Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (10/19/87)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Monday, 19 October 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 52
Today's Topics:
Re: Parts for Sun monochrome monitors
Re: Tape allocation and Silo overflow questions
Silo overflow
Re: suppressing watchdog reset on BREAK keyin
Re: NFS over "LANBridge"
Damaged SCSI tape
Sun multiprocessor rumor
Csh Limits
xy0?: read retry (hard ecc error)
X bug fixes?
VT640 Terminal Emulator?
Graph package for Suns?
Can I attach MIDI to my Sun computer? How?
Request for advice: Suns and Apollos
yet another news icon
------------------------------
Date: 10 Oct 87 14:03:16 GMT
From: roy%phri@uunet.uu.net (Roy Smith)
Subject: Re: Parts for Sun monochrome monitors
Robert Wenig wanted to know about getting parts for Sun monochrome
monitors. At various times, Sun has used monitors from various
manufacturers. We have one made by Moniterm, and a bunch from Phillips.
I understand that later monitors were Hitachi and/or Sony.
We once had to replace the power supply on the Moniterm. We went direct
to the manufacturer: Moniterm, 5740 Green Circle Drive, Minnetonka,
Minnesota, 55343. Cost us $100 and took a week or two. They were fairly
helpful (although it looks like they make crappy power supplies; this one
is going again).
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 87 21:56:27 EDT
From: sundc!potomac!jtn@sun.com (John T. Nelson)
Subject: Re: Tape allocation and Silo overflow questions
Ask Mike Urban at trwrb for the tape drive allocate/deallocate code.
They might give it to you I don't know.
On our system the silo overflow error refers to a buffer in our MTI
multiplexor board. The machine does not crash when we get this error.
Presumably you are overflowing the buffer (or silo as it is also
called in the DEC world) in the board on the CPU board (since you
didn't post a pair of numbers that would distinnguish the MUX's port).
------------------------------
Date: 12 Oct 87 17:56 EST
From: stpeters%mozart.tcpip@ge-crd.arpa
Subject: Silo overflow
A silo overflow error typically happens when a program is off doing
something, an impatient user hits a lot of mouse clicks, and an IO buffer
overflows.
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters@ge-crd.arpa
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters
------------------------------
Date: 12 Oct 87 17:10:49 GMT
From: root@hamachi.LGN.UUCP (Gary K. Sloane)
Subject: Re: suppressing watchdog reset on BREAK keyin
We built the circuit presented in the SunSpots digest, and it *does* stop
watchdog resets when you unplug the console tty or hit the 'break' key.
However, when you power off the tty and power it back on, you still get a
watchdog reset. Anyone (the authors of the circuit?) know why this would
happen? We are using an Ampex 230 tty in Televideo 925 emulation mode as
the console for a Sun3/180S-16.
--Gary Sloane, LOGICON San Diego
...!nosc!hamachi!sloane
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 87 13:22:12 EDT
From: hedrick@topaz.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Subject: Re: NFS over "LANBridge"
I'd like to point out that the subject of one of the messages was a bit
misleading. It was "NFS over LANBridge", but it discussed use of NFS over
an ATT ISDN Ethernet bridge. LANBridge is not a generic term. It is a
trademark of DEC for a specific product. Based on the description in this
article, it sounds like the LANBridge is significantly faster than the ATT
product. Thus it is still possible that fileserving through a LANBridge
would work. Note that the normal problem with bridges and gateways is not
their raw speed, but the tendency of NFS and ND to put out large numbers
of back to back packets. This can be controlled, in fstab and nd.local
respectively. We have used a 2/50 with everything except ND through an IP
gateway. (This included /usr and the user's files.) With appropriate
rsize and wsize mount options, it works. I wouldn't do it by choice, and
I wouldn't do lots of machines that way, but if you get into a situation
where there is no practical alternative, it can be done.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 87 15:53:02 EDT
From: Bernard Silver <bs30%gte-labs.csnet@relay.cs.net>
Subject: Damaged SCSI tape
I have previously posted a question about recovering stuff from a 1/4in
SCSI tape (after doing a tar c instead of a taf x on a non
write-protected tape). I got many suggestions, but none of them work, due
to the brain-damaged nature of 1/4in drives/controllers.
