Sun-Spots Digest, v6n106
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at RICE.EDU
Thu Jun 9 15:38:11 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 8 June 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 106
Today's Topics:
The archive server again
Franz Lisp is available through SUG
Re: Xylogics 753
The following SUN3/SUN4 benchmark was submitted by a colleague
3/50, 3/60 keyboard: <return> & <del>
sunview window dumper wanted
Vt100tool wanted
Looking for a graphics editors for Suns
Anti-Glare/Polarizing Screen for 19" screens?
A question about NeWS availability in Switzerland
Sun 3-50 SCSI peripherals?
Sun 4: timesharing & I/O limitations?
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 88 23:47:02 CDT
From: William LeFebvre <phil at Rice.edu>
Subject: The archive server again
Astronomical archive requests, Batman!
Well, it turns out that there is quite possibly another reason that people
get an acknowledgement but no later delivery from the archive server. It
seems that I haven't checked the queue of pending requests very recently.
There are currently over 400 requests waiting for final processing and
delivery. The server sends out the smallest requests first, regardless of
the order in which they were received. This means that someone with a
fairly large request might wait a long time before seeing it. The oldest
requests waiting date all the way back to May 9 and they are about 97K in
total length. So how did this happen? Well, I think I have a parameter
set too low. I'm going to increase it a substantial amount and these
things should start going out a little faster. I am also preparing the
latest version of the server software for use. This new version should
fix a few bugs and have a few features that people have asked for. I
should install it sometime next week. So be patient with those large
requests. I will probably be mailing out a queue summary to those who
have requests still waiting so that you will have some sort of idea where
you stand.
William LeFebvre
<phil at Rice.edu>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 14:40:43 EDT
From: yunexus!mike%ists.YORKU.CA at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Franz Lisp is available through SUG
The PD version of Franz Lisp is available on the 1987 Sun User Group tape.
It is reliable, customizable, and very cheap. Many thanks to Barry Shein
et. al. for makeing this run. See you Sun salesman for info on how to
join the Sun User Group.
PS. PD Ingres is on it too.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 31 May 88 18:19:26 BST
From: mcvax!ritd.co.uk!mr at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Re: Xylogics 753
Our experience with Xylogics, even on the "wrong" side of the pond, is
pretty good. We have had a 7053 under evaluation for a few months running
under SunOS 3.2 (Xylogics supplied device driver) on a 3/1260 with a
Fujitsu M2333K. No problems. I don't expect any further problems under 4.0
:-).
Seriously, I've been assurred by both Sun and Xylogics that the 7053 is
fully supported under 4.0. I have confirmed this against a recently
arrived 4.0FCS Release Notes. Note that these notes DO NOT mention the
Interphase, which up to then I had expected to have a supported device
driver.
For those interested, the 7053 is a Sun sized card (no adaptor needed)
which they commissioned from Xylogics. Sun are uppity about the world at
large buying this board, so Xylogics are putting together the 753. The
753 is really the 754 with the 7053 firmware, so that it is functionally
identical to the 7053. However, the current 7053 cannot cope with 3Mb/sec
drives whereas the 753/754 can (see the new Fujitsu M238xK drives if you
wonder why this is relevant). Of course, to get a 753 in to a Sun requires
a VME 2-3 adaptor and internal cabling; I gather Xylogics are working hard
to supply complete and neat solutions Looks like we are going to find out
very soon.
BTW, we use lots of Fujitsu M23{33,44}K "bricks" and find them pretty
good. Anyone care to speculate why Sun have migrated to (by my standards)
bulky units for their new 900Mb drives?
BTW2, anyone tried a 754 yet?
I don't work for Xylogics or Sun, etc..
Martin Reed, Racal Imaging Systems Ltd
uucp: mr at ritd.co.uk,{mcvax!ukc!ritd,sun!sunuk!brains}!mr
Global String: +44 252 622144
Paper: 309 Fleet Road, Fleet, Hants, England, GU13 8BU
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 88 21:01:05 BST
From: James Davenport <jhd%maths.bath.ac.uk at nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: The following SUN3/SUN4 benchmark was submitted by a colleague
Prof. R. Sibson - rs at uk.ac.bath.maths
These benchmark results are obtained from a program written in FORTRAN 77
to load up a pseudorandom (but repeatable) symmetric matrix, find its
eigenvalues and eigenvectors by Householder tridiagonalisation followed by
implicit QL iteration, and check each eigenvector by direct multiplication
by the matrix. The computation is in single precision except that certain
inner products are accumulated in double precision. Sun-3's are running
Release 3.5 and the standard f77. The Sun-4 is running Sys4-3.2 and
Fortran 1.05. Times (seconds) are for a 100 by 100 matrix, with
repetitions of the same computation giving times which differ by less than
5%. Each figure here is for the first such test which was run.
