Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!visdc!jiii
From: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Re-request X terminal info
Summary: Some selection considerations
Message-ID: <619@visdc.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 00:18:57 GMT
References: <8908101730.AA00540@syteka.hls.com> <1672@bacchus.dec.com>
Reply-To: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III)
Organization: VI Software Development, Boise, Idaho
Lines: 37

The July 1989 issue of UNIX WORLD, pg 75, reviewed the NCD16 and the
Acer Counterpoint Model 100.  The author, Rik Farrow, seemed quite
biased against X.  This erupted into a fairly interesting bitch fight
in the "letters" section of the September 1989 issue.

In my opinion, one of the most important things to keep in mind is cost.
The new Tektronics XN11 color machine is over $7,000!  This seems out of
line considering that most of the "work" of providing pixel by pixel
instructions for drawing images is done by the client software, which
does not execute on the X terminal.

The second thing that I would consider is memory expansion.  X terminals
can handle the overhead of restoring the display that lies under a
window only if they have enough memory.  The Acer Counterpoint, for
example, has an 8086 and is limited to only 640 K.

The final consideration is performance.  Since the X server function is
well-defined, I would expect someday to see a reasonably-priced machine,
utilizing a TMS34010, or equivalent, graphics processor plus some custom
ASICs, that achieves really good performance.  I would think that for
the $2,500 you must currently spend for a monochrome NCD16, you should
be able to get at least 1,024x768 pixels x 16 colors.  Otherwise, it
seems that a person would be better off to set up an SVGA display on a
386 PC.  It costs about $1,500 to add this display capability to a PC,
so X terminals must provide additional performance in the form of
writing speed, pixels, and/or colors.  Otherwise, they are pointless.

This is because X terminals don't eliminate the requirement for some
sort of local computer.  To do so would mean running X client as well as
the database client software on the database server.  Since the X client
is executing on a machine that is also required in order to run the
database client software, the only logical reason to split off the X
server to a separate machine is for increased performance.
--
John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID  83707, (208) 343-1865

uunet!visdc!jiii