I was told that Sun Consulting might help if I offered money (over and
above our on-site support). I did this, but was eventually told that
nothing could be done. I then asked if a special device driver could not
be written, and was told that a) it might not work, and b) the consulting
group was too busy to write one.
So... we now would like the names of any companies/consultants who might
be able to read data off (software) damaged tapes. Almost everyone I have
spoken to "knows" that such places exist. These places can even read data
off tapes that have been erased (if necessary I'm willing to erase my
tape!). However, no one has been able to give us any names. (Except for
the NSA, which doesn't seem appropriate).
Thanks
Bernard Silver
ARPA: silver@ai.ai.mit.edu
CSNET: bs30%gte-labs.csnet@relay.cs.net
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 87 09:04:30 EDT
From: Neil G. Sullivan <ngs@cs.duke.edu>
Subject: Sun multiprocessor rumor
I don't know if this information is appropriate to the sun spots digest,
but aside from talk.rumor, it seems to be the most reasonable place.
I have heard an unsubstantiated rumor that Sun is soon coming out with a
multiprocessor architecture machine. Could someone substantiate this
rumor and if possible fill in with some more information.
Neil G. Sullivan
Dept of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706 (919 684-5110)
UUCP: {ihnp4, decvax, mcnc}!duke!ngs
CSNET: ngs@duke
ARPA: ngs@cs.duke.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 87 22:06:25 EDT
From: umix!itivax!lokkur!scs@rutgers.edu
Subject: Csh Limits
We have recently run into several limitations in the C shell. These seem
to be undocumented, but are (in our humble opinion!) much too low.
Without source to the C shell we cannot change them.
We would like to see them either raised or the C shell revised such that
they are removed.
If the limits are set to some constant, this should be documented. The
limits we have been able to determine are:
1. There is a maximum of 99 environment variables that can be defined
at once. We can't tell if 'set' and 'setenv' are both affected
by the limit. We ran into when using setenv. This limit has been
confirmed by the Sun 800 number.
2. There is an undocumented eighteen-character limit on the length of a C
shell variable. It shows up in a most bizarre way:
% setenv constitution_clien foo
% echo $constitution_clien
foo
% setenv constitution_client foo
% printenv | grep const
constitution_clien=foo
constitution_client=foo
% echo $constitution_client
Variable syntax.
Since there's little chance of changing these in 3.2/3.4, we'd like to see
the limits raised in the 4.0 release and removed in later releases.
We've passed both of these on to the hotline, but thought the Sun-Spots
crew would be interested in knowing the limits.
Steve Simmons
scs@lokkur.UUCP
------------------------------
Date: 13 Oct 87 10:56:21 GMT
From: mcvax!inria.inria.fr!shapiro@uunet.uu.net (Marc Shapiro)
Subject: xy0?: read retry (hard ecc error)
We have a Sun 3/260 (previously a 160) connected to a Sun Eagle. We
continuously get errors like this on the console:
xy0b: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #8089, abs blk #35689
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0a: read failed (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0c: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #157128, abs blk #157128
xy0c: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #148851, abs blk #148851
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0c: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #149018, abs blk #149018
xy0c: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #149018, abs blk #149018
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0a: read failed (hard ecc error) -- blk #3673, abs blk #3673
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #704, abs blk #704
xy0a: read retry (hard ecc error) -- blk #712, abs blk #712
Sometimes they cumulate in a hard I/O error in swap and the kernel panics.
When we first bought our configuration we had no errors. Then we had a
few a day (which we would correct by reading and writing back the
incriminated block). Then a few per hour. Until finally the disk become
unreadable because the block containing the inode for /etc blew up.
Sun came in, changed all the cables and electronics, re-wrote the entire
disk. No more errors. Until... it started a few a week, then a few a
day... Now we're back to one per hour.
I'm told by fellow gurus that this also happens on other sites. Before
our system blows up again, is there anything I can do ?
