staatsvr@asdcds.cds.wpafb.af.mil ( Vern Staats;;) (12/06/89)
In article <3482@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> kay@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Jon Kay) writes: > > Another possibility you might want to consider is buying Amiga-500's; > X Windows software is definitely available for them. If the > server is written half decently, it ought to be ungodly fast.. (mis-quoting HAL-9000, with a faint mechanical whirrr in the background...) "Without your Ethernet connection, Dave, I'm afraid you'll find that a bit difficult" :-) Seriously, I think the Amiga 500 would make a great (medium-res) X terminal, but the only way I can think of to get ethernet would be to use an A2000 ethernet card in an expansion box. The 3rd party expansion boxes shouldn't be anywhere near as flaky on an A500 as they are on the A1000, still I've yet to hear of anyone actually doing it. If anyone has seen an Amiga 500 running X (either over ethernet or SLIP) please drop me a line. ---- /// INET: staatsvr@asd.wpafb.af.mil Vern Staats (513) 255-2714 \\\/// UUCP: -Maybe- nap1!asd!staatsvr ASD/SCED WPAFB OH 45433 \XX/ Boolean orthogonal(char *my_opinions, char *employer_opinions) {return(TRUE);}
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (12/06/89)
| From: staatsvr@asdcds.UUCP (Vern Staats) | | "Without your Ethernet connection, Dave, | I'm afraid you'll find that a bit difficult" :-) | | Seriously, I think the Amiga 500 would make a great (medium-res) X terminal, | but the only way I can think of to get ethernet would be to use an A2000 | ethernet card in an expansion box. The 3rd party expansion boxes shouldn't | be anywhere near as flaky on an A500 as they are on the A1000, still I've | yet to hear of anyone actually doing it. If anyone has seen an Amiga 500 | running X (either over ethernet or SLIP) please drop me a line. (sigh) Doesn't anyone read what I post any more. Probably not. I certainly don't. In any case, here we go again: You can get very good X11 performance across a serial line as long as you don't insist on running the entire X11 server on the workstation. My GraphOn OptiMax 200 is a proof of concept. I haven't written all these articles about the OptiMax 200 because I'm being paid by GraphOn. I wrote them because I believe that GraphOn is the only company which has attacked the problem with the correct solution. If NCD, Visual and all the other X11 terminal manufacturers would adopt this better technique I'd drop all my objections to their products. I'd really like to see a standard for Remote X11 Support developed (a remote procedure call interface to implement the dix/ddx X11 server interface.) I've now done all the conceptual design work for it, but I just don't have the time to pursue it further. If such a standard were finished however, it would be trivial to run X11 on PC, Macintoshes, Amigas, etc. and get good performance over serial lines. If you're interested in what's been written so far, just drop me a line and I'll send you the current draft rational and protocol outline. Casey Copyright 1989, Leith (Casey) Leedom. No part of this work may be republished in whole or part without the entire text of this copyright notice and disclaimer. My opinions are not necessarily those of the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, The United States Department of Energy, or any part of the California or United States governments. I speak for myself only. My opinions do not represent any bias of the aforementioned organizations.
eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (12/06/89)
| From: staatsvr@asdcds.UUCP (Vern Staats) | | "Without your Ethernet connection, Dave, | I'm afraid you'll find that a bit difficult" :-) | | Seriously, I think the Amiga 500 would make a great (medium-res) X terminal, | but the only way I can think of to get ethernet would be to use an A2000 | ethernet card in an expansion box. The 3rd party expansion boxes shouldn't | be anywhere near as flaky on an A500 as they are on the A1000, still I've | yet to hear of anyone actually doing it. If anyone has seen an Amiga 500 | running X (either over ethernet or SLIP) please drop me a line. To answer the actual question here, yes it's been done (Ethernet and X on an Amiga 500 using an expansion box), but it is not something I would recommend. At current prices, the approximate $300 savings (over an Amiga 2000 based similar configuration) is not worth the additional desk clutter. Besides, once you add a hard disk and extra memory, the SYSTEM prices get even closer (but still less than other desktop systems which can be used as X servers). Now, just to make sure the message is not misread, if you want a color X server that is also a workstation, I would reccomend an Amiga 2000 with the Ethernet board, extra memory, the flickerFixer (video board which drives multisync monitors at 31KHz), and a good monitor. I prefer such a system to Sun workstations (Hmmm, maybe that's why I'm responding to this message from an Amiga rlogged -- over Ethernet -- into a Sun. :-) Robert I. Eachus -- Robert I. Eachus with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
amercer@thor.wright.edu (Art Mercer) (12/08/89)
From article <303@nap1.cds.wpafb.af.mil>, by staatsvr@asdcds.cds.wpafb.af.mil ( Vern Staats;;): >> In article <3482@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> kay@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Jon Kay) writes: >>> >>> Another possibility you might want to consider is buying Amiga-500's; [... omitted ...] >> Seriously, I think the Amiga 500 would make a great (medium-res) X terminal, >> but the only way I can think of to get ethernet would be to use an A2000 >> ethernet card in an expansion box. The 3rd party expansion boxes shouldn't [... omitted ...] It's not only getting the ethernet hooked up, the user will have to contend with the flickering high-res screen. While non-interlaced high-res is promised for future updates from Commodore, getting rid of it now requires an additional $400.00 outlay for a "Flicker-Fixer" board. Again, this board is intended for a 2000/2500, not the 500. The Amiga does work well with X, we have two A2500's set up now and have been very pleased with their performance. (BTW: one of these replaced an A2000 with also performed very well.) Both the X implementation and the ethernet hardware and software have performed flawlessly. >> INET: staatsvr@asd.wpafb.af.mil Vern Staats (513) 255-2714 \\\/// >> UUCP: -Maybe- nap1!asd!staatsvr ASD/SCED WPAFB OH 45433 \XX/ >> Boolean orthogonal(char *my_opinions, char *employer_opinions) {return(TRUE);} Art Mercer Associate Director, Academic Computing Resources Wright State University Col Glenn HWY Dayton, OH 45435 BITNET: amercer@wsu.bitnet ---