apuzzo@boulder.Colorado.EDU (APUZZO ALFONSO A) (07/15/90)
I can get an Apollo/Mentor graphics DN660 workstation for what seems to be a fair price, but since I'm a relative unix newcomer and the seller is a Macintosh-aholic, I can't get any technical specs from him, (he is basically brokering them), my question to all you netters out there is "How much should a DN660 with networking hw/sw 300MbHD, 8megs RAM and a 1024x768x256color display go for, and how quick (or slow) are these things, is HP/Apollo/ (Mentor Graphics?) still supporting them, can they run SysV and/or Xwindows (would I _want_ to do that?)" I really could only afford to buy the system, (I'm a junior CS student) and won't be able to fix it unless something relatively trivial goes wrong) Oh yeah, what processor do they use, he said it was 32-bit, so I'm guessing (hopeing for a 68020/'881/MMU, not a 68010 :-) ) Please respond via email since I don't keep up with this group very much Thanks in advance! --> Tony <-- * * Be a non-conformist like me and don't use a .sig at all. *
burdick@hpspdra.HP.COM (Matt Burdick) (07/16/90)
> Also like the Apollo setup, AFS will let you access directories such > as /<hostname>/<path> (ie: /eddie.mit.edu/usr/tmp). I just received a reply to my query in comp.soft-sys.andrew (a newsgroup for Andrew-related topics) about AFS. Since this person works at Transarc and is more knowledgable about AFS, this is what they said: --------------------------------- Essentially, naming doesn't work that way (/dopey/usr/tmp -> ``/usr/tmp'' on machine dopey). AFS files are in a totally separate name space, not connected in any UFS sense to any machine's native file system. AFS directories aren't UFS directories. Usually the machines that store files aren't any random workstation, but rather dedicated, secured machines. Now, to AFS 3.0: /afs/transarc.com/usr/cfe is my AFS home dir. ``/afs'' is the mount point off which the global name space hangs. ``transarc.com'' is the name of my cell, which represents a lot of servers running on a lot of machines in that cell. ``usr/cfe'' is the path name within my cell--that is, using the root directory in the cell's root volume to get at the directory ``usr'', and using that to get to the directory ``cfe''. -------------------------------------- -- Matt Burdick | Hewlett-Packard burdick@hpspd.spd.hp.com | Intelligent Networks Operation
krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (07/17/90)
The DN660 is a bit-slice processor made to emulate a 68020 CPU (is made of custom chips with its own floating point unit). The DN660 was introduced back when the 68010 was the fastest chip Motorola had. The machine is roughly the speed of a DN3000 (12 Mhz 68020) for integer math and single precision floating point, but roughly half the speed of the DN3000 for double precision floating point. Apollo's hardware support is extremely expensive for these machines, as they are almost 5 years old. A service contract would run on the order or $500/month. As for price ... not more than a couple of hundred dollars. We recently tossed some of these machines out in the trash because we could not get any Apollo reseller to take them at any price. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)