Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!encore!bzs From: bzs@Encore.COM (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: A Thought on X Terminals Message-ID: <4921@xenna.Encore.COM> Date: 16 Feb 89 18:52:05 GMT References: <19613@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <611@gt-eedsp.UUCP> Distribution: comp Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA Lines: 38 In-reply-to: jensen@gt-eedsp.UUCP's message of 6 Feb 89 21:43:12 GMT Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.15 of Tue Jun 9 1987 on xenna (berkeley-unix) From: jensen@gt-eedsp.UUCP (P. Allen Jensen) >Many of the X Terminal systems I have looked at (NCD in particular) can down- >load the server from another system. This would seem to be reasonable, >most X Terminals will be in networks with other systems that have disk, >processors, and other perpherials but no Graphics devices for running >X Windows. I think that the problem will be that if you want enough memory >to have a lot of fonts, the cost starts going up pretty fast. Add to that >a 19" monitor and the cost starts to get very close to that of a diskless >Apollo or Sun workstation. Yes, but you're falling into the standard "diskless workstation" fallacy, that the disk behind that diskless is not going to cost anything. In fact you usually need around 24MB of disk, at least, just to boot the thing (8MB root, 16MB swap), if you need to support even a dozen users you better throw in the price of a server also so suddenly you've easily eaten an additional $50K of hardware, or once again the price of the workstations. Of course, the workstation is more powerful and it all depends on what you're really trying to support, but let's not fall into these questionable comparisons to make a point. The X terminals require some disk space and a system to boot off of and store fonts on but the resources involved is just not comparable, perhaps 5 or 10MB of disk space could support 100 or more of these terminals since it's only accessed once at boot (ok, it might get a little hairy after a power failure, but on average, and there will be some font accessing.) (Unfortunately at many places you really do get that kind of thinking, someone will go out and buy a diskless workstation and then wander around banging on doors demanding that someone do whatever is necessary to make it work, and/or act betrayed that their $3500 purchase is worthless. I think the sysadmins out there know what I'm talking about.) -Barry Shein, ||Encore||