Configuration: Sun 3/260 + 8 megs + Eagle 470 Mb (xy0) + NEC 800 Mb (rf0)
+ 3.4. Errors occured also in release 3.2, and when we had a 160, and
before connecting the NEC.
Marc Shapiro
INRIA, B.P. 105, 78153 Le Chesnay Cedex, France, tel.: +33 (1) 39-63-53-25
e-mail: shapiro@inria.inria.fr, or: ...!mcvax!inria!shapiro
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 87 14:06:05 CDT
From: cole%puff.wisc.edu@cs.wisc.edu (Bruce Cole)
Subject: X bug fixes?
Can someone mail me or point me to the necessary bug fixes to get X
working properly ona Sun 3? I've heard that there are considerable
changes to be made.
------------------------------
Date: 9 Oct 87 07:54:06 GMT
From: whpm%cgcha.UUCP%cernvax.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu (Hans-Peter Mueller)
Subject: VT640 Terminal Emulator?
Hi,
Here at work we have a wide variety of graphics programs and they all have
only the VT640 graphics terminal in common. I was wondering if anyone
could possibly point me to a VT640 TERMINAL EMULATOR for a Sun 3
workstation?
If you don't know of a company that has one off hand, any leads would also
be appreciated.
Thanks for the feedback,
Hans-Peter Mueller
Ciba-Geigy AG
Switzerland
Email: whpm@cgcha.UUCP
------------------------------
Date: 9 Oct 87 15:34 +0500
From: cook <cook%systems.carleton.cdn%ubc.csnet@relay.cs.net>
Subject: Graph package for Suns?
Does anyone out there know of, has or has heard of, a quality graphing
package for a Sun 3 workstation ( FPA board optional ). I'm looking for
something that can run on a monochrome monitor and be outputted to a laser
writer and/or HP plotter.
The features I would be looking for are :
1 ) Ability to plot 2 dimensional graphs, ability to plot
3 dimensional would be a plus but is not a must.
2 ) User can add text to the plot.
Can also display a grid if you wish.
3 ) User can specify limits and increments on the coordinate
axis'. If user does not specify these value the program
will calculate from the data.
4 ) Mouse driven so the user can zoom in on an area or can
pan in any direction.
Command line options available.
5 ) Reads input from a file, can read from more than one file.
Data is defined by x y points or x y z.
Data can be float or integer and displays accordingly.
6 ) Able to display more than one set of group information on
a single graph. i.e. Have two different y axis'.
If this isn't available maybe something that gives multiple
graphs on a single sheet, but each graph will obviously
be reduced in size.
7 ) Data points can be displayed as dots or can be encircled
by boxes, triangles etc.
Data can be connected ( line draw ) or not
connected ( scatter plot )
I would appreciate any input you can give on this request as well as who
to contact to get a hold of this package.
Thanks
George Cook
Carleton University
UUCP: ...watmath!clan!cook
CSNET: cook%systems.carleton.cdn@ubc.csnet
------------------------------
Date: 9 Oct 87 23:06:40 GMT
From: sundc!potomac!jtn@sun.com (John T. Nelson)
Subject: Can I attach MIDI to my Sun computer? How?
I'm interested in attaching a MIDI interface to my Sun somehow.
Preferably in some easy kludgy way since I don't want to spend bofo bucks
with circuit boards and VME bus adapters. The goal is very simple:
Connect a standard MIDI synth (MIDI in and MIDI out not necessarily
MIDI-thru) too my Sun. Run some hypothetical software (you got software
too sailor boy?) to ship MIDI commands down to the synth through the MIDI
channel and shake the building apart.
John T. Nelson UUCP: rutgers!mimsy!rlgvax!sundc!potomac!jtn
trwrb!ihnp4!rlgvax!sundc!potomac!jtn
Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@ads.arpa
1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 87 13:58:37 BST
From: Dr R M Damerell (RHBNC) <damerell@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Request for advice: Suns and Apollos
My department (Maths at RHBNC) is hoping to buy a net of about 5 stations
& I would greatly appreciate any advice that you might like to give about
Suns and Apollos, particularly: how reliable have you found them, and how
good is their maintenance? Any source of cheap software? Any pitfalls to
be avoided?
