Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Re: AT&T 630 X ?
Message-ID: <11118@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 20 Sep 89 15:04:53 GMT
References: <9340@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <11050@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1112@aurora.AthabascaU.CA>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 42

In article <1112@aurora.AthabascaU.CA> lyndon@auvax.uucp (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>You could follow the lead
>>of one X terminal vendor (Graph-On?) and provide a host X server
>>that talks with the 630 over its usual serial-line connection.
>Gak! At 4800 baud effective throughput? No thanks.

I use my 630 at 19.2KB and it works fine.  You appear to be thinking
about the overhead of the scrolling terminal emulator, which the
terminal's X interpreter would supplant.  Because the 630 has a
dedicated MC68010 processor, it's capable of serving X requests at
well over 19.2KB, depending on the nature of the requests.

>The 630 is a nice terminal, but there is absolutely no way I can
>cost justify them when, for less money, I can buy an "X terminal"
>that also happens to run Unix.

The way I justify them is that the application user's time is much
more expensive than low-end terminal equipment.

>>The main benefit of a
>>630-X would seem to be if you happen to have 630s for other
>>reasons and want to tap into applications that ONLY support X.
>No, the main benefit would be the ability to talk to the other half
>of our campus network that runs BSD.

All the layers-supporting systems we use with our 630s are BSD-based.
On the other hand, X availability on any system, including the BSD
ones, is still rather low.  Therefore 630-X still seems to me to
be useful primarily in the context that I cited.

>X server/client source is free;

Source code for most X servers is NOT free.  You may be thinking
about the SunOS version, but Sun workstations are rather expensive
X terminals.

>Source to layers, the 630 developers kit, etc., most definately
>is not [free].

But it's relatively inexpensive, especially when you amortize the
license across all the terminals at a site.