lin@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Yi-C Lin) (01/17/90)
I am recently looking for imformation about X-terminal. If you know about any good product, then I'd like to hear from you. If you have any first hand experience, then I beg you to share your experiences. Please note that price is a serious consideration. Please post or e-mail. I'll post a summary if enough responses are received. I sincerely appreciate any informations. Thank you! /Yi-Cheng Lin lin@psych.rochester.edu
ekberg@ti-csl.csc.ti.COM (01/18/90)
Here is a message I received last summer about X terminals. Where I work people use NCDs in the office and GraphOns at home. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Jun 89 00:48:27 EDT From: wood%phws00.dnet@smithkline.com (Bill Wood, SmithKline &French R&D 215-2705163) To: "xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu"%INET.dnet@smithkline.com Cc: WOOD@smithkline Subject: Need comments on GraphOn OptimaX (or others) corbet@stout.ucar.edu writes about the Graphon OptimaX X terminal: >It is not a workstation replacement. There are times when you simply *know* >that you are working over a serial line. If you have any users who are >fond of putting cute pictures into their root window, this terminal will >drive them nuts. Any sort of raster data is very slow. Some raster data is quite fast, depending on how well it can be compressed. xphoon is reasonably fast, given the large areas of black in it. Framemaker pages, which are image data, are surprisingly fast. Complex images can take 30-60 seconds to draw. >In summary, I think it can be a useful device for casual X users, who have >not been spoiled by having a full workstation or network-based X terminal. >Those who use it for text work, or for simple vector graphics, will be >happy. I would certainly buy it before I got another dumb monochrome >graphics terminal for one of my users. At 19200 KB I am quite pleased with the terminal for general programming, system maintenance, and day-to-day work. It exhibits a snappy response most of the time, except when it must download a new font, and it pauses for a moment. Text output in particular is very fast, faster than the Sun color server distributed with X11r3. From home, at 9600 baud over a Microcom AX/9624c modem, it is not as snappy but very acceptable. Both from home and at work I have a terminal server between the host and the terminal, which works fine. Network traffic is reduced with the terminal due to a) its low speed (19200 baud is typical, which is aprox. 2000 bytes/sec of terminal server traffic) and b) the fact that the protocol between it and the server is 2-3 times more efficient than the X protocol. The OptimaX can also be used as a regular VT100 terminal with attached printer port. It is nice to have the option of running X or not. The terminal will dump the X screen to a number of different types of attached printers (Thinkjet/Quietjet, Laserjet+, QMS/Talaris, FX-80/FX-100, FX-85/FX-185, Okidata 92/93, Okidata 192/193, Okidata 84, and SIXEL printers). We are thinking at work that the GRAPHON may be the way to bring X to everyone's desk, due to its low cost and serial interface. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jun 89 15:49:00 GMT From: ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu!kai@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu Subject: Re: Network Computing Devices Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu > /* Written by NEVILLE%20CVX1@draper.COM */ > Does anyone have information on the Network Computing Devices X-Terminal? > Also does anyone know how to contact them ? i.e. where are they ? > Thanks > George Network Computing Devices Inc. 350 North Bernardo Avenue Moutain View, CA 94043 (415) 694-0650 (fax 415-961-7711) Sales Offices: Mountain View CA Jeff Raice 415-694-0650 Rockville Maryland Stephen Deakins 301-670-2803 Cleveland Ohio Ray Zilka 216-892-4660 This data comes from the information packet I received when I called and asked for info. The NCD16 seems like a really nice X terminal, but it's currently out of my price range - $2500 quantity one including 1 Mb RAM, plus $50 software license, and $500 for the RAM based software (or $300 for PROM based software). Maintenance costs an additional $500/year after the initial 6 month warranty. They did mention a deal where two NCD16's including RAM based software for $4500, but I couldn't get anyone else (with that kind of money) in the building interested. It runs a 12.5 Mhz 68000, with proprietary graphics coprocessor, 0.5 to 4.5 Mb RAM supported. The screen is 1024x1024, 16" square, 70 Hz non-interlaced, paper white. How is a person supposed to estimate how much RAM they will need? Does the RAM based software use more of the system RAM than the PROM based sw? The RAM based software is downloaded using RARP, BOOTP, and TFTP (RARP and BOOTP aren't available on any systems we have - I don't know if NCD includes them) from a host on the network. The PROM based software is cheaper ($300 vs $500), but upgrades cost more (if you buy maintenance ($500/year) $210 for each workstation each time you buy a new PROM - RAM based software is supplied at no charge for the first 10 workstations). NCD is positioning it as a "low-cost alternative to an engineering workstation", but I want a X terminal that provides a cost effective enhancement to the VT220 