nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) (12/09/90)
In article <HANCHE.90Dec7184829@hufsa.imf.unit.no> hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen) writes: >In article <1990Dec7.034301.29493@midway.uchicago.edu> rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) writes: > > I have looked at a lot of machines, and for floating point performance, > if you get all four processors and especially if you count on the > new 2x processor upgrade, the 10k is a very fine piece of hardware. >[...] > However: (get out your ear trumpets, HP), THE DISKS cripple the > DN10k. > >Just adding my two cents' worth here: Yes, for floating point it's a >great machine. However I am not impressed with its interactive >response when used by several users simultaneously. Apparently task You can add this to my "pads are not terminals" statement. Apollo's are not multi-user machines. They were supposed to make that obsolete too. Frankly, if there are things you like in Aegis/DomainOS, push to make sure they make it to the OSF/1 crossover. If they do, then Apollo's OSF/1 product is going to make it worthwhile to stick with Apollos. If they don't, then you might as well look elsewhere (unless the price/performance curve is better on the Apollo). It's for this reason that I think HP is making an incredibly stupid mistake in not supporting OSF/1 on the DN machines. I don't buy the support argument - if they support OSF/1 on DN's, then they can phase out support for DomainOS all that sooner. And supporting multiple hardware platforms has *got* to be easier than supporting mulitple OS's; even if you farm out the OS support to India or something. The only other argument is that my DN machines are going to be obsolete, and I don't buy that either. If I can be relatively happy running SR10.2 and X on a DN3000, then I surely don't think I'll be unhappy running OSF/1 on that machine. I seriously doubt that it's going to be either bigger or slower. In fact I rather expect that paging and context switching (my two biggest problems) ought to get *better*. -- Alphalpha Software, Inc. | motif-request@alphalpha.com nazgul@alphalpha.com |----------------------------------- 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | Proline BBS: 617/641-3722 I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.
hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen) (12/11/90)
In article <1990Dec8.165826.3094@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
Apollo's are not multi-user machines. They were supposed to make
that obsolete too.
Gee, wonder what we would have done if the sales critter who sold us
the machine had told us that ;-)
- Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@imf.unit.no>
Division of Mathematical Sciences
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAYnazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) (12/12/90)
In article <HANCHE.90Dec10183805@hufsa.imf.unit.no> hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen) writes: >In article <1990Dec8.165826.3094@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes: > > Apollo's are not multi-user machines. They were supposed to make > that obsolete too. > >Gee, wonder what we would have done if the sales critter who sold us >the machine had told us that ;-) No doubt that's why they didn't :-^. Seriously though, the same problem occured when people tried to load dozens of diskless nodes off of a single server. That configuration never got a lot of testing at Apollo, and in fact when the word came down that more machines had to be diskless people screamed bloody murder. Multiuser is even less likely. The ratio of machines-to-people in R&D when I left Apollo was probably close to two-to-one, and even the secretaries had nodes. Here's a total aside. Does anyone remember the original DPSS product? It included mail (both graphical and command line), a database program, a WYSIWYG text editor and (I think) a spreadsheet. All that before the Mac even existed. Somewhere I have a brochure for it (real pretty marketing material too, reminds me of Sun's stuff). This was integrated office software back in 1983. -kee -- Alphalpha Software, Inc. | motif-request@alphalpha.com nazgul@alphalpha.com |----------------------------------- 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | Proline BBS: 617/641-3722 I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.