mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) (03/15/91)
Now that I have Mouse-X up and running (thanks to the authors for a job well done), is there any way that I can interface my NeXT here at home with the VAXes at school? Specifically, I'd like to call up the VAX, and run X programs on their machine. I can tell the VAX that I'm an xterm, and vi seems to work really well. However, if I try to run an X program, I get a message about not being able to open the display. I was once told that X only worked over an ethernet line. I would hate to find that that's true. Thanks, -- MikeC _________________________________________________________ Michael D. Callaghan, MDC Designs, University of Maryland mikec@wam.umd.edu
waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu (03/16/91)
In article <1991Mar14.204058.1474@wam.umd.edu>, mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) writes: >Now that I have Mouse-X up and running (thanks to the authors for a job >well done), is there any way that I can interface my NeXT here at home >with the VAXes at school? In theory, yes, but the pieces aren't there. You need a (supported) transport for shipping X protocol between the X clients and your Mouse-X server. If the NeXT had DECnet, you could, of course, use that. If your VAX has tcp/ip, there may be a supported mechanism for that as well depending on whose tcp/ip (I know Wollongong, TGV Multinet, CMU and DEC's UCX support DECwindows) but here's where all those discussions about SLIP or PPP for the NeXT hit home. Even though your NeXT supports tcp/ip, it supports it only over Ethernet. If you had SLIP on the NeXT and SLIP support on the VAX (I don't know which implementations of tcp/ip on VMS support SLIP except that TGV Multinet does) then you run as desired (well, maybe...X likes transport bandwidth and it's likely to be painfully slow over a 9600 baud line). > >Specifically, I'd like to call up the VAX, and run X programs on their >machine. I can tell the VAX that I'm an xterm, and vi seems to work really >well. However, if I try to run an X program, I get a message about not >being able to open the display. If that were a tcp/ip link and you had logged on to your VAX via telnet, you would issue the DCL command $ set display/create/node=yourNeXTnodename/transport=??? where ??? is furnished by the instructions for your VAX tcp/ip implementation on running DECwindows. > >I was once told that X only worked over an ethernet line. I would hate to >find that that's true. It's not true but might be fair to say that it doesn't work well over less than a 56Kbyte link (I have no firsthand experience with serial line operation...I am passing on what others have said but it may depend on what X clients you are running as to how satisfactory performance is...I hope to be able to find out firsthand someday when my NeXTstation arrives and after I have purchased coXist and that implementation of SLIP that was announced in this newsgroup recently). [...] c.f.waltrip Internet: <waltrip@capsrv.jhuapl.edu> Opinions expressed are my own.
nerd@percival.rain.com (Michael Galassi) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar15.120533.1@capd.jhuapl.edu> waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu writes: >In article <1991Mar14.204058.1474@wam.umd.edu>, mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. >Callaghan) writes: >>Now that I have Mouse-X up and running (thanks to the authors for a job >>well done), is there any way that I can interface my NeXT here at home >>with the VAXes at school? > In theory, yes, but the pieces aren't there. You need a (supported) > transport for shipping X protocol between the X clients and your > Mouse-X server. There is a low cost solution to all those who like me NEED slip. Buy an ibm/pc clone, put an ethernet board and a serial port in it and run pcroute. You can get pcroute off uunet and many other places (look it up in archie). I run 3 slip links, one to a vax running vms, the other two going to pcs similar to mine w/ pcroute, one hiding a next, the other an SCO Xenix box. The pc has two advantages. First is resources. With pcroute dealing with the serial link you only take the interupt overhead once for each ethernet packet that comes in, not for each byte. Second is cost. You only need a super cheap clone which you can usualy find used for ~$100 and an ethernet board which should be between $100 & $150. Software is free. My setup has an 8 MHz nec v20, a western digital WD8003e board, and three standard serial ports. The cpu currently is driving an Intel 9600ex at 19200 bps, a USR courier at 2400 bps, and a weco 212a at 1200 bps with no problems, I don't know yet how it will do when we up the speed on the two low speed lines. I may have to upgrade to a 12 MHz '286 for the job. Even then, the motherboard is only $90 mail order. Currently we use the slip links to distribute news (nntp), mail (smtp), xfer files (ftp), and general wide area networking learning. If you have unanswered questions about how things work drop me a line, I'll try to help. -- Michael Galassi | nerd@percival.rain.com MS-DOS: The ultimate PC virus. | ...!tektronix!percy!nerd
garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar19.004418.14226@percy.rain.com> nerd@percival.rain.com (Michael Galassi) writes: ]In article <1991Mar15.120533.1@capd.jhuapl.edu> waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu writes: ]>In article <1991Mar14.204058.1474@wam.umd.edu>, mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. ]>Callaghan) writes: ]>>Now that I have Mouse-X up and running (thanks to the authors for a job ]>>well done), is there any way that I can interface my NeXT here at home ]>>with the VAXes at school? ]> In theory, yes, but the pieces aren't there. You need a (supported) ]> transport for shipping X protocol between the X clients and your ]> Mouse-X server. ] ]There is a low cost solution to all those who like me NEED slip. Buy an ]ibm/pc clone, put an ethernet board and a serial port in it and run pcroute. ]You can get pcroute off uunet and many other places (look it up in archie). ]I run 3 slip links, one to a vax running vms, the other two going to pcs ]similar to mine w/ pcroute, one hiding a next, the other an SCO Xenix box. This sounds like a good use for a PC motherboard... a little better than using it as a controller of an automatic teller machine (which at least one three letter company does do :-). However, do note that SLIP is almost certainly too slow to support the X-protocol at any reasonable speed. ]The pc has two advantages. First is resources. With pcroute dealing ]with the serial link you only take the interupt overhead once for each ]ethernet packet that comes in, not for each byte. Second is cost. You ]only need a super cheap clone which you can usualy find used for ~$100 ]and an ethernet board which should be between $100 & $150. Software is ]free. One could conceivably also use a PC to get affordable color (for students :-) for the cube. You would need some version of X-Windows on the PC (lacking a PC version of NeXTstep) and the X-Windows clients installed on the NeXT. This would give a one step process for viewing color images using the processing power of the NeXT (to do the image processing) and the video technology of the PC :-). Of course you'd also need a PC Ethernet card and appropriate cabling. You could hide the PC except for the display (which could be something nice like a 1304 Sony Trinitron) and you'd never have to know you were using one! :-). Let's see: a $100 (used) PC, $150 PC video card, $550 display, and $150 Ethernet card, and whatever the PC X-Windows costs. ($950 + ?). This is an option that is just a "little" more affordable than $5600 (but then the functionality isn't anywhere close either...). Alternatively, has anyone successfully used an X-station (any manufacturer) together with the NeXT (clients running on the NeXT, images displaying on the X-station)? -- John Garnett University of Texas at Austin garnett@cs.utexas.edu Department of Computer Science Austin, Texas