gmd@sirius.UUCP (George MacDonald) (10/22/88)
I was wondering if anyone in USENET land has used/seen the visual 640 X display-station, and if so what their impressions were. Also I am looking for some seminars or short courses on The X Window System, I know of seminars at the up comming UNIX Expo in NYC, does anyone know of any others in the near future? Thanks in advance, -- George MacDonald @ Northern Telecom ..!dartvax!sirius!gmd
meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) (10/24/88)
In article <214@sirius.UUCP> gmd@sirius.UUCP (George MacDonald) writes: > >I was wondering if anyone in USENET land has used/seen the visual 640 X >display-station, and if so what their impressions were. > Well, we have one here, as a matter of fact. It mostly works OK, but we are NOT amused when it does not. 1) The documentation is OK, but has holes (so whats new?) 2) I wish they would have used a faster processor; the 6800 seems to be just a tad too slow (or they just used a slow part). Of course, that could have been a cost-cutting move, too. Its a VERY small nitpick; the speed is really OK. Ive just gotten spoiled by the 386i. 3) Which leads to the biggest problem. The clients that come with the terminal (a login server and font server) came with documentation that they work on Sun 3 and 4 (or was it 2?) and the MIPS machine. OK, no problem. Shouldnt be hard to port to the 386i. WRONGWRONGWRONG. a) One of the files wouldnt compile at all, due to needing an include file that wasnt #included. grep saves the day. b) The socket addresses are screwed up. Turns out the compiled code has bigendian vs littleendian problems, and the bytes of the socket addresses are backwards. We fixed this, and voila! We can now get the Sun to try to open an xterm on the XDS (Visual 640). Try to open, I said. Instead, it completely resets the setup information in the XDS, so that all the addresses, and other stuff has to be reprogrammed. We hunt code some more, and find all kinds of similar stuff. In fact, we find a number of places they should have used the calls to get stuff from or put stuff to the Internet code, and they just stuffed/grabbed values. They ignored the very calls that were made for big/little Indian problem prevention. Seems there was more, but this was enough. We can log in via the built-in Telnet interface. The error logging works fine. The resolution is OK. The built-in mini-Unix, ping, etc seem to work ok. Odd events, however, tend to send the XDS server into never-never land, often with a black screen and sensory deprivation of the terminal. This can only be fixed by power-fail-reset'ing the terminal; they really should have a reset button or key sequence. WHY THIS IS POSTED. We would simply have worked things out with them by now if we could have. However, we wasted a LOT of time trying to get the terminal working, with its associated software, and CANNOT get a response from them. We have had a call in for several days, and have yet to hear back from them. They offer a 99%-done solution, but for us at least, the missing 1% is a little too much to take. I will post further developments. ===================================================================== Any opinions, facts, fantasies, theories, fallacies and/or lies which may or may not have been expressed in this posting or elsewhere, may or may not belong to myself, my employer, the building management, Atlanta, Fulton County, public and/or private utilities serving such, the State of GA, the USA, or God himself. No other warranties apply, implied or stated. For further information, call 1(800)HOO-HAHA. Said opinions, DO, however, reflect, in this case, the opinions of my immediate supervisor and everyone who has taken part in our trying to get this fershluginner terminal up!!! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Miles O'Neal decvax!gatech!stiatl!meo