Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sri-unix!Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA From: Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA Newsgroups: net.works Subject: workstation trends Message-ID: <1635@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Fri, 6-Jul-84 03:54:02 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1635 Posted: Fri Jul 6 03:54:02 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jul-84 00:33:05 EDT Lines: 35 Color is necessary for VLSI design and experimenting with color graphics. For these you want a very good tube, not just a warmed over TV set. Unless you are doing serious color work, I think you will be better off spending your money on bigger and better B+W displays. I think you are on the wrong track when discussing extra processors. Who cares how many processors a system has if the memory is the limiting factor? On the other hand, even when you are compling, an IO processor can save a few % of the main CPU by doing the trashy background tasks. Frequently you can save a lot of hardware by making a CPU work harder. This is easier to get away with if you have an idle IO processor. Some 68000 systems have 2 processors because of a design bug in the page fault area - if you got a nasty one there was no way to get restarted correctly. When a page fault happens, they suspend the first processor and run the page fault handler on a second processor. My keyboard has a 6802 in it. Does that count? That whole scene is very complicated. I suggest that you treat each system as a black box and see how well it does the things you are interested in doing and how much it costs. The software environment is much more important that the hardware. I've seen a 64K byte 8085 run rings around a machine orders of magnitude more powerful. On the other hand, the 8085 wasn't good for writing more 8085 code and there wasn't room for any more even if you wanted to write it. Figure out what you want to do, and take each interesting system for a test drive. If your procurement really is big, it's worth a day or so of your time to become familiar with each system. I second the suggestions that a mouse (or such) is essential. I'm addicted to my mouse. (I have not seriously used other pointing devices.) None of them will help much if all your software expects a TTY. Ben: You should be able to fake a Dvorak keyboard today. Just rearange the keytops and run each character through a translation table.