compatible terminals we currently use. Guess I'll have to look into the Acer Zebra, or other low cost, low resolution devices. Unix World had a review on 5 X terminals a few months ago, including the NCD16. Patrick Wolfe (pat@kai.com, kailand!pat) System Manager, Kuck & Associates, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 7 Jul 89 20:30:28 GMT From: Paul Coppi <coppi@csvax.caltech.edu> Organization: Theoretical Astrophysics, Caltech Subject: X terminal info (summary - long) Message-Id: <11234@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu *** EOOH *** Return-Path: <xpert-request@tilde> Date: 7 Jul 89 20:30:28 GMT From: Paul Coppi <coppi@csvax.caltech.edu> Organization: Theoretical Astrophysics, Caltech Subject: X terminal info (summary - long) Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu A couple of weeks ago I asked for information on X terminals. Here is a summary of the responses I received. Thanks to all those who replied. Four companies were mentioned: GraphOn, NCD, NCR, and Visual. The name of NCD appeared most often. The consensus appears to be that ethernet X terminals (NCD, NCR, Visual) can match the windowing/display capabilities of workstations. The GraphOn which works over a serial line is a "neat idea" that isn't quite up to snuff yet. Keith McNeill (eplrx7!mcneill@uunet.UU.NET) writes: ==================== We have 2 demo's here right now (an NCR Towerview & an NCD16). The NCD wins hands down. The monitor is the big win on the NCD. It has 1Kx1K screen (that looks rectangular but is really square) that looks pretty sharp. It doesn't look as nice as our 19 sun mono-monitors but it is still pretty good. You can forget the NCR. The NCR monitor has 1024x840 resolution. You can't even fit a whole page from Framemaker on it. It has a PC type keyboard with a real cheap feeling. It's my gut reaction that the NCR is more designed for the office (which is NCR's strong suit in the UNIX market) and the NCD is more of an engineering workstation. Features: NCD -- vt220 type keyboard with good feel 1024x1024 resolution logitech mouse nice screen uses tftp to download fonts server is prom based or downloadable serial or ethernet based prom based approx $2800 downloadable approx $2500 + $500 for server tape..so the $500 gets spread out over all the workstations you buy. NCR -- IBM PC type keyboard with cheap feel 1024x840 resolution logitech mouse fuzzy monitor (may be just the monitor that we got) uses a braindead daemon that you have to run on the serving machine to download fonts. Yes, you would have to add yet another daemon to /etc/rc.local. server is prom based serial or ethernet based approx $3000 By the way: USE XDM to startup X on the Xterminal. Don't bother with the telnet session. It works great! An X-terminal can definitely reproduce the look and feel of a workstation! =================== Robert Brodersen (rbroders@hseq.oracle.com ??) writes: =================== I just went to Xhibition (today), and thus I have some new information. Needless to say Visual and NCD were big stuff, but there is a new guy in the Market with a twist: GRAPHON - the graphon line is to have a VERY dumb terminal (smarter than a VT220, but dumber than your average Xterminal), and put more intelligence on the host. GRAPHON runs a server on the host which translates from the X protocol to a proprietary protocol which amounts to graphics primatives (i.e. lines, circles etc..). The window management type activities are maintained on the host (with lots of virtual memory), and the terminal operates over SERIAL lines! They claim to perform well at speeds down to 2400baud, but I wouldn't want to go under 9600, and their demo was set up at 38400 (and the salesreps didn't know enough about hardware to lower it to 9600 for us to see). They also list at around $1400. Hardware is 14inch with a 12Mhz 68000. The thing performed reasonably well: ico ran okay, plaid was almost bearable, and ordinary text was fine. They admit to being slow at bit images (I couldn't even find xfish on their system). Savings on ethernet wiring could really make this the ticket if your budget is tight. They claim to be 10 times more efficient than the SLIP protocol, but I didn't see any side by side comparison. ===== [Comments from friends who have seen GraphOns: The screen is the same size as the ones in GraphOn vt200/textronix terminals, ie. pretty small. The screen manager is very intelligent, but the result is still a rather slow response. The GraphOn isn't quite a workstation screen replacement. It's cheaper than the alternatives though... ] ========== "Bob" Development Manager, Application Foundation, Oracle Corporation Belmont, CA (computer address lost due to mailer problems -- sorry) writes: =================== Our group has been evaluating several X-terminals for use in our development environment (software). We primarily looked at Visual and Network Computing Devices (NCD) X-terminals. They both are offering 19-inch models in the near future (Visual in July, and NCD in September). We hung these terminals off the ethernet connected to our Sequent (18 80386 processors in a box - very nice) and they performed very well. Our applications were primarily text - large emacs windows, a clock, load averages, some static graphs, but they performed very well. We were even able to play a reasonable game of asteroids (xfish was quite sluggish though). I benchmarked both terminals using xbench (gleaned from comp.x.sources) and they both ran around 8000 X-stones (a Sun-3/50 running untuned MIT X11-R3 := 10000 X-stones). Here is some technical information about the visual offerings: (Greg Bourdon is our Visual Technologies rep, (818) 884-7815) Model 640 (small screen) Model 790 (large screen) ------------------------ ------------------------ 12 Mhz Motorola 68000 CPU 16 Mhz Motorola 68000 CPU 1024 x 768 pixels same 82 Hz interlace refresh rate 68 Hz non-interlaced (aprox. 