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From: mh@roger.imsd.contel.com (Mike Hoegeman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: observations on the (9000/7x0 series)
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.191139.11313@wlbr.imsd.contel.com>
Date: 21 Jun 91 19:11:39 GMT
References: <1474@theseas.ntua.gr>
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Organization: Contel FSD, Westlake Village, CA
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In article <1474@theseas.ntua.gr> nfotis@ntua.gr (Nikolaos Fotis) writes:
>I recently had some experience with a HP 9000/720 demo unit, *no manuals*
>and I would like just to add my remarks (I hope that's not too late
>for 8.05...):
>(machine OS: HP-UX kentayros A.B8.01 A 9000/720 )
>pro: its FAST! and it doesn't heat up easily (we notice these things here
>	in Greece!)

I have a demo unit sitting here also that i am porting some sun stuff
to. So I`ll ad my two cents worth.  Yes, It's pretty fast
computationally, it's a bit slower doing nfs i/o.

Note: I'm making a set of notes as I port stuff from the sun for my
colleagues who will be doing some additional porting later on. It's not
the most polished document in the world and evolves as I go along but
if there is a demand for it I'll post it. It is a latex document that i
can post as is or just the PostScript output of it if that is
preferable.

>cons (in no particular order):
> a. Very bad keyboard, especially the escape key and a rather plastic touch.
>	NO DELETE key! (very bad) and very small control key.
>	proposal: make it a customer option. I would love to have something
>		reasonable like a Northgate keyboard.

Yes. The keyboard sucks *big* time. two small keys the caps lock and
the ctrl key are right next to each other to the left of 'a'.
thankfully the control key is closest to the 'a' but i still hit caps
lock by accident an awful lot. there is a delete key labeled delete
char.  but it's off in the sticks way to the right of the return key.
the keys themselves seem kind cheap too. also there are no nubs on the
home keys which i think is really lame.

> b. I don't like (really!) the mechanical mouse. It'll need a piece of paper
>	at least in order to stop it from slipping.
>	proposal: give us optical mice with flexible mouse pads.

I kinda like the mouse. It is certainly better than most mechanical
mice.  I like the nub that on the left mouse button.  I'not sure i'd
take it over a optical mouse though..

> c. The vi and more don't behave so well when I work with more than
>	24x80 text (console, resizing xterms,etc. Neither eval resize
>	does the trick). I hope that the solution is just a manual away.

Yes i hated this too. it does not matter if there is some way to do it
in the manual though, it should just do it by default. it does not even
seem to understand anything but your standard terminal size. if you
bring up a terminal with 34 lines vi should use 43 lines. And no i do
not want to make a bunch of bogus terminal definitions for every size
terminal that I want. I will probably resort to porting elvis to it if
I have it long enough.

> c. From what I read in this newsgroup, I didn't liked the attitude of
>	stripping out all these BSD goodies, especially when the kernel and
>	the associated data structures are here (e.g. renice()).
>	proposal: make it more BSD 4.3-like where it doesn't collide with

>		SYSV, and add the networking code (ping,etc.)

it does have ping, etc. 


mike hoegeman, mh@awds.imsd.contel.com