Robert.Wood@samba.acs.unc.edu (Robert Wood) (10/23/90)
Apologies in advance for any stupid mistakes or questions (1st post...) I need help! I've been reading this newsgroup for a couple of months now, and I'd like to ask for some information and advice. I may be taking over an Apollo network at the end of the year (at a place I once Co-Oped) and I really need to formulate some type of plan on exactly how I should begin to address certain problems. The situation is summed up as follows (there are some holes in my description of the new layout, I have been in school for the last few months [final semester] and have only second hand knowledge of some of the conditions) : - Our old Apollo netowrk (consisting of a mix of 330s, 3000s, and a 580.. all running Aegis 9.7.1) is being updated to several 400t units and a 400s (better be a 433 :-) ). Two of the 3000s will be retained for 9.7.1 compatibility (there is no effort going on now to insure that programs will be 10.2 compatible...I tried for almost a year to point out the stupidity of this, but who listens to a co-op :-( ). - All software in use is internally written simulation code. We only have Domain/OS, FTN, PAS, CC, and Dialogue under liscense...the majority of the code is in Fortran, Pascal is second, and very little is in C. Almost all of the code extensivly uses GPR calls, many have intricate Dialogue front-end menus. There is very little use of the lower-level system calls. - (Note, personal gripe here) Current plans are to not get any substantial perhipherals. I'd advised them to buy one less machine than the budget allowed for, and get new printers, an Exabyte 8-mm tape drive, etc. I found out recently that they didn't (great.. 3 Gb of disk space... and only a couple of lousy cartridge tape drives...). The rational is that we can get peripherals later (this from an agency that took over a year to buy a couple of lousy DN3000 ram boards!). Anyway, I need any advice and suggestions that I can get. Obviously, I will need to start moving software development away from Domain-specific tools and towards something more portable (the Domain UNIX environments and X). I have a limited working knowledge of SR10 (I was able to set up a 3000 as a test site for about a week before I had to bring it back up as a 9.7 machine). Specific topics I am greatly concerned about are: - SR9.7 to SR10.x. I know this must've been worked to death over the last couple of years, but I'd appreciate any comments or summaries. If anyone could direct me to a site from which I could ftp old transcripts of this newsgroup..... - X and Dialogue. How portable (if at all) is Dialogue (I've never worked with it myself)? Can X be easily called from any language other than C? Will I, for example, have to play tricks with the std_$call datatypes or whay? Can X calls be easily made from Fortran or <gasp> Ada (this is a DoD agency)? - Goodies. I'd like to be able to offer some of the more useful utilities.. GnuEmacs, GnuC & C++, GhostScript, TeX, etc. Where is the best ftp source for TeX? Is there a better place to get the Gnu stuff than from the MIT sources? Are there any other useful utilities? Is there a freely distributable spreadsheet anywhere??? Is there a list of ftp sites for apollo software? Well, you get the idea..... a babe in the (internet) woods... Anyway, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks in advance, Robert Wood EMAIL -- Robert.Wood@bbs.acs.unc.edu (yeah, a bbs...I'm on the skids :-) ) P.S. Any Huntsville, AL users out there? Are there many other Apollo sites in the Hunstville area? ...Alabama? ...Southeastern US? ...CONUS?... :-) ............No sig yet. If I had one it would include............. "I must be a loser. My two favorite systems are Apollos and Amigas" :-) --