earle@MAHENDO.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) (05/23/89)
I just got a chance to try out a GraphOn X terminal last week. Quick 30 minute
impression:
(1) LOTS of games assume that you've got a screen which is BIG, at least in one
dimension. `xmille' doesn't fit length-wise. Same for `xwanderer'. `xqix'
doesn't fit height-wise. The GraphOn is 800x600 or thereabouts. It won't
replace a Sun-3/50 in my book until it's at least 1K by 1K. Same goes for
any X terminal with similar dimension shortcomings.
(2) I ran `mazewar' on the GraphOn, and simultaneously on the Sun-3/260C which
the GraphOn was hooked up to (running at 19200 baud), thus was running the
GraphOn X server. When I got the eyeball on the Sun server in range of
the eyeball on the GraphOn, I fired with the middle mouse button. Imagine
my surprise when not only the eyeball on the GraphOn got zapped, but the
GraphOn itself went completely out to lunch!! The terminal went completely
black, with some cryptic message on the bottom line that I interpreted as
`Something killed me and I died'. Occasionally, the still-running server on
the Sun sent some GraphOn-compacted stuff down the serial line, which ended
up as gibberish on the terminal. The terminal got reset; it thought that
it was talking at 9600 when I'd set it to 19200. All in all, the poor
GraphOn got its brain completely scrambled.
(3) The GraphOn seems to invent little `extensions': when I ran `ico', and then
obscured part of the `ico' window with the corner of an xterm, whenever the
icosahedron started to cross the obscured region, suddenly it jumped into
hyperspace and it *instantly* comes out on the other side! Hey, that's a
novel one; `Gee, they wouldn't see it anyway, no sense in pretending to
draw it and waste time, let's get right to when & where it reappears'.
Hmmn, haven't seen this `enhancement/optimization' on other servers ...
(4) Note to `mazewar' author: when the Sun eyeball was in range and approaching
the GraphOn eyeball, the bitmaps used to display the eyeball when it got
Real Close were completely inverted. I suspect that because the GraphOn
uses different values for the `black' and `white' pre-allocated pixels
(as returned by `xdpyinfo') that this is what caused this behavior.
Summary: The GraphOn seems like a good idea, but it needs a little aging ...
- Greg Earle
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
JPL on-site Software Support
earle@Sun.COM
earle@mahendo.JPL.NASA.GOV (Guest)