krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (11/11/88)
I just got my SR10 distribution, but haven't bothered to unpack it yet as I am not up to dealing with a whole new set of bugs ... and now you tell me that I can't run (much less develop) my GMR based software on SR10 unless I go out and buy a GMR license? WHY IN HELL DIDN'T THEY TELL ME THAT WHEN THEY ASKED ME WHAT DISTRIBUTION MEDIA I WANTED!!!! As has been already pointed out, why would I buy a graphics workstation that doesn't have graphics software? Do I need to buy GPR, too, or is that still bundled with the OS? Does anyone else have the feeling that Apollo is being run by some really outstandingly STUPID S.O.B.'s? I'm also hearing a rumor that the diagnostics in the /sau directories became unbundled (or will soon become unbundled). Can anyone who has actually unpacked SR10 confirm or deny this? (and possibly stave off another round of flaming from this corner) -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)
burati@apollo.COM (Michael R. Burati) (11/17/88)
Dave, Scott, Dennis and Scott (hope I didn't leave anybody out :-) This is NOT a flame. I'm not saying WE're right or you're wrong, I just want to clarify some facts before even more people forget what they read in Usenet Etiquette, and start flaming without checking the facts first. Some of the flames may be justified, but a lot of them are from people that don't even have the software yet. The rumors kept building on each other... Following are some followup answers to some complaints. At the bottom of this message is the summary of what's happening with Apollo graphics products. > Well, I don't know where to start ... we can't run the > diagnostics anymore -- we have to wait for the repairman > to come down here and run them and *then* figure out > that he doesn't have the correct board; many of the more Not necessarily. There is now a password on DEX, that part is true. The license to use DEX is your customer service contract. I believe that what you have to do to get the password is call your local office, they should verify that you have a service contract, then give you the password to use DEX. I'll get a more precise answer to that as soon as I can. >I just got my SR10 distribution, but haven't bothered to unpack it yet >as I am not up to dealing with a whole new set of bugs ... and now >you tell me that I can't run (much less develop) my GMR based software >on SR10 unless I go out and buy a GMR license? This is not true. The GMR2D license is included, but not the actual software (see the description below) >As has been already pointed out, why would I buy a graphics workstation >that doesn't have graphics software? Do I need to buy GPR, too, or is >that still bundled with the OS? > Charging extra for GMR 2D, and 3D have been bad enough, but > now GPR? > the gprlib has to be there, of course, but are the /sys/ins files > available which allow us users to use the gprlib? As Dave Gorgen and Leonard Zubkoff already mentioned, GPR is bundled (RUNTIME AND DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS) and should always be that way. > software which used to be bundled with the graphics > hardware -- and it's not cheap! 2-D GMR is $1000 per > workstation ... According to the price list the license is bundled with each system and you pay for the media and documentation ($100). I believe the other media types are even less. (see explanation below) > ... Sun seems to understand that a lot of Universities buy > machines 1 or 2 at a time and they market them to us in that > manner, while Apollo keeps coming in and telling us what a > deal they'll give us on a DN10000 if we buy 30 midrange machines. Buying 30 DN3500's and receiving a DN10000 FREE!!! sounds like a good deal to me (and I'm not in Sales). It's a good deal for universities that are putting together a lab of workstations, but if you only want to buy one system, then go ahead. > inability to use object oriented file system info > without making system-dependent OS calls. Maybe I don't understand the question, and if so feel free to tell (not flame) me. It looks like you're asking for system indepent (ie: standard UNIX) OS calls to get non-standard (ie: info not available in UNIX) information from the file system. This does not make a lot of sense to me. How do you expect a file system call, that doesn't understand typed-files/with stream managers, to return this information? GRAPHICS PRODUCTS ================= The RUNTIME LICENSES (right to use) are bundled with each system for each of the following GRAPHICS PRODUCTS: GPR, GSR, GMR2D, GMR3D, PHIGS RUNTIME and DEVELOPMENT software is included in the OS for GPR The RUNTIME software for GSR, GMR2D, GMR3D and PHIGS is not included on the OS tapes. You already have the license for them, so you just have to order the media and documentation for the product you need (ie: $100 for a GMR2D cartridge tape and manual). ..Mike ================================= Michael Burati Tech Consultant Technical Marketing (no jokes about the contradiction) Apollo Computer Inc. burati@apollo.com My opinions wouldn't necessarily be supported by any sane person...
krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (11/18/88)
A few things ... I'm not talking about Unix calls returning AEGIS system info. I'm talking about Fortran I/O statements that used to be able to make use of the AEGIS system info, and have now been shorn of that value-added feature; thereby forcing run-of-the-mill Fortran programmers to deal with the AEGIS OS calls in order to do relatively simple operations. I could compile a long list of what features have been broken recently (ie. since 9.7.0 was released) including the fact that even the IOS calls can not (in some circumstances) distinguish between a Fortran output file written as a sequential file and one written as a direct access file. If someone who has 10 years of system programming experience is having trouble getting the new system to do certain previously simple operations, how do you think our graduate students are making out? These people are not EE/CS students! Our (Scott, myself, Casey, and others) main complaint is this: APOLLO HAS CHANGED OUR SYSTEM LICENSES UNILATERALLY AND NOT TOLD US, THE SALES FORCE, OR THE FIELD SERVICE OFFICES ABOUT IT UNTIL WE ALREADY HAD THE SOFTWARE IN HOUSE! My field service office manager just found out yesterday that "Chelmsford has not been able to resolve the licensing issue on DEX, so they have authorized us to give out the password to our customers" (to paraphrase a bit). From what he said, it sounds like Chelmsford intended to unbundle the diagnostics, but is now having second thoughts. The fact that DEX tells you that you need a license to run the software (not that you need to call your field service office) tends to support this view. In any case, Apollo has not been up-front about this issue, even with their own field service personnel. About the availability of run-time licenses ... are you sure about those products other than 2D GMR? Our salesman, whose office is in the Chelmsford headquarters, wasn't. He is still looking into it for me (I called him two days ago). The first we heard about the runtime libraries *not* being available, was after we got our shipment of SR10 (two weeks ago). It would not be quite so bad if what you say is true. But then again, why can't Apollo simply tell us that we needed to order seperate media at the same time we put in our order for the OS? Why couldn't they us (tell us) that SR10 could not be loaded across the network onto a freshly INVOL'd disk? They sent me a set of floppies as boot media for SR10 and a set of magtapes to load the system from. This is not too unreasonable since you can't boot from magtape, and it would take a horendous number of floppies to hold the OS. The problem is that my magtape drive is on a DSP80 -- which doesn't (and can't) have a floppy drive -- and my DN3000's don't (and can't) have a magtape attached. I do have a DN560 with a cartridge drive and a multibus (which could hold the magtape interface), but that machine contains our master registry, so I can't do the intial load of SR10 onto it (plus the fact that I don't have the bootable cartridge). None of the restrictions on loading SR10 were made available to me until I opened my box of tapes -- AND I TOOK THE STUPID 'TRANSITION TO SR10' CLASS WHEN IT WAS OFFERED! Now I am waiting for another shipment of cartridges so I can try this again. More unaswered questions ... what about my development licenses? I bought my nodes when 2D GMR was bundled with the OS. Presumably, I still own development licenses for 2D GMR. Is there a different set of media that I have to order to get the insert files? Do I have to have 2D GMR under maintenace contract to do this, or can I simply re-order media from time to time? I bought some of my nodes back when a 3D GMR license was bundled with the OS and paid for at least one set of media and several sets of manuals. When 3D GMR was unbundled from the OS we did not take out a seperate maintenance contract on it because it wasn't being used. Can I now put it under contract (do I still own licenses for those machine) ? Can I simply re-order media for 3D GMR? Our salesman doesn't know, and has not yet been able to find out. Part of the problem is that he's being hit all at once from all of his customers because this is the first time that any of us have heard about the changes. My field service manager told me yesterday that he had just gotten a notice saying that since we were a university customer we would only have to pay the 1-node maintenance price for C, FTN, Pascal, DSEE, DPAK, and whatever else is on the list of products that university customers get bundled licenses for rather than the 25-node maintenance price (we will have 25 nodes shortly). Can you confirm this? My salesman hadn't heard of this yet. This would be a lot more useful than a buy-30-get-1-free offer. I don't buy machines 30 at a time, I don't even buy them 10 at a time. I do buy them 2 or 3 at a time, and