walters@COMMUNITY-CHEST.MITRE.ORG (Chris Walters, Bubba) (12/21/88)
Xperts,
Thanks for all the responses to my request for information on the Acer
X terminal a few weeks back. I should have gotten all this together
ages ago, but...now that finals are done :-)
The best response I got was from Tom Dale and Mark Waddell at UNISYS
here in McLean, Virginia - an invitation to see the Acer in action.
They were preparing some software for a demo in crunch mode, and my
thanks go out to them for taking some time out to show me the Acer.
Although I wasn't able to form any rock solid opinions of the product
in that short time period, I hope to talk my management into procuring
an evaluation unit sometime in the near future. Until then, here are
the other four responses I received...
From Steve Miller <steve@umiacs.umd.edu> came a very good summary of
an earlier request he had made regarding X terminals to the net:
---- Response 1 ----------
To: walters@community-chest.mitre.org
Subject: Re: Acer Counterpoint X Terminal
Here's the summary I came up with the last time I was interested in
X11 terminals. There's some information (though not a lot) on the Acer
stuff in here, too. With any luck, this will be of some use to you...
-Steve
At long last, here's the promised summary of the responses I received
about X11-based terminals. Unfortunately, by far the bulk of the responses
were of the "I don't know, but I'd like to hear what you find out" variety.
Still, I hope that there's at least a little information here that wasn't
generally known...
The first response I got was from someone who wished, for various
reasons, to remain anonymous. A summary of what he said is as follows:
1) Visual. Visual is certainly already shipping, which places them
well ahead of most of their competition. (Most vendors I know of
are not yet shipping.) This seems to be a Tektronix terminal
emulator with new ROMs. This person complained about the screen
being dim and of low resolution, and complained a bit about
slowness. This comes with Ethernet and SLIP. This product does, at
least, basically work.
2) Graph-On. Shipping Real Soon Now; they're planning on
communicating between host and server via some special protocol, and
they supposedly give you a new ddx library to link in with the
server.
3) Network Computing Devices. This company was recently founded by
the founders of Bridge. My contact seemed enthusiastic about this;
he says it's got 1Kx1K resolution, a bright 17" screen, a 680x0 with
some special graphics hardware, and a downloaded server image for
ease of maintenance. Availibility: mid-to-late 1Q89, probably, at
a cost of ballpark $2400. Phone number: (415) 472-7466.
4) NCR. This is a 68020-based system, with a 1Kx1K, 17" diagonal
monitor. Availability is probably in 1Q89. I don't know a phone
number here, but it's probably in the 513 area code...
5) IBM PC. There are a few PC implementations around, most of which
seem to be based on the Locus software.
6) Others. Wyse and DEC may, according to this source, have
something or another cooking along these lines. I have no hard
information (and, actually, no soft information) about anything in
this area. Maybe a diskless Sun-3/50 or VAXstation 2000 is cheap
enough to consider, too.
I then heard from Tim Morgan (morgan@paris.ics.uci.edu), who told me
about a product coming from Acer. It's called the Xebra, and while it has
only a 14" monitor, the price is right: $1K. It uses an 8086 (boo hiss)
for now, but an 80286 version, and a color version, may be coming down the
pike sometime. The resolution is poor, at 640x480 pixels. Most of Tim's
information (if I'm reading his letter properly) was condensed from an
InfoWorld blurb. Acer's phone number is (408) 434-0190.
About the time I asked this question, there was a lot of discussion on
xpert about the Visual terminal. There were some very bad things said about
this unit, but they seem to have been the result of a misunderstanding about
the status of some beta hardware and software. Robert Scheifler
(rws@zermatt.lcs.mit.edu) said that his group has had some Visual 640s for a
while now, and they like them a lot.
Also, I was called by Ed Heinz of Visual. We discussed his product for a
while, and this is what I learned. He says it's based on a 12-MHZ 68000,
with anywhere between one and four MB of memory. It's got some custom
display chip to deal with the graphics, a LANCE chip to do the Ethernet
(with builtin thick/thin connectors), a serial port if you want to do SLIP,
and a mouse. (There's a PC/AT mouse interface available, too, if you're
into PCs for some reason.) You can choose a VT220 or PC/AT keyboard. The
display is 14" diagonal, and has 1024x800 resolution. It's got a TCP/IP
implementation and 11R3 in EPROM, and it can act as a "dumb" (probably with
terminal emulation, but no windows) TELNET terminal, too, if you want it to.
It's worth pointing out that Ed wasn't too clear (or perhaps I wasn't too
clear) on whether or not this beast does subnets and broadcasts correctly.
Apparently you can download some or all of the X11 code or the TCP/IP (I
don't remember which) across the net. This has been out for six months, and
runs $1995 for the 1MB version. There is a 20% educational discount.
While we were talking, Ed also mentioned the Acer product. If I remember
correctly, he says that he thinks it's basically a diskless PC running the
Locus software, and that it comes with only 640K of memory. He also
mentioned the NCD product, saying that it was much like the Visual box, only
$700 more. He says this isn't quite out the door, so the price may, of
course, change.
Ed can be reached at (800) 847-8252. He's also sending me a beta version
of the manual, so I may be able to say more after reading that.
That's about all I know. I'd like to find the time to call up some of
these folks and ask them about their products, but with the worm, I'm
running about one work week behind where I'd like to be... If any of you
find out anything more, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know. Thanks,
and I hope this is of use.
-Steve
Spoken: Steve Miller Domain: steve@mimsy.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!mimsy!steve
Phone: +1-301-454-1808 USPS: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
------ End of response 1 --------
This one came from Chris Moore <cwm@twg.com>:
------ Response 2 ----------
I got a quick look at the Acer X terminal at Unix Expo a month ago. Looks
good from a distance but when I tried to use it the mouse wouldn't track,
etc. Demos I saw from a distance when it was working looked quite slow,
especially in comparison to the Visual terminal. Sorry I don't have any
more specific information or feedback.
I would be interested in the other comments you receive.
- Chris
------ End of response 2
This one from P. Allen Jensen <gt-eedsp!jensen@gatech.edu>:
------ Response 3 ------
I like the visual better from what I have seen. It has higher
resolution and is faster (as far as I can tell). I have full
specs on the Visual if you want anything more detailed.
P. Allen Jensen
------ End of Response 3 -----
finally, Xev Gittler <xg00@gte.com> sent this:
------ Response 4 -----
Well, Visual has better resolution (1024x400 on a 14" screen) then
Xebra (640x480 on a 14" screen). I don't imagine you can get more then
one terminal window on the Xebra. Also, I talked to both companies,
and Visual seems to be a bit ahead on development then Xebra.
Xev Gittler
xg00@gte.com, or
xg00%gte.com@relay.cs.net
------ End of response 4 -----
Thanks for all the responses, and if I get any other information about
X window terminals, I will be sure to pass it on.
-- Chris Walters (703) 883-6159
The MITRE Corporation
McLean, VA 22102 MS:z665
walters%community-chest.mitre.org@gateway.mitre.org
walters@mitre.mitre.org
#include <stdquote&disclaimer.h>