From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: X terminals: Suggestion for projects like SLS, MCC, etc. Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1993 23:06:25 GMT
In article <C8nLFq.IJt@rex.uokhsc.edu> benjamin-goldsteen@uokhsc.edu writes:
> While I have to agree with Mark Davis about a few things, I think
>these numbers need to be fixed up.
>
>mark@taylor.uucp (Mark A. Davis) writes:
>
> I am not sure what the specs are on the $875 X terminals are, but I
>assume they are 14" B&W 70K Xstone X terminals. I assume the $1500 PC's
>up there also have B&W monitors (good B&W monitors ones are under $200).
> Also, to get a server equivalent of the power in 100 PC's
>(adjusting for multitasking) you need at least 150 SPECs. You also need
>quite a bit of RAM. For this solution to beat the cost of the PC
Well in digging around I found a complete PC system 486/33 for $1350 with
a 14" color monitor.It has a 130MB disk and is capable of running both
DOS and Unix.
The system is capable of generating more than 80k xstones. I know because
I hack on X servers :-)
As for a previous note on X terminals storing fonts on their memory we
do the same but store the fonts on the card itself :-)
Please consider that Color Xterminals start around $1600 so if we replace the
PC cpu with a 486/66 it will performance faster than the X terminal at lower
a price.
It takes me about 20 minutes to configure and load from scratch
and the configuration scripts can be automated to the point in which
it can take less than 5 minutes.You will basically, boot a floppy answer
a few questions and walk away and after the process is completed just simply
boot from the disk. This is a poor engineers solution but a flash boot prom
can accomplish the task faster.
However, I am trying to come up with a much cheaper hardware configuration
to match the B&W X terminal diskless configuration.
Enjoy,
Amancio
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