Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x:5357 comp.terminals:904 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!gatech!bbn!milliken@bbn.com From: milliken@bbn.com (Walter Milliken) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.terminals Subject: Re: X-Windows terminal from Wyse ? Summary: Visual 640 mini-review Keywords: X Terminals Message-ID: <30215@bbn.COM> Date: 28 Sep 88 16:18:48 GMT References: <215@ists> <16248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Sender: news@bbn.COM Reply-To: milliken@bbn.com (Walter Milliken) Followup-To: comp.windows.x Organization: BBN Advanced Computers, Inc. Cambridge, MA Lines: 32 In-reply-to: casey@admin.cognet.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom) In article <16248@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, casey@admin (Casey Leedom) writes: >In article <215@ists> mike@ists.yorku.ca (Mike Clarkson) writes: >> I've heard that Wyse may be planning to introduce an X-Windows terminal >> with built-in Ethernet soon. Costs around $3000. Does anyone have any >> information on this ? > > I've heard rumors of some X terminals also and likewise would be >interested in any solid reports. However, they better come in under $3K >or they're looking at a product that just isn't going to sell. (Any >manufacturers listening?) I don't know anything about a Wyse terminal, but Visual just gave us a demo yesterday. Their terminal lists for $1995, and looks fairly good. It did evidence a few minor display bugs, however. They have a rather nice way of handling fonts (it can get them through NFS or a special font server they supply to run under Unix). The screen is a bit small (14", 1024x800), and they currently use an interlaced monitor, which flickers visibly with some bitmaps. Performance is better than a Sun 3/50 running the souped-up R2 server (maybe twice as fast) -- not amazingly fast, but good enough to be usable. The terminal can run over SLIP (up to 38kbaud) as well as thin- and thick-wire Ethernet. The terminal can also run as a conventional VT100-style ASCII terminal running TCP/IP telnet over the Ethernet. The Visual people said a new software release was in the works, and that they would shortly have a non-interlaced monitor version of the terminal (which I would definitely prefer). If the next software release fixes the few bugs I saw, I'd say this terminal is a good buy. It's not quite like having a Sun 3/50-sized screen, but it should be reasonable as an X server for the cost-conscious. ---Walter