Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!unmvax!bbx!tantalum!cheeks
From: cheeks@edsr.eds.com (Mark Costlow)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  WANTED: Faster X server for Sun4 w/GX
Message-ID: <1990Oct1.174419@edsr.eds.com>
Date: 30 Sep 90 21:14:18 GMT
Sender: usenet@tantalum.UUCP
Reply-To: cheeks@edsr.eds.com
Followup-To: comp.windows.x
Organization: EDS Research
Lines: 33

The thing that burns me is that Sun refuses to release enough specs on the
board for somebody that was so inclined to add support for it to the MIT
release.  Like a few others said, some people at my site use OW 2.0 because
it's so much faster in certain areas, but most would prefer the freedom to
use the MIT release, since there's typically a 6-month lag between the
latest MIT release and when the vendor-supplied servers have merged the
latest release (I'm only speaking from experience with Sun and HP here, but
I suspect others are the same).

We were pretty annoyed when we shelled out the bux for all those cg6 boards
and then found out we couldn't use them the way we want (the way we SHOULD
be able to).  I find it hard to believe that Sun is worried about clones -
they GAVE away SPARC, NFS, RPC, etc.  I'm not asking for ROM masks, I just
want programming specs . . . a library would be nice, but just telling me
what regs are what and how to use them would be cool.

I thought I was going to get my wish when I saw the note on the Aviator
tape about giving away the source - until I saw the footnote that said they
wouldn't make the source available until they REMOVED the GX register
manipulation code.  Ugh!

Oh well ... you can be sure our next gaggle of Sparcs will come with CG3s
... or maybe they won't be Sparcs at all.

We've been known to get inaccurate manure from the marketroids.  If anyone
can prove me wrong with different manure, or has reverse-engineered the
board any, I'd love to hear it!


Mark
--
cheeks@edsr.eds.com    or     ...uunet!edsr!cheeks
Disclaimer:  I speak for myself, nobody else.