41 Hz non-interlaced rate) refresh rate 14" display (11" actually used) 19" display (almost that much used) hardware switchable ethernet adaptor software selectable ethernet adaptor 1 Mg Standard RAM/4 Mg Max RAM same No grey scale (stixel instead) same ROM cartridge with 768K of software same (software can also be downloaded) (includes: TCP/IP, executive, Telnet, NFS, server, 5 built in fonts, etc.) $1995.00 list price $2995.00 list price $700.00 per extra mg of RAM same $100.00 per year for upgrades same Available now Between 5 and 10 units available sometime in april. I don't have the technical info on the NCD's, but they are very similar. The 16inch NCD has a 16MHZ 68000 with a special chip to enhance blt copying - this helps text performance somewhat. The 19inch NCD has a 20?MHZ 68020(30?) which should improve performance dramatically due to a wider data path (the special blt chip is no longer needed) - They quoted performance figures in the 20-30,000 X-stone range. =============== Steve Chappelow Systems Programmer EMBA Computer Facility (sc@uvm.edu || uunet!uvm-gen!sc) writes: ========== I've had an NCD xterm for a few months and really like it. They run an MC68000 and download the X server from PROM or the network via tftp. We just got five more. The performance is superior to a sun 3/50, though the keys are a little cheaper. The screen is higher-res, 100+dpi. The video updates are quicker too. The communications overhead seems to be the limiting factor on some operations. I have 1.5 Mega of RAM in mine which is barely enough. The price is under $2000. The address is: NCD 350 North Bernardo Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043 (415)694-0650 ============ Finally Mike Harrigan of NCD writes: ================ The NCD16 from Network Computing Devices has been shipping since February 1989. We have shipped over 1000 units to date and have excellent acceptance for the product. The NCD16 has a unique 16" *square* screen with 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. It uses a 68000 processor with 1.0 to 4.5 MB of RAM. X11 server code is embeddedin PROM or can be downloaded from a network host computer. The NCD16 also includes Ethernet with TCP/IP for communications as well as a serial port. The list price for the NCD16 is $2550 including monitor, keyboard, mouse, ethernet interface, and software. Discounts are available for universities, volume end-users, VARs, and OEMs. If you want more information on the NCD16, please contact us at: Network Computing Devices, Inc. 350 N Bernardo Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043 (415) 694-0650 FAX (415) 961-7711 info@ncd.com Sincerely, Mike Harrigan VP Market Development mikeh@ncd.com =============== Hope this helps someone! Paul Coppi (coppi@zeppo.caltech.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jul 89 20:39:58 GMT From: lll-crg.llnl.gov!casey@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Subject: Review of the Graphon Optimax 200 X terminal Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu My previous posting about the Graphon wasn't really an evaluation. It was a product summary. I hadn't seen the Graphon at that point. I now have one and have used it for a while. The version of the software that came with it (1.2) wasn't very good, but Graphon emailed me updated copies of a couple of pieces (the server and their version of xinit) and I'm very pleased with what I've got now. There are a couple of minor problems (like no VAX binaries and difficulty in getting source for their server so I can recompile it on some of our weirder machines), but they're working on them now. My overall impression is that the company is responsive and the product is very nice. Specific points: General: RATING: VERY GOOD o The whole monitor, keyboard, mouse arrangement is very attractive. it's low profile and doesn't take up a lot of space. The monitor tilts easily both up and down and side to side. People who object to large keyboards will be put off - it's about 21 inches wide. The saving graces are that it's low profile as I mentioned above and only weighs about four pounds. Monitor: RATING: VISUAL: FANTASTIC, SIZE: USABLE o The monitor is wonderfully crisp. I have rarely used a monitor which is as easy on the eyes. It comes with an anti-glare coating which is extremely effective. The only down side is that the display resolution is only 800x600. Keyboard: FEEL: USABLE, SIZE: LARGE, WEIGHT: REASONABLE LOW, ERGONOMICS: GOOD o The keyboard is a little clacky, but feel isn't bad. o They have a very hoaky method of tilting the keyboard, but that's borrowed directly from DEC (in fact, it looks like the keyboard could have been manufactured by DEC from the look of it). They have two holes on the underside that you're supposed to stick two supplied plastic posts into to raise