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From: elliott@UTAH-CS.ARPA (Ian A. Elliott)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.workstations
Subject: Re: Information wanted about Apollo series 3000
Message-ID: <8701232027.AA12890@utah-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 15:27:29 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.8701232027.AA12890
Posted: Fri Jan 23 15:27:29 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 08:40:57 EST
References: <1036@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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Approved: works@red.rutgers.edu
Summary: RE: info wanted about Apollo series 3000

> I would like to know more about the Apollo Series 3000
> workstations.  These might be an alternative for Sun workstations,
> but I am not familiar with the Apollo products. The penetration of
> Apollo's in academic circles seems to be much lower then Sun's. Is
> there a good reason for this fact?

My feelings on the subject are: 1) many academic circles are filled
with Unix Wizards, and since the Sun is a multi-terminal Unix
environment, these people feel comfortable with the Sun; 2) Apollo
has seemed to me to have been thought of more as an engineering
workstation, and has not been used to its full extent by many people.
My research group (BTW these opinions are my own, and not the
University of Utah's which has several Unix guru's and Sun's) has
found the Apollo's useful for all sorts of things, which the Sun
could only dream of doing.  Apollo themselves hasn't even thought of
all the things which we have our workstations doing.

> 
> My principal questions are:
> 
> - What is the quality of the UNIX implementation? Is it real UNIX or
>   just a UNIX shell around a proprietary operating kernel? 

There is some of the Unix kernel built on top of and along side with
their own kernel.  For example signals work the same as they do on a
VAX.  It is not just a Unix shell build on top of AEGIS(TM).

> - What about the network facilities? Is there a fully transparent
>   distributed file system?

Apollo has an excellent distributed file system.  If you want to get
a file off a workstation (node) named "this_node" you simply add
"//this_node" in front of the pathname of the file.  You can also
have soft links which can point all over the place.  For example you
can have a soft link named "foo" which points to
"//this_node/dir1/dir2/foo".

> - How easy is it to port UNIX program distributions to the Apollo?

This depends on how deep your code goes into the Unix kernel, and
whether your code is written according to correct C syntax, or was
written to take advantage of holes in pcc.  We have seen a few
examples of our VAX letting things by that the Apollo didn't.

> - What is the general politics of Apollo with respect to make
>   available kernel sources?

My understanding is that they generally don't let too many people at
them, but I know that they are available.


Flame time:

To those who want to live in an exculisively Unix world and never
know that anything better exists, then I feel that the Sun is their
machine.  But for those who are willing to learn a few more things,
the Apollo is great.  The Apollo's provide more features, better
security, and yes, even System V, 4.1 BSD and 4.2 BSD Unix.

I have found that developing code on Apollo's is easier than any
other computer I have ever tried using (haven't tried the new fancy
AI workstations).  I am currently porting a tasking package (partly
written in 68K assembly and Pascal, to C and VAX assembly) from
Apollo's to a VAX running 4.3 BSD, and find that Unix doesn't even
come near the development environment which is provided by Apollo.
What takes me a few minutes to debug on an Apollo, takes hours or
days on Unix boxes.  A former member of our group who ported a window
package to the Sun said similar things.  I heard somebody complain
that the Apollo's C compiler wasn't the same as pcc - GREAT!  When I
can't figure out what the Unix C compiler is complaining about (with
such great diagnostics as "syntax error") I use the Apollo C compiler
to figure out what is wrong with my C file.

Ian

ARPA:   elliott@cs.utah.edu
Snail:  Dept. of Computer Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
                                                            UT 84112