I should explain that we have 25 full-time staff + several post-grads etc.
Some are non-users. At present the main types of use seem to be: run
small batch jobs that consume vast amounts of CPU, test & debug large
programs, receive large data from other sites & do graphical displays,
interact with large packages (e.g. SPSS), prepare papers for publication.
thank you,
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 87 13:30:52 EDT
From: rsalz@pineapple.bbn.com
Subject: yet another news icon
/* Format_version=1, Width=64, Height=64, Depth=1, Valid_bits_per_item=16
* In my .suntools, I have:
* shelltool -Wp 144 64 -Ws 650 567 -WP 1076 828
-Wi -Wl "" -WL "" -WI /usr/rsalz/icons/usenet rn
*/
0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0x8000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0001,
0xBFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFD,0xA000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0005,
0xA180,0x0000,0x0000,0x0185,0xA1E0,0x0000,0x0000,0x0785,
0xA1F8,0x0000,0x0000,0x1F85,0xA19E,0x0000,0x0000,0x7985,
0xA187,0x8000,0x0001,0xE185,0xA181,0xE000,0x0007,0x8185,
0xA180,0x7800,0x001E,0x0185,0xA180,0x1E00,0x0078,0x1185,
0xA188,0x0780,0x01E0,0x6185,0xA186,0x01E0,0x0781,0x9185,
0xA181,0x8078,0x1E06,0x6185,0xA180,0x601F,0xF819,0x9185,
0xA188,0x1007,0xE066,0x6185,0xA186,0x0201,0x8199,0x8185,
0xA181,0x8281,0x8666,0x0185,0xA180,0x6541,0x8998,0x0185,
0xA188,0x02A1,0x8660,0x1185,0xA186,0x0551,0x8980,0x6185,
0xA181,0x82A1,0x8601,0x8185,0xA180,0x6551,0x8806,0x0185,
0xA188,0x02A1,0x8000,0x1185,0xA186,0x0551,0x8060,0x6185,
0xA181,0x82A1,0x8181,0x8185,0xA180,0x6151,0x8606,0x0185,
0xA188,0x0021,0x8800,0x1185,0xA186,0x0601,0x8060,0x6185,
0xA181,0x8181,0x8181,0x8185,0xA180,0x6461,0x8606,0x0185,
0xA188,0x0311,0x8800,0x0185,0xA186,0x06C1,0x8060,0x5185,
0xA181,0x81B1,0x8180,0xA185,0xA180,0x6061,0x8605,0x5185,
0xA188,0x0011,0x8802,0xA185,0xA186,0x0601,0x8065,0x5185,
0xA181,0x8181,0x8182,0xA185,0xA180,0x6061,0x8605,0x5185,
0xA188,0x0011,0x8802,0xA185,0xA186,0x0601,0x8065,0x5185,
0xA181,0x8181,0x8182,0x8185,0xA180,0x6061,0x8604,0x0185,
0xA180,0x0011,0x8800,0x0185,0xA180,0x0601,0x8060,0x0185,
0xA1C0,0x0181,0x8180,0x0185,0xA1F0,0x0061,0x8600,0x0785,
0xA03E,0x0011,0x8800,0x3F85,0xA00F,0x8001,0x8000,0xFC05,
0xA001,0xF001,0x8007,0xE005,0xA000,0x7E01,0x803F,0x0005,
0xA000,0x0F81,0x81F8,0x0005,0xA000,0x01F1,0x87E0,0x0005,
0xA000,0x007D,0xBF00,0x0005,0xA000,0x000F,0xF800,0x0005,
0xA000,0x0003,0xC000,0x0005,0xA000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0005,
0xA000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0005,0xA000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0005,
0xA000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0005,0xBFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFD,
0x8000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0001,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF
[[ In the archives as "sun-icons/rs-news.icon". --wnl ]]
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End of SUN-Spots Digest
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