speed of 386i windows

[Glenn Roberts]

> "the Sun 386i seems real slow to me.  I've logged in remotely to it while
> no one was signed on,  and it seems slower than any Sun 3 I've used.
> Someone said that the window system was slower in this release, but I
> wasn't using windows!"

In defense of the 386i, remember that on a color system it ALWAYS uses
color for SunView.  On a 3/60 or 3/110 the system will use the overlay
plane for most windows so the system is refreshing only one bit plane, not
eight.  The 386i has only 8 planes (no overlay plane) so all windows are
maintained to a depth of 8.  This is the price we pay for color.  We have
one monochrome 386i system and I feel that SunView works about as well on
it as it does on our 3/60.

Having said all that, I tend to agree that the 386i model 250 seems slower
than I would have thought it would be, especially since Sun advertises
this as a 5 MIP machine.

- Glenn Roberts, MITRE
  gfr%wolfgang at gateway.mitre.org