n138ct@tamuts.tamu.edu (Brent Burton) (05/04/91)
Now the replacement wind.o thread of messages is starting to mention mgr. I noticed one post concerning a reluctance to hack on the hardware. Well..... For any users out there who have been contemplating the Vidpal modification to run MGR or just allow graphic access, I'd like to make a few points. I have built several circuit kits in the past (some worked, some didn't, some were fixable...) and the vidpal is one of the easiest to build. I received my kit this week (Tuesday, I think) and just over 1 - 1/2 hours later, I had the vidpal built and installed with no problems. Brian Botton supplies good instructions and the hardest part of the modification is making sure you are very careful with the 68010 reinstallation onto the motherboard. I had the machine back up and running in about two hours. MGR is very nice; unfortunately there is not a lot of software available that capitalizes on it. The vidpal emulator, while a good previewer for MGR, is just too slow because of the nature of its method. If you have been using the vpe and are happy with access to video ram, you'll definitely want the vidpal - text in the mgr windows will actually scroll at a bearable rate. Anyway, I just wanted to make a few comments in favor of vidpal/mgr. It really is not that hard. Brent Burton n138ct@tamuts.tamu.edu
daveb@ingres.com (Dave Brower, UNIX Group, [415] 748-3418) (05/06/91)
In <15777@helios.TAMU.EDU> n138ct@tamuts.tamu.edu (Brent Burton) writes:
[ stuff in priase of vidpal ].
Let me second his comments. I had my vidpal working in a hell of a lot
less time than I'd spent fiddling with the blit code in MGR to get it to
compile with Gnu-CC, and when I was done, some 'rops' tests I'd run with
the vidpal-emulator driver in ~45 seconds were running in 0:04. This is
a _noticabable_ improvement, as they say, and make MGR usable.
Those using MGR seriously will almost certainly want to have the "vtem"
package running on both their local machine and any remote ones they
access regularly. VTEM is not without problems (no graphics chars ofr
function key mapping), but for much of the world the only good terminal
is still close to a VT100.
My experience installing MGR suggests that it is still not ready for the
masses. While all of the problems I had turned out to be my own fault
once I'd figured them out, it's still far from easy to do. Problem #1
is that you don't know where to load the source, or what to use as the
INSROOT directory, and this causes a good deal of grief.
A binary distribution would help a lot.
I'm still reserving judgement on the whole experience. I have had
difficulty using the rmgr program on Suns (everything hangs). I haven't
figured out why I can't get my ^U kill character to work either. But
it's clearly good enough that I have no plans to run UA for anything but
routine administration ever again.
cheers,
-dB
--
"If it were easy to understand, we wouldn't call it 'code'"
David Brower: {amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, sun}!rtech!daveb daveb@ingres.com