christ@tybalt.caltech.edu (Christian L. Keppenne) (05/02/89)
i just decided to get rid of my mac 2 to purchase a NEXT. (the price at caltech is $6500 +3% order fee +6.5% for the basic unit) and have a few simple questions concerning the machine and its use: 1) has anyone used the NEXT with an internal modem. is there an appropriate driver available? i have an epic 2400 internal taken from my mac 2 that i would like to use on the cube. 2) i understand that there does not seem to be any version of kermit around and would like to know how i can transfer files over the phone line (i hope there is a way). 3) has anybody used another scsi hard disk than the ones sold by NEXT? i have a rodime 100 meg internal from my mac 2and would like to use it until i can afford the 330 meg drive. 4) i found the man pages for the fortran 77 compiler but not the compiler itself. can i expect a standard unix fortran compiler to be issued with some later version of the operating system or is the $750 absoft compiler the only one around? c is great but i have a large numerical model with a lot of complex manipulations for which i prefer to use fortran routines called from a c skeleton. 5) regarding the above model: it runs fine on the macintosh, the sun, the cray x-mp and the cray y-mp but i encounter a segmentation fault when i try to run it on the NEXT. the error occurs at some point where a lot of dynamic allocation is done using calloc and malloc and i haven't been able to figure out what is triggering it. does someone know of an option to the linker or the segment loader or some other trick that would help me get rid of this problem? 6) is NEXT planning to market its machine in europe or will i be the only one to have one when i will eventually return there? 7) i have read of a software base at cs.orst.edu but have no idea of the username and password i should use to log in. does someone know of other similar software bases? 8) finally, did someone manage to have a next and a macintosh networked together in such a way as to allow transfer of text and graphics files from the one to the other? some (if not all) of these questions probably have very trivial answers but i would be grateful if some more experienced user were to take the time to point them out to me. thank you in advance christian e.mail adress(es): christ@tybalt.caltech.edu alubias@caltech.bitnet
jgreely@previous.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) (05/03/89)
(hint for the day: breaking lines at under 80 columns is a good thing. You'd be surprised how hard it is to read your article on most terminals) In article <10556@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> christ@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Christian L. Keppenne) writes: >i just decided to get rid of my mac 2 to purchase a NEXT. (the price >at caltech is $6500 +3% order fee +6.5% for the basic unit) and have a >few simple questions concerning the machine and its use: Are you buying a 0.9 machine, or waiting for 1.0? If you're not a Unix fan, you may want to wait for the actual release software. >1) has anyone used the NEXT with an internal modem. is there an >appropriate driver available? i have an epic 2400 internal taken from >my mac 2 that i would like to use on the cube. I haven't tried running any Mac peripherals, and I'm not sure they're supported, despite the mostly-identical bus. This one needs to be answered by NeXT, or at least one of the unofficial lurkers. I suspect you'd be better off selling the Epic and buying an external modem. >2) i understand that there does not seem to be any version of kermit >around and would like to know how i can transfer files over the phone >line (i hope there is a way). Well, no. The truth is that c-kermit doesn't work correctly under 0.8, and I haven't had a chance to dig in and debug it (preferring to wait for 0.9, when it should work fine). By the time 1.0 shows up, *someone* will have gotten kermit working. >3) has anybody used another scsi hard disk than the ones sold by >NEXT? i have a rodime 100 meg internal from my mac 2and would like to >use it until i can afford the 330 meg drive. This shouldn't be too hard, providing you're a fair hand with nuts- and-bolts Unix. Translation: you can't just attach it, click "format", and go. This might be possible under 1.0, but for now you'd need to read up on "newfs", and hack up a disktab entry (that should be *all* you need, but I haven't snitched a "spare" SCSI drive yet). >4) i found the man pages for the fortran 77 compiler but not the >compiler itself. can i expect a standard unix fortran compiler to be >issued with some later version of the operating system or is the $750 >absoft compiler the only one around? Tha manual pages supplied with 0.8 are a dump of the vax 4.3 tape. A fair number of the manual pages have no corresponding programs. 0.9 should more accurately reflect reality. >c is great but i have a large numerical model with a lot of complex >manipulations for which i prefer to use fortran routines called from a >c skeleton. I don't think f77 will be installed. No mention of it has been made to date, so I think they're pushing Absoft's. I could easily be wrong here (anyone?). >5) regarding the above model: it runs fine on the macintosh, the sun, >the cray x-mp and the cray y-mp but i encounter a segmentation fault >when i try to run it on the NEXT. Are you compiling it on the NeXT, or are you using the Sun binary (presuming sun 3)? The C compiler is buggy, but without seeing the code I couldn't say whose fault it is. 0.9 uses a much later release of GNU C, so if it doesn't work under that, the problem is almost certainly in your code. >does someone know of an option to the linker or the segment loader or >some other trick that would help me get rid of this problem? The correct way to get rid of the problem (assuming it's not a compiler error) is to debug the program. Gdb should tell you lots about what's wrong. If it *is* a compiler error, try using a Sun 3 binary of it, which should work. >6) is NEXT planning to market its machine in europe or will i be the >only one to have one when i will eventually return there? Marketing is open to question. The machine is built to run just about anywhere (image of technical writer on desert island with diesel generator and NeXT), so I imagine they'll start selling overseas once they have a sufficient US sales base. >7) i have read of a software base at cs.orst.edu but have no idea of >the username and password i should use to log in. does someone know of >other similar software bases? Anonymous ftp. Ask a local administrator how. The other places archiving NeXT stuff are j.cc.purdue.edu, umd5.umd.edu, and tut.cis.ohio-state.edu. Look in pub/next, for most of them. >8) finally, did someone manage to have a next and a macintosh >networked together in such a way as to allow transfer of text and >graphics files from the one to the other? If I had kermit working, I'd be set, but I haven't taken a look at it yet. As it is, I've got a Mac+ running on ttya as a secure terminal (running Mac-Kermit). If you want to transfer graphics, you'll need to find a TIFF utility for the Mac, since all the NeXT understands is TIFF (by default). -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)