over half of the ADUS university SIG members that we polled at the ADUS conference are similar to us -- independent research groups that each buy a couple of machines off of their seperate research contracts and then tie them into a single network. Software licensing and maintenance, which affects the entire group, is a lot more important then deals on hardware that we can't afford at any price. The major point is: we don't know what is going on. Our normal contacts (sales and service) don't know what is going on. The people running the SR10 transition classes don't know what is going on (they couldn't even tell us whether or not we could run backups from our DSP80 [which has the tape drive], just that the DSP80 could not run SR10 and would have to stay at Sr9.7). I'm being shipped software that I can't load, that does not have all of the components that I'm currently using (and currently paying maintenance on!), that will not run well on over 1/3 of the machines currently in my network (and which have no upgrade path), and no one at Apollo has been able to give me a clear picture of what is going on. I'm getting bits and pieces from various different contacts, some of them supporting each other, and others contradicting each other. How do you expect me to feel about this? -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)
achille@cernvax.UUCP (achille) (11/18/88)
In article <3fb4f835.7c9c@apollo.COM> burati@apollo.COM (Mike Burati) writes: > > Well, I don't know where to start ... we can't run the > > diagnostics anymore -- we have to wait for the repairman > > to come down here and run them and *then* figure out > > that he doesn't have the correct board; many of the more > >Not necessarily. There is now a password on DEX, that part is true. >The license to use DEX is your customer service contract. I believe that I think this is really a bad idea if it is like that: I buy a machine, I don't get a service contract and Apollo does not allow me to run diagnostics ? Why ? Is it my machine or not ? May I know what is going wrong on MY (not Apollo's) CPU ??? > >I just got my SR10 distribution, but haven't bothered to unpack it yet > >as I am not up to dealing with a whole new set of bugs ... and now > >you tell me that I can't run (much less develop) my GMR based software > >on SR10 unless I go out and buy a GMR license? > >This is not true. The GMR2D license is included, but not the actual software ... (lines deleted) ... >According to the price list the license is bundled with each system >and you pay for the media and documentation ($100). I believe the >other media types are even less. (see explanation below) And you mean that for 100$ Apollo is giving all this shit to customers ? This is even more ridicolous than having to pay 1000$ for GMR2D. Just the paper work for a similar order could cost to our organization around 100$ !!! So I can get GMR2D without paying 1000$, what about 1) delivery time (in Europe), 2) software maintenance prices for GMR2D, I think this was included in the OS maintenance before, and with DomainOS ? How much I have to pay ? > > inability to use object oriented file system info > > without making system-dependent OS calls. > >Maybe I don't understand the question, and if so feel free to tell (not flame) me. >It looks like you're asking for system indepent (ie: standard UNIX) OS calls to get >non-standard (ie: info not available in UNIX) information from the file system. May be this means that Apollo had to expand Unix toward Aegis (i.e. distributed environment) rather than downgrade Aegis toward Unix, Sun apparently has been quite successfull to expand Unix whether Apollo is quite unsuccessfull in downgrading Aegis. Mike, I would like to see more of this kind of info on the net, but I'm pessimistic as it took a long series of flames going around before somebody decided that was time to answer. A few general remarks about Apollo and its customers: 1) looks like a lot of people are missing this kind of info, 2) Apollo has to think more carefully about its strategy WELL in advance. it is real difficult to decide which package to use for a long lasting project if Apollo keeps changing direction every now and then. Here are two examples: I was told two (2) years ago by various people in Apollo that GPR was dead (planned obsolescence and degrading performance), GSR was the way to go at the low level, GMR[23]D were the high level packages to use and eventually migrate to Phigs. Now you tell me that GPR is going to stay around forever and that special action is required to get any of the other graphics packages, how this fits with 1987 strategy ? I was being told 2 years ago that RFS was the way Apollo was going for hetereogenous networking. Today the only product I know of is NFS. This was not intended to be a flame, if you think it is, I apologize. Achille Petrilli Cray and Personal Workstation Operations