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From: NEVILLE%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa (Neville D. Newman)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: BLITs vs. PCs vs normal terminals
Message-ID: <245@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 24-Apr-86 02:20:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.245
Posted: Thu Apr 24 02:20:42 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Apr-86 00:44:02 EDT
Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA
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In all the postings about how BLITs are the answer to the world's windowing
problems, nobody has pointed out some of its definite shortcomings...

It has an all metal case, to the tune of almost 60 pounds.

It has no automatic screen-turn-off, so you keep reaching for the
	intensity knob at the end of the day.  Turning it off loses
	downloaded software.

Just try to get good technical help from AT&T Teletype for them.  i dare you.
	If hardware is your only problem, you *may* have a (slim) chance.

If you want to use them as intended, you probably need to write programs
	to download to the BLIT.  For this, you need the DMD compiler and
	library package.  To get this, you either convince AT&T to give
	you a donation or you pay major $$$ for it.  (Ours was a donation
	along with other equipment.)

Many features are documented incorrectly (try to get keyboard repeat without
	running under layers),  and many of the more useful functions will
	only work under layers even they could provide needed functionality
	outside of layers.

-----

On the other hand, you can do a lot of nice stuff with them.  We run a half-
dozen of ours on a MicroVAX II running Ultrix, and have written a downloaded
terminal emulator for it that is a BIG superset of a Bitgraph (actually, it
emulates our idea of what the world's most incredible graphics/ascii terminal
would be like).  We also have a program that lets it emulate a Symbolics LGP
for previewing TeX/LaTeX/etc. Looks terrific!

All this code runs directly on the BLIT, not on the MicroVAX.  A great
demo is to hook one up to your 3Bx, start up layers, run several
of the packaged demo programs, and WHILE THE DEMOS ARE RUNNING unplug
the terminal line from the BLIT.  Everything keeps going, it is all
really running on the BLIT.

All the above mentioned software is for private use and is NOT distributed.


						-neville