avoiding obsolescence

[yar at basser.cs.su.oz.au]

In article <3103 at brazos.Rice.edu> miranda!mc at moc.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Caplinger) writes:
> X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 199, message 14 of 17
>
> Reading this list, one frequently sees exhortations to buy more memory,
> get a faster processor, or otherwise totally replace one's hardware in
> order to "keep up" with the latest SunOS release.  A recent message, for
> example, speculated that 12 MIPS and 16 Meg was going to be the minimal
> usable configuration for SunOS/Xview, and my experience so far supports
> that guess.  Some of us, however, can't afford the luxury of trading up to
> a new CPU every 18 months.

Is anyone out there working on a native version of an Xserver for sun
3/50s so that they can be used as very nice X-terminals, no SUNOS, no
paging, no need for more memory. That way we can find a cheap way of
getting out of this expensive workstation architecture and back to a
system where you replace the expensive back-end when it runs out of grunt
(every 2-3 years) load it full of memory and disks and keep the user
interfaces (19" windowing terminals) for about 10 years, like we were able
to with RS232 ttys. We have been wanting to do this for our own 3/50s for
years but are still waiting for our sunos source, but then again it has
only been 4 years so who is rushing????  I'd rather have 30 19" Xterminals
backing onto a couple of Mips R6000 based systems each with 256Mb of
memory than have 30 Sparcstations with each with the minimum 16Mb of
memory.  It would sure make the management a lot easier, and it would
eliminate the factor of 30 involved in any upgrade.

Just as I was actively thinking of dumping Sunos3.5 and buy some memory
someone from sun was advising a minimum of 16Mb or you will be stuck with
Sunos4.0.?, where will it end????

Ray Loyzaga
Basser Department of Computer Science
Sydney University
yar at cs.su.oz