No opt -O
Sun-3/160, 68881 136.9 85.7
Sun-3/160, fpa 68.8 20.7
Sun-3/260, 68881 113.1 76.9
Sun-3/260, fpa 45.2 15.6
Sun-4/260 38.7 13.5
A possible interpretation of these results is as follows. The program is
heavily floating-point intensive, with integer computation involving
little more than loop control and array addressing. The Sun-3 68881
results are dominated by the difference in clock rates between the 68881
chips on the two machines, which is not great; optimisation effects a
significant improvement by reducing data transfer between the 68020 and
68881 chips. The FPA on the two machines runs at the same rate, but
communication with it is more efficient on the Sun-3/260. Because it has
a lot of registers, optimisation can dramatically improve performance
(this is the biggest -O effect I have ever seen, and certainly does not
reflect inept source-coding, which is based closely on Wilkinson and
Reinsch). What is puzzling is the poor performance of the Sun-4. On any
RISC machine, one would expect optimisation to have a big effect, and it
may well be just coincidence that the effect is parallel to that on
FPA-equipped Sun-3's. If the optimised code on each architecture is
spending most of its time in the Weitek chips, and these are running at
similar clock rates, then this could explain the similarity. Presumably
the message in that case is that the Weitek chips have now run out of
steam!
------------------------------
Date: 2 Jun 88 01:01:40 GMT
From: Maarten Litmaath <mcvax!cs.vu.nl!maart at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: 3/50, 3/60 keyboard: <return> & <del>
Why have the keys mentioned above, been placed so irritatingly close
together? The location of the <del> key is 'normally' covered by the
extension of the <return> key, to let the latter be more easily spotted.
Due to SUN's setup every now and then I have to retype a complete line,
after hitting <del> instead of <return>... (Yes, I use <del> as interrupt
character, and I guess I'm not the only one!)
South-Africa: |Maarten Litmaath @ Free U Amsterdam:
revival of the Third Reich |maart at cs.vu.nl, mcvax!botter!ark!maart
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 18:38:31 PDT
From: ihnp4!homxc!lewisd at ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: sunview window dumper wanted
We'd like to be able to print the windows of applications running under
suntools. Has anyone devised a program that would grab and dump a
particular window in some rasterfile format? We could then pick it up and
print it. (For X users, I'm looking for an xwd equivalent for the suntool
environment.)
Also: I can't seem to get screendump to work on any color monitor; it
works without any problems on monochrome screens. Ideas?
David B. Lewis {ihnp4,allegra,ulysses,rutgers!mtune}!homxc!lewisd
"Kenneth, the frequency! What's the frequency, Kenneth?!"
[[ There's a program called "dumpregion" in the source archives. It
allows the user to select the specific region of the screen that is to be
dumped into a rasterfile. It is in "sun-source" and is called
"dumpregion.c". --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: 31 May 88 15:45:04 GMT
From: eplrx7!mcneill at uunet.uu.net (Keith McNeill)
Subject: Vt100tool wanted
Could someone send me vt100tool for sunview? Please send me mail first so
I can get it from the closest site.
Thanks
Keith D. McNeill E.I. Dupont Co.
uunet!eplrx7!mcneill Engineering Physics Lab
(302) 695-7395 Wilmington, Delaware 19898
Mail Stop: E357-302
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 88 17:53:37 -0500
From: Gurudatta Parulkar <guru at flora.wustl.edu>
Subject: Looking for a graphics editors for Suns
I am looking for a good graphics editor which
- can help draw all kinds of figures and pictures
- produces postcript output which can be used with other TeX or
LaTeX files
- can be used from suntools or X (reason for the cross posting)
- is a public domain software or a COMMERCIAL product (that is,
willing to pay $$)
- is considerably better than graphedit or fig
Could you suggest anything which meets MOST of these requirements ? (We
are exploring Autocad but not sure if it is worth its high cost.)
Thanks!
-guru
Dr. Guru Parulkar
Asst Professor guru at flora.wustl.edu
Dept of Computer Science parulkar at udel.edu
Washington University wucs1!guru at uunet.uu.net
St. Louis MO 63130
(314) 889-4621
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 88 09:49:21 -0400
From: Sandeep Mehta <sxm at philabs.philips.com>
Subject: Anti-Glare/Polarizing Screen for 19" screens?
I have been looking for a large size anti-glare or polarizing filter for
my workstation screen. The standard stuff they sell for PC's and Macs in
the computer catalogs does not exceed 12-14", whereas my Sun screen is
19".
I know one can buy polarizing sheets in large sizes, but that is a rather
expensive solution. I was wondering if someone has any ideas, solutions,
or is a large polarizing sheet the best solution ? I have seen a fine
nylon mesh being sold for the PC's also, and the vendor claims that it
cuts out glare/reflections. Any help is appreciated. Please send me
e-mail, and I will post all feasible solutions if there is interest.
