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From: rw@beatnix.UUCP (Russell Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GraphOn X terminals
Message-ID: <610@elxsi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 11:37:27 EST
Article-I.D.: elxsi.610
Posted: Fri Oct 30 11:37:27 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 23:27:10 EST
References: <8710280709.AA20167@neptune.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Sender: nobody@elxsi.UUCP
Reply-To: rw@beatnix.UUCP (Russell Williams)
Organization: ELXSI Super Computers, San Jose
Lines: 37

In article <8710280709.AA20167@neptune.CS.UCLA.EDU> tamir@CS.UCLA.EDU (Yuval Tamir) writes:
>Apparently there is a company called GraphOn Corp. that has
>developed a terminal with a builtin X server (models GO-250 and GO-235).
>Can anybody supply more details about this
>product (performance, cost, etc) ?
>
>I don't even have the address or phone number of the company.
>I would be interested in getting those as well.
>

   The GraphOn terminals do *not* run the X server.  GraphOn has developed
a modification to the server so that instead of moving bits around on a
screen, it talks GraphOn protocol out an RS232 port.  Putting an X server
in an RS232 terminal would require a protocol to multiplex data streams
over the serial line.  The modified X-10 server is available from GraphOn in
source form, but of course it's not compatible with anything but these two
terminals, it's not an official product at this time, and in the demo I
saw it crashed twice.  The difference between the two models they offer is
that one also implements the ReGis protocol.  Neither is specialized in
any particular way for X, though they may make tweaks in the microcode
to help out the host-resident server.  

   The performance was quite good at 9600 Baud (as you might expect if
you take a few seconds to count the number of bytes it takes to build
windows and so forth).  Drawing graphics was slow, but then that's 
a problem with any RS232 graphics terminal.  There's not a lot of storage
in the terminal for fonts.  

   The idea has a lot of appeal, but right now you'd have to port software
which has no use other than to drive GraphOn terminals, and everything
would probably be incompatible with any other RS232 X terminals that
get introduced later.  What's needed (in my 'umble opinion) is a standard RS232
multiplexing protocol and a terminal that has the X-11 server in ROM.  
GraphOn's terminals aren't it yet, but maybe next year...

Russell Williams
..{ucbvax!sun,lll-lcc!lll-tis,altos86}!elxsi!rw