Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!RICHTER.MIT.EDU!krowitz
From: krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re:  sr10.3 report
Message-ID: <9011021601.AA06970@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 2 Nov 90 16:01:03 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 47

I have just finished trying SR10.3 on my systems ... 

It doesn't work on a DN560 -- the multi-focus stuff for X seems to have
completely broken the DM. The DM cursor will track the mouse, but when you
click a mouse button, depress a keyboard key, or try to actually do *any*
work ... well, the system seems to think that the input focus is somewhere
else. It makes is *real* hard to resize a window. This bug was reported during
the beta-test, but HP's written reply was ... "it works on DN3xxx/4xxx and on
DN570's". DN570's have a different graphics unit. If they're DN570 turbos, they
have different CPU's as well.

It doesn't work on diskless DN330's as well. The calendar program doesn't seem
to be able to reset the time and date, and the system won't boot because the
date always seems to go back to sometime in the year 2015, and the UID generator
can't produce correct object UID's with a date that far into the future.

This bug was also reported during the beta-test.

It seems like HP is getting a jump on its reported plans for dropping
support for the sau3, sau3, sau4, sau5, and sau6 machines in SR11. Considering
that the C, Fortran, and Pascal compiler have not been able to generate
floating point code for the sau4 machines since SR10.0 was introduced (we
reported that the -cpu 460 switch will cause the compilers to bomb with
fatal internal errors on almost any piece of code), and that this problem
has not been fixed in over 2 1/2 years (we finally threw the machines out
after 2 1/2 years of their 5 year lifetimes were spent running at 1/3 of
their full power due to the lack of floating point support), I would expect
to be able to install SR10.3.x sometime around 1992.

SR10.3 may fix a lot of users' problems ... but I would procede with caution ...
make full backups, do *not* overwrite your SR10.2 AA, test your individual
hardware configurations by booting diskless off your SR10.3 AA machine *before*
installing SR0.3 on your local disk, and above all, test your application
software on *each* of your individual graphics configurations (E vs. F vs.
1280x1024 mono vs. 1024x800 mono) before you leap into SR10.3

This may be Apollos "highest quality release ever", but it is certainly not
bug free. As with any new software release, procede with caution at your
own risk.


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet
(in order of decreasing preference)