the back of the keyboard. o The keyboard cord comes trailing out of the right side of the keyboard which doesn't make any sense because the connector on the monitor box is on the left side. However, the cord can be pulled out of a small channel leading off to the right on the bottom of the keyboard and pushed into a similar channel leading off to the left with no real effort. You then have more than enough cord to move the keyboard almost anywhere. Keyboard layout: VERY GOOD (modulous some minor nits) o Less than and greater than (`<' and `>') are located properly above comma and period rather than the traditional placement on DEC terminals between SHIFT and Z. o There is a CAPS LOCK key (sigh) and worse yet, it's located between the CONTROL and A keys. You can configure the CAPS LOCK key to be a caps lock, a shift lock, or nothing, but so far that configuration is ignored when the terminal is in X mode. I've recommended that they add the ability to configure the key as a control key also. o The COMPOSE/META key is too tiny and located off to the left side of the SHIFT key. I like the design that puts large META keys on the left and right sides of the SPACE BAR. o They added three keys to the top of the DEC cursor movement pad immediately to the right of the main pad. Unfortunately they moved the standard DEC pad down by one key to insert these three keys instead of simply adding them at the bottom. This means that many people who are used to going for the standard DEC keys by position will have a hard time. Mouse: TRACKING: EXCELLENT, FEEL: USABLE o The mouse comes as a separate option which doesn't make sense given the market Graphon is shooting for, but it's only $125. The mouse also feels very light and the mechanism (two small 0.25in wheels) looks flakey, but I haven't had any problems yet and it tracks quite nicely on a variety of surfaces. Software: SUPPORT: EXCELLENT, X 11.3 CONFORMANCE: GOOD o First off, it should be noted that all you really need from Graphon is a server and a special version of xinit which they call xgoinit. Everything else can be run right off the X 11.3 distribution. The reason they need a special version of xinit is two fold: 1. xinit does it's best to disconnect completely from the tty it was started from before executing the server, and 2. xinit uses display zero as it's default. I won't go into detail on the tty issue because I haven't studied the subtleties enough. Leave it be that I think that there are some very subtle interactions involved which xgoinit handles very well. o Graphon distributes a reasonable complete chunk of the X 11.3 core distribution including client binaries, libraries, font files, include files, server, and special version of xinit. Since I already had X 11.3 installed, I'm not using anything except their server and their xinit. Maybe Someone else will choose review the quality of their distribution and installation targeting. They're default installation directories are /usr/bin/X11, /usr/lib/X11, /usr/include/X11, and /usr/man/man[13]. o As mentioned above, the terminal lets you configure what you want the CAPS LOCK key to be (CAPS LOCK, SHIFT LOCK, or nothing), but this configuration is ignored in X mode. Strangely enough, the terminal's configuration to swap or not swap the DELETE and BACKSPACE keys are not ignored, but that's inconsistency for you. If you're like me and absolutely detest CAPS LOCK, the standard ``xmodmap -e "clear lock"'' works fine, but this leads us to the next problem ... o The keyboard mapping stuff is very funky. Once you clear lock as above for instance, it's impossible to add back. You can also only add one keysym per modifier. And, every single character code has it's own keycode! So, for instance, there are separate keycodes for a, A, 1, and ! instead of having them show up as unshifted and shifted aspects of one keycode. But when all is said and done, it works well enough for me (xmodmap -e 'keysym BackSpace = Delete' -e 'clear Lock'). o The server screen saver doesn't work in X mode. It works fine when the terminal is used in its dumb == vt100 mode. o Surprisingly enough, the X mode isn't as susceptible to errors on the communications link as I thought it would be. While operating in V.22bis (2400 BPS), I lifted the phone handset and put it back down. Expectably, there were errors all over the screen, but the server and the terminal resynced without any trouble. A quick xrefresh and I was back in business. o Since their server wasn't configured with the rest of my X 11.3, the server couldn't find my RGB database or font files without being told, but that only requires that I add a few extra parameters at start up to tell it where things are. Overall I like the product quite a bit and I think that Graphon is serious about supporting it. They've practically bent over backwards to make sure I'm happy with the terminal. A good example was the fact that they were willing to email me new binaries when I had problems with the version that came on tape. I'm trying to convince them to release their graphics protocol to the public domain as a base for a standards effort. So far they've indicated guarded support for participating in a standards effort, but I can't say where this will lead ... I'm also pushing them to offer an emulation of their terminal for the Macintosh and other PCs. They say that they're considering