Thanks.
sandeep
Sandeep Mehta (914)-945-6478
Robotics & Flexible Automation uunet!philabs!bebop!sxm
Philips Laboratories sxm at bebop.philips.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 88 20:59 N
From: <DIMITRI at CGEUGE51.BITNET>
Subject: A question about NeWS availability in Switzerland
I have a question-complain conserning the SUN policy(?) in Europe. I am
trying (for the last two months) to get the NeWS 1.1 release. Still SUN
Suisse can not tell me if they can give it to me, and when. I wonder why
that is happening. Is there a problem with Europe? Are there any sites in
Europe running NeWS 1.1? What about 1.1b+ ? Will that ever get in Europe?
Is true that NeWS is NOT to be distributed with the 4.0 release?
And by the way, how many UNIX pieces have been "unbundled" from 4.0? (I
heard something about FORTRAN and Pascal)
[[ Just about everything except the C compiler has been unbundled for 4.0
(well, so I exaggerate sometimes). --wnl ]]
Dimitri Konstantas | UUCP : mcvax!cernvax!cui!dimitri
Centre Universitaire d'Informatique | EARN : dimitri at cgeuge51.bitnet
Univeristy of Geneva | MHS : dimitri at cui.unige.ch
------------------------------
Date: 31 May 88 17:09:32 GMT
From: well!ejf at lll-crg.llnl.gov (Erik James Freed)
Subject: Sun 3-50 SCSI peripherals?
I know that this has been gone over before but this situation is new for
me. Can anyone email me SCSI peripherals both Hard disk and Tape that work
witht the Sun3-50 reliably and with no kernal modifications? Thanks in
advance.
erik freed
well!ejf
------------------------------
Date: 02 Jun 88 16:20:19 CDT (Thu)
From: albers at umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
Subject: Sun 4: timesharing & I/O limitations?
Briefly: We're buying a new departmental system to support timesharing and
file serving. We'd like to consider a Sun 4, but don't believe that the
I/O subsystem can support our needs. I'd like some response from Sun 4/280
sites with timesharing loads. I'll post a synopsis to sun-spots.
BACKGROUND
The Computer Science Department at the Univeristy of Minnesota -- Twin
Cities is retiring a VAX-11/780 (4.3BSD) & DG/MV10000 (DG/UX) and will buy
a replacement system. At this point, we've narrowed our selection to one
of an Encore Multimax 310, a Sequent Symmetry S27, and one or more Sun
4/280s. Our initial requirements are to support about 40 network pty
logins, maybe 10 or so tty logins, and 10-20 Sun clients mounting shared
mail/news/source/executable NFS volumes. With user file systems, we will
be supporting about 2.4 GB of file systems on this new machine.
We expect that the timesharing requirement will decrease as we continue to
add workstations, but the NFS serving requirement will grow considerably.
Furthermore, this system will be the primary departmental server for uucp,
news, mail, BIND 4.8, and etc.
We will be making a tentative final selection soon. I'd like very much to
go with the Sun, but don't have an reliable evidence that it can handle
the load or provide any growth.
There has been some discussion in sun-spots describing experience using
Sun 3/280s and Sun 4/280s as timesharing systems. At the time of the
original postings, most sites had only just received their 4/280s and had
little experience with them (January -- March). Now, you sites with
4/280s, now that you have (hopefully) run your systems under some fairly
heavy loads and have installed SunOS 4.0....
Here are some questions:
1. What is your configuration (CPU,memory,disk ctrlr type (e.g. Xy451 or
Ciprico 3220?),disk drive type, arrangement of disks on controllers, mux
ports, ...)
2. What is the maximum reasonable load you have observed on your system
with different ratios of user logins and file serving? E.g. logins:NFS
traffic at 1:0, 1:1, 0:1, etc. If you can, include the usual subjective
guess concerning the kind and ratios of processes the user logins are
running (mail, emacs, lisp, c compiles, etc.).
3. What do you know or guess about Ciprico's ability to stay abreast of
4.X upgrades now that Sun has committed to Xylogics and will presumably
not cooperate further with Ciprico? (that is, don't want to have to run
xy451s until the new xylogics controller is available)
4. How would you trade off the performance costs of ttys vs. ptys? We
could front-end an ALM-2 MUX with an Annex or Ciprico box to offload some
pty overhead. What is your guess about the relative performance cost of
ptys (M ttys = N ptys)? Would M/N be closer to 2.0 or 1.5? (Yes, there
are lots of qualifications... but the question is really whether we must
front-end the box with Annexes/Ciscos to get the performance we need.)
5. SIMPLE QUESTION: Would you, from your experience, have any hesitation
using the following configuration for the purposes I described:
Sun 4/280S-64
2 Ethernet interfaces (we may have host-terminal traffic on a separate
segment than the NFS traffic... TBD)
XY451 with 1 892MB drive
XY451 with 2 892MB drives
(assumes upgrade to a viable 32-bit path controller asap.)
ALM-2 if necessary to support more user sessions when we can't support
any more ptys.
6. Extra credit. Do you have any experience with Multimaxes or Symmetries
in a similar environment to compare relative performance/functionality?
Thanks!
Jim Albers, Computer Science Laboratories, CSci Dept, University of Minnesota
albers at umn-cs.UUCP, albers at umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
------------------------------
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