markus&ti.com (Markus N. Richardson) (12/22/89)
I got alot more "me-toos" than I ever expected so here's the summary. First here is my original posting (in case you missed it): What I would like to know (about XSight specifically): Does XSight support extended memory yet? If so, what version of LIM EMS? What release of X11 is the latest version based on? What display resolutions does it support? Does it work with Orchid VGA Designer 800 coupled with the NEC Multisync 3D display? How about with the 3COM C503 NetCard? How much floating point does the Server code incorporate? Is an 80387 a necessity? How buggy is it? Is there a current buglist? How is support from Locus Computing? What version are you using? -- Markus R. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: the author of PC XSight (staying anonymous and abridging his comments both at his request) Organization: Locus Computing Version 2.0 and above support the hardware configurations I had asked about. Supports Extended Memory up to 16MB, uses X11R3, no floating-point, and up to 1024x768 resolution. Generally one should obtain the latest version of XSight which at this writing is version 2.1. The author is currently working with version 2.2 (internal name) which is working very well. No comments about when this version will be released officially which might be called version 3.0. No comments about what "new features" if any(?) this new version will have. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ramo@otax.tky.hut.fi (Pauli Ramo) Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Don't know about Locus' product, but I have sometimes installed a product called XSight (or was it XView), the manufacturer is Graphic Software Systems, I think. XSight supports extended memory up to 16 megabytes (it also runs on 80286, you know). Besides, I think you are mixing extended and expanded memory. LIM EMS is _expanded_ memory, that is paged between 640k and 1M and can be used even in 8088 machines. '286 machines and up also support _extended_ memory, that is located over 1M and can be used in the 'protected mode' of the processor. [Support is for] X11R3 Any, you can configure the graphics mode number and display size. Orchid [support]: see above. The parameters of the most common adapters are included. Don't remember if Orchid was on this list. 3Com: Yes. Any network card your tcp/ip program supports. XSight supports two tcp/ip packages: pc/tcp of FTP Software and Lan Workplace of Excelan. You need either of the products to run XSight. I have used XSight with pc/tcp and Tiara network cards. I have never tried '387. Never thought I need it. I have also tried X under unix (on SCO Xenix 386) and I think the mouse interface was too sloppy to do anything useful. Maybe I should add more memory, it only has 5M :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: polygen.com!bill@cs.utexas.edu (Bill Poitras) Organization: Polygen Corporation, Waltham, MA > Does XSight support extended memory yet? Yes is does, it uses a DOS Extender known as DOS16M. You can have up to 15 Megabytes of extended memory for use by XSight. > If so, what version of LIM EMS? LIM is an EXPANDED memory thing. Extended is just normal addressable memory that is only accessable in the protected mode of the 286 chip. > > What release of X11 is the latest version based on? The release is based upon R3, which is the version that has a good font naming system (as opposed to R2 which didn't.) > > What display resolutions does it support? It supports several VGA/EGA and special monitors. Most common resolutions are 640x400, 640x350, 640x200, 640x480, 800x1600. Some of the special; monitors is supports is the WYSE WY-700 display (1280x800 max res) , Tecmar Graphics Master (720x704 max res) et. al. > > Does it work with Orchid VGA Designer 800 coupled with the NEC > Multisync 3D display? How about with the 3COM C503 NetCard? > According to the release notes version 2.0 the Orchid VGA Designer 800 is not listed. That means that you PROBABLY (not definitely) will not be able to use any extended (non 640x480) modes. Call Locus to see if they have added any support for the Orchid card. They may have. As for the 3D display, I see no problem with that, as long as the card you use supports it. The 3COM 3C503 (as well as some other 3COM cards) are indeed supported. Call FTP Software Inc. to find out what Ethernet cards are supported by TCP for DOS (this the net package that works with XSight). FTP's number is (617)246-0900. They are located in Wakefield MA. > How much floating point does the Server code incorporate? Don't know. > Is an 80387 a necessity? No. You make it seem that it won't run on a 286, it does. > > How buggy is it? Is there a current buglist? It seems to be somewhat bugfree. It may crash with an error from the DOS extender, but it is not much worse than anything else you can find. > > How is support from Locus Computing? I found it to pretty comprehensable. I make a call to the support department, describe the problem, or error messages and within a day an technical support person contacts me to help with the problem. They appear quite competent. > > What version are you using? 2.0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: plonski@aero.org (Michael Plonski) Organization: The Aerospace Corporation I played with PC-Xsight for a while, both on a stock PC clone and a 386 machine. PC-Xsight allows you to run X on a PC with an ethernet card in it and run X-applications across the net. I had it connected to a network of SUNS using a 3COM-3C501 card. Xsight, I believe is the full X distribution that allows you to function as both a client and server. I only have experience with PC-Xsight which is summarized below. I used PC-Xsight for about a month, 6 months ago, and don't recall the version number. I have migrated to a Sparc station and have since passed my PC and Xsight onto someone else. Locus corp. First they sent Xsight documentation with the floppies for PC-Xsight. The floppies were labeled for the 8086, but they actually turned out to be for the 286/386 version. They did send a new copy which corrected these faults, but I found them difficult to deal with - it took a bit of phone tag to get things done. Memory. As I recall, the support for extended memory only allowed one to pull in one 64K page at a time. They were supposed to fix this in later versions. Display. I used to run it on a VGA screen with normal VGA resolution. I found that running in B/W was faster than using color. Bugs. This was my major complaint. If it ran out of memory, which happened often since one could not even run xrn with no other windows open, the results were unpredictable. Sometimes it would be nice and just indicate it was out of memory. Sometimes it would kill PC-Xsight. Sometimes it would lock up the PC and you would have to do a cold reboot to get things back. These three outcomes seemed to be about equally likely. Overall. I found the only thing that I did with PC-Xsight was run a few Xterm windows with their associated Tek windows. Memory was too tight to spare on luxuries like Xload. I used uwm since it seemed to take the least amount of memory. I set up my .xinitrc to open the maximum number of windows that it could handle and then avoided opening any new windows to avoid the problems in the bugs section. At times it seemed totally unresponsive on window manipulations and the processor might get very far behind the mouse which would screw everything up if you got impatiant and beat on the mouse. I don't recall the speed difference between the 8086 and 80386. In Short. I found PC-Xsight to be useful only for running multiple xterm windows and not as a general X-windows terminal. My group have since gotten a number of X-windows terminals in which are far superior to running X on a PC using Xsight. The same bugs exist when using a 386 or a stock 8086. I do not recommend this product.......... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: bellcore!pyuxf!rhf (Richard Flood) Organization: Bell Communications Research I work at Bell Communications Research (aka Bellcore), which does development work for the phone companies. We have used LOCUS and GSS X to support the lowest-common-denominator "workstation" for network graphics displays (that is, AT-w-EGA configurations). If you can handle the fact that they run only an X server, with clients running on a "real" X box (that is, UNIX or something similar), they are really pretty acceptable for most applications. On a 10-mhz PS/2, mouse/menu stuff is a bit slow but OK; on a 386-fortified PC-AT, performance is not bad at all. We stoped recommending LOCUS because their 2.0 version leaks memory rather seriously during pop-up and menu operations, leading to eventual out-of-memory X crashes. They are supposed to fix this real soon. However, GSS is cheaper (for us), faster, and does not leak memory. Therefore, we counsel our users to buy GSS XView. Both products now use expanded memory (or is it extended??? -- they use the one that requires raw, contiguous memory, not allocated LIM pages). Both products appear to use a product called DOS/16M to use the additional DOS memory. Richard Flood -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Markus R. markus@ti.com A .sig file? I don't have any spare inodes!