this, but just don't have the personnel resources. Personally I think they would be better off just donating their server to the X Consortium and concentrating on offering their terminal and emulations of it. They have two interrelated problems in my eyes: their small size and cracking the market. Because of their small size and their unique approach to supporting X across low bandwidth communications channels, people tend to look askance at them and wonder what the future of such a product is if Graphon doesn't take a large enough share of the market. I think if they were to donate a sample copy of their server to the X consortium this would solve both problems: they could concentrate on their terminal and leave server support and development to others, and their protocol would become a de facto publicly available standard which would immediatedly open up the market. Oh well, these are obviously just my ramblings and it remains to be seen as to whether I can convince Graphon of their value ... One final comment: I'm using the Optimax 200 with a Telebit T2500. It doesn't work very well in PEP mode because of the echo delay, but works very nicely in V.32 mode with MNP. I can hardly wait for Telebit to implement MNP compression so I can see if I get any improvements with that. Casey ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Jul 89 18:59:00 GMT From: gilroy.pa.dec.com!klee@decwrl.dec.com (Ken Lee) Subject: more X terminals Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu A couple of people mentioned that my note on X terminals was truncated (the old xrn problem). Anyway, someone else mentioned the NCR, NCD, Visual, and GraphOn terminals. A couple of others are: Acer-Counterpoint (Santa Clara?, CA) Human Design Systems (Philadelphia, PA) Tektronix The Acer terminal is cheap ($1000), but performance isn't great. The HDS and Tektronix terminals have been announced, but I don't think either is shipping now. Both are big screen color terminals, with expected prices $1000 to $2000 more than monochrome terminals. Also note that NCD and Visual have recently announced 19" versions of their terminals, with the same number of pixels as the old ones. Other companies are rumored to be developign X terminals, including a couple of the big 3 letter word companies, but no announcements have been made. Other companies, such as MIPS and Tektronix, are reselling the NCD and Visual terminals. Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@decwrl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Jul 89 22:18:29 GMT From: hpfcdc!hpfclp!diamant@hplabs.hp.com (John Diamant) Organization: HP SESD, Fort Collins, CO Subject: Re: X terminal info (summary - long) References: <11234@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu > Four companies were mentioned: GraphOn, NCD, NCR, and Visual. > The name of NCD appeared most often. The consensus appears > to be that ethernet X terminals (NCD, NCR, Visual) can match the > windowing/display capabilities of workstations. The GraphOn which > works over a serial line is a "neat idea" that isn't quite up to snuff > yet. > > Keith McNeill (eplrx7!mcneill@uunet.UU.NET) writes: > ==================== I think you missed the point on the GraphOn terminals. As an office terminal, I would agree that it isn't quite there (certainly doesn't perform as well as an NCD), but it is really the only one that can work over modems and phone lines with acceptable performance (not as good as at the office, but what do you expect?). I haven't seen anything using SLIP that comes even close to acceptable performance (words like "unusable" come to mind). Personally, I don't consider the Visual 640 (the 14" -- really 11" interlaced version) to be quite there. I haven't seen the NCR, so can't comment, but between the NCD16 and the Visual 640, I'd say the NCD16 is a clear winner. I'd be curious to see the 19" Visual terminal, but the performance and poor quality of the Visual 640 screen really didn't impress us. John Diamant Software Engineering Systems Division Hewlett-Packard Co. Internet: diamant@hpfclp.sde.hp.com Fort Collins, CO UUCP: {hplabs,hpfcla}!hpfclp!diamant Disclaimer: These are my own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Hewlett-Packard Company. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: These are my own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Texas Instruments, Incorporated. -- tom (aisle C-4Q), ekberg@csc.ti.com
mccalpin@masig3.ocean.fsu.edu (John D. McCalpin) (01/18/90)
ekberg@ti-csl.csc.ti.COM just posted a summary of messages receivd
last summer about x-window terminals. I asked the net about the NCD
terminals specifically, and got about 20 responses over the xmas
vacation.
The responses were about 19:1 in favor of the NCD. Those people who
had compared it to the competition considered it superior, and the
people who have been using them like them. Two comments came up
several times.
(1) Several people said that the NCD19 is enough faster than
the NCD16 that it is a much nicer machine to work with.
(2) Several people said that the NCD16 screen is just too
small to work with the default fonts.
I am hoping to see one of the NCD color boxes soon....
--
John D. McCalpin - mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu
mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu
mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu