rwl@franklin.ee.umr.edu (Wayne Little) (03/28/91)
We've been offerred 3 Alliant FXs with 16 user OSs, & FORTRAN & C Compilers.
I've worked with UNIX computers for years, but other than being familiar with
the name, know nothing about Alliant computers.
I haven't been the primary contact, but I'll have to make them "work" with
the rest of the things we have, so a few questions:
(Basically I've got to decide if these will be worth the additional maintenance
and administrative costs - so any info. you could provide in that light would
be appreciated.)
1. Can someone give me a phone or e-mail address for an Alliant sales office?
(I can get most of the details I need from them hopefully.)
2. Are those of you with Alliant FXs generally happy with them?
a. performance? [references to any benchmarks?]
* Unless they are really hot performers, we'd probably be better off
buying more cpus for our Solbourne (mulitprocessor sun-clone)
Comments?
b. reliability? [do we need hardware maint.?]
c. telephone support? [is it good? is it reasonable ($$)?]
d. pointers to any reviews?
3. Do they integreate well into an internet environment (name service, etc.)?
If so, what level of the operating system do I need (at least) to do this
reasonably well?
4. Suggestions as to what I should ask about the current owner?
e.g. are there lots of models of the FX?
Please e-mail to me, and if more than 1 person asks for a summary, I'll
summarize back to the list.
Thanks in advance,