[14616] in Athena Bugs
re: sun4 8.0I: keyboard failings
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (biomorph@MIT.EDU)
Fri Aug 30 13:26:08 1996
From: biomorph@MIT.EDU
To: ghudson@MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:26:03 EDT
> use arrow keys and the 'backspace' key on a sparc classic
> they don't do anything. this is in both athena tcsh and emacs
> 19. i'm currently using the 'del' key instead of the 'backspace' key
> for the relevant function
Well, I've looked over your dotfiles, and I can't find anything which
would explain this behavior. Did you solve the problem on your own?
I can try testing with a copy of (the readable parts of) your home
directory at some point.
Are programs finding their app-defaults files okay, or are they
complaining?
---
that was the first time i'd used a sparc classic in seven eternities
and week. i'll try again to be sure it wasn't just user failure or
a flaky machine.
i've had no problems with sparc 4's or 5's.
---
On to the more interesting stuff:
> last i checked, sun's workstation prices weren't all that stellar,
> especially bearing in mind that both their hardware and their
> software is generally of the lowest common denominator.
Actually, Sun has very good prices on their workstations, if you take
into account the educational discount. The exact price we get is
confidential, but it's not at all bad.
And, although I'm a free software bigot myself, I consider Solaris a
cut above the operating systems most vendors ship. I've had an awful
lot of bad experiences with AIX, HPUX, Ultrix, and Irix.
---
Yeah, AIX gives me the willies. HP/UX and Irix have seen fit to give
me some troubles, too, though not as bad. I always thought Ultrix
was okay, as long as you keep in mind it was really ment to run
on a VAX 6 years ago.
---
> for instance, the dec 5k/133's, in floating point benchmarks i ran,
> were marginally outperformed by the indy's and the sparc 5's. what's
> up with that?
Decstations are a dead product line. You can't buy them any more.
---
speaking of which, what is athena doing with all their old
DECstations? selling them for scrap? i'd like to get a piece
of that action...
-bayard wenzel
