[19] in 1993-clients
I've played with both and...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Mon Mar 9 21:53:51 1992
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1992 21:53:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@Athena.MIT.EDU>
To: 1993-clients@Athena.MIT.EDU
I like the DEC Maxine better than the RS/6000 model 200, but I consider
neither of them up to our standards.
It took about a minute to log onto the DEC, and almost 2 minutes to log
onto the IBM. I attribute this to the delay introduced by the AFS/NFS
translator. I suspect that the login time test is not fair and will not
be fair until there is an RS/6000 integration of AFS.
The DEC 5000/25 passed my nastiest EZ tests with flying colors. The
machine was quite fast -- perceptably faster than a DEC 3100. One test
was to image a postscript Athena owl. (Only possible on DECMIPS and
RS/6000 platforms employing vendor-proprietary PostScript extensions to
X.)
I was unable to run EZ and try my favorite nasty tests on the RS/6000.
This is because of a clash in the way EZ and the AIX 3.2 currently deal
with AFS. I compiled EZ in "AFS literate" mode. This enables us to get
richer error messages, and takes care of some problems we had in
non-supported parts such as Andrew messages. I didn't know until the
new RS/6000 that the "AFS literate" configuration would not run EZ at
all if it encountered a kernel without AFS. (Such is the stuff you
learn every time you integrate another operating system.)
I think a relevant thing to learn here is: Yes both the DEC 5000/25 and
the IBM RS/6000-200 have different operating systems, but the DEC one
has few enough differences that all our code just works. Not so the IBM.
I have a problem with the video on BOTH platforms. (I've mentioned my
various misgivings in the hall, but here is my official statement.)
I have a Sun IPC at home with a 14 inch monitor. It exhibits the same
focus problems that the DEC 5000/25 does. I compensate by making my
default Xterm font 8x13bold. I would like DEC to give us another
monitor and see if it has the same focus problems. It may well be that
we just add in an ongoing monitor focusing cost to the maintenance if we
go with this platform. Of 3 color monitors all with 16 inch size, only
the Sony has consitently been sharp in my experience. Any vendor claims
to the contrary should be treated with skepticism.
But there is more going on than focus on color displays. The contrast
between black and white is not the same as on a monochrome display. To
many people's eyes, the characters almost dance. Through the rest of
this note I say blurry but that's only because I don't know the term for
what happens on color displays that does that to the letters. It's not
just a focus issue.
I find the fewer lines down the DEC 5000/25 screen inconvenient. In
this respect is it inferior to my Sun at home. Yes, it has the same
vertical resolution as the RT's we're so familiar with, but we're able
to get readable Xterms with the 6x10 font on an RT. Because of the
blurring induced by the color display, the actual, usable visual area of
the DEC screen is smaller than that of the RT, or any other platform
excepting the old PS/2 VGA. This will be an inconvenience.
The IBM RS/6000 has many more dots on the screen, and that is good.
But the "new and improved font integration" for Info explorer is still
WRONG! The random application of 72 and 100 dpi fonts creates a real
mess. Our kludge for font integration will have to be re-introduced.
It is a real pity that the people developing RS/6000 software didn't
understand that the screen was 100 dpi.
DEC's "let's create yet another keyboard" elves have been at it again.
We may want to set a default X binding that make the AltFunction keys do
the same as ComposeCharacter keys. I keep pressing the wrong ones when
I use EZ and the window manager. The feel of the keyboard is
interesting. It's different. I kind of like it, but I'd have to ask my
fingers how they feel after 8 hours of it.
I summarize my findings:
1. The AFS problem on the RS/6000 will go away, and it will end up
feeling as fast as the DEC 5000/25. In that regard the machines are the
same.
2. The font inconsistency on the RS/6000 requires careful
re-coordination of several third party contractors to IBM. Unless
considerable pressure is brought to bear on IBM, this problem will NEVER
be fixed.
3. The lack of resolution on the DEC 5000/25 is an inconvenience, that
I'd could live with but would really rather not.
4. The DEC keyboard differences are inconvenient now, but will end up
being worth it later and the current layout is, at last, reasonable.
5. But to tell you the truth, I like my Sun IPC better:
The screen resolution is higher.
Provably robust monitors are available for it.
The product has been available for quite some time and is well understood.
The downside is that there isn't a REAL Athena integration, and that we
run the risk of having a fiasco like the initial deployment of the
RS/6000 and the lesser mess on the initial deployment of the DECMIPS
machines.
But as the most vocal critic of premature deployment of new vendor
platforms, I say that the Sun represents the opposite situation. It
think it would be a bigger mistake to deploy the RS/6000 with its
plethora of little operating system differences that are STILL jumping
out at us and its messed up font integration, or to settle for a the
blurry lower resolution color screen of the DEC 5000/25 than to go with
the Sun platforms.
The preliminary Athena integration has turned up fewer snags than the
DECMIPS, RS/6000 and possibly even the RT integrations.
The Sun operating system has been out in the world being debugged for as
long as our BSD operating system. This represents a unique opportunity:
We won't have to debug the vendor's operating system for them! (NOTE:
this consideration is invalidated if Solaris 2.0 is taken instead of
SunOS 4.1.)
The pricing and range of hardware is EXACTLY what we have called for in
our RFP.
Perhaps instead of worrying about whether we can withstand the low
resolution and blurriness of the DEC 5000/25 we should get the ELC and
the IPX on the table next to them and see how they stack up. The ELC
has sharp Monochrome graphics, and a very low price. The IPX is
probably the lowest cost color machine, and you don't have to get a new
graphics board to put a bigger monitor onto it.
It is clear that we will eventually deploy Suns as public workstations.
But I believe there is a real opportunity cost to viewing the Sun port
as being difficult: The RS/6000 port is still, in some senses,
unfinished. The present, experimental, Sun port is already more
compatible with the Athena computing environment than the AIX port!
There is a real risk we'll compromise ourselves into being saddled for
four years with an overpriced DEC solution that simply isn't up to snuff.
-wdc
Continuing my tradition of pointing out the nonobvious possibilities...
Thanks, as always, for listening.
