Sky or Mercury? We are
primarily a computational facility and I am trying to get more horsepower
out of our Sun's for running some large FORTRAN fluid dynamics codes. How
about any experiences with vectorizing computers hung off of an Ethernet
as a batch machine?
Any suggestions would be heartily appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Mike
Mike Lijewski (mlijews@nswc-wo.arpa)
Code R44, Bldg. 427
NSWC
Silver Spring, MD 20903
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 87 15:28:12 PST
From: ho@tis-w.arpa (Hilarie K. Orman)
Subject: NFS over arpanet?
I would like to hear from anyone who has tried to use NFS between Arpanet
sites. I am advised that it would be painfully slow and awkward, but I
would like to try. However, I cannot get "mount" to complete between the
two test sites, so I cannot even begin to experience the pain. I have
been in daily communication with Sun Support for two weeks about the
following experiment between two arpanet machines:
Both sites have NFS mounts running on their LAN's, so we know that the
basic capability is there. The sites can rlogin to each, run FTP and
Telnet, so we know the arpanet connectivity and addressing are OK.
However, the command
/etc/mount machine1:/glkspl /mnt
results in an RPC timeout message after 20 seconds. Using the options
"timeo=20000,rsize=512,wsize=512" doesn't alter anything at all, despite
what you might think from reading the documentation. I think these
options are only in effect after mount completes successfully, and the 20
second timeout is an unalterable parameter.
I cannot see any evidence that machine1 ever sees the mount request. Does
anyone know how to check this? Is rpcinfo definitive? Any help would be
appreciated. Also any interest other sites might have in this capability
should be expressed, since Sun's official opinion is "not supported".
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 87 13:01:04 PST
From: tektronix!fpssun!en2!jram@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Joe Ramus ex 3656)
Subject: Sun EMACS, Mouse, & Function keys?
I am looking for GNU EMACS that works with the Sun Mouse??
I know how to use the Sun function keys & keypad keys but they will not
repeat when I hold them down. How can I make them repeat?
Joe Ramus
tektronix!fpssun!jram
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 87 12:15:49 +0100
From: mcvax!swivax!jan@uunet.uu.net (Jan Wielemaker)
Subject: Modifying buffer allocation?
We have a Sun network, consisting of 6 diskless nodes (3/140 with 12 MB
core) and a 3/160 fileserver with 4MB and 575 MB eagle. All this is
running SunUnix 3.2. The server has no other task then providing
file-services. This implies we could allocate much more then the default
about 350K for buffers (The system pretends it has about 900K free memory
left (top's estimate)).
Now our distributer claims buffer allocation cannot be modified (they
probably want to sell memory). I am inclined not to believe them. Who
can either verify their story or tell me how to change it?
Thanks as lot --- Jan
------------------------------
Date: 19 Nov 1987 10:09-EST
From: Hans.Tallis@ml.ri.cmu.edu
Subject: SunCore in X?
Is is possible to run SunCore inside X? Currently I run inside a SunView
window and would like to port over.
--tallis@ml.ri.cmu.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 87 11:04:36 EST
From: Marty Hall <hall@alpha.ece.jhu.edu>
Subject: Kermit for Sun? How about Prologs?
Does anyone know where I can get kermit for the Sun? I picked up a copy
of C-Kermit, but it wouldn't compile on my Sun.
[[ We have C-Kermit successfully running on our Sun 3/280. I didn't
install it, so I can't offer any helpful hints. --wnl ]]
Also, does anyone know of any good, inexpensive (or public domain)
Prolog's for the Sun?
Thanks!
- Marty Hall
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1987 10:27:23 LCL
From: Gareth J. Barker <gjbarker@uffsc.bitnet>
Subject: Help for a new Sun user
Please bare with me with several problems which may have been dealt with
many times before; I'm a VERY new UNIX/Sun user. My current queries are:
1) Has anyone out there done a reasonably comprehensive investigation of
the various wordprocessor/text formatters on the market? We want to be
able to do equations and tables, to produce/import figures and graphics,
and to produce documents ranging from simple letters to journal articles
and book chapters. We are currently looking at 'Eroff' from Elan and 'The
Publisher' from Arbor Text. Any comments?
2) We're interested in the possibility of adding high capacity SCSI
floppies (known as 'Bernouilli Boxes' ?) to our Sun. A company called
Jasmine has something called a MegaDrive for the Mac - does anyone know if
this could be interfaced to the Sun, or if another similar product exists?
3) I need a VT100 emulator. I've heard of something called 'vt100tool' -
is this or anything else available in the public domain?
[[ vt100tool is in the public domain. It was distributed in volume 6 of
the Usenet list "comp.sources.unix". It is stored on the machines that
archive those volumes, and I will attempt to get a copy here for
sun-sources (although I fear that it is rather large). --wnl ]]
4) Can someone give me a quick intro. to some of the ins and outs of
networks? In particular how do you get access to a networks such as uucp,
and what are the 'FTP' and 'anonomous login' I keep hearing about?
[[ It's "anonymous", as in the well-known prolific author by the same
name :-). Would some kind soul care to answer this question offline?
--wnl ]]
5) Our kernel paniced yesterday with the message 'bad rmfree'. We're back
up and running and nothing seems to be wrong - does anyone know what this
message meant?
Details:
Sun 3/160 server, Sun 3/110 diskless client
SunOS 3.2
NMR Spectrometer pretending to be a SCSI tape drive (!!!)
Thanks,
Gareth Barker BITNET : GJBARKER@UFFSC
------------------------------
End of SUN-Spots Digest
***********************