[Info-vax] Prices of Microvax 3100's

[John Wallace]

On May 4, 3:00 am, David Froble <da... at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> John Wallace wrote:
> > On May 3, 10:34 pm, David Froble <da... at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >> John Wallace wrote:
> >>> On May 3, 2:59 pm, koeh... at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob
> >>> Koehler) wrote:
> >>>> In article <0c85168b-2bb2-413c-b27a-214935e8d... at w7g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>, AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
> >>>>> So why not run Charon or SIMH? Speaking of which -- and please pardon
> >>>>> me if this is a stupid question -- do these things run as a separate
> >>>>> process or do they take over the entire machine? I don't see why it
> >>>>> can't be the former. Just making sure.
> >>>>    SIMH is just an ordinary application as far as I've seen.  It can
> >>>>    be a significant CPU load, but I've been able to timeshare with it
> >>>>    on all the desktop OS I've tried it with.
> >>> SIMH can be greedy, as can others, but the main issue with coexistence
> >>> is likely not the behaviours of the VMS-hosting emulator application,
> >>> but the behaviour of Windows and Windows-based applications on Windows
> >>> systems, and in in particular the impact of any undesirable behaviour
> >>> on VMS and the applications in the VMS environment. (I hope that
> >>> sentence made sense).
> >>> That's why from time to time you see people round here asking about
> >>> Linux versions of the emulators and why at least one of the emulators
> >>> has a version that runs on QNX, the realtime OS. If the host OS has to
> >>> be Windows then it's presumably safest to treat the Window box as a
> >>> single purpose box but that isn't really much of a guarantee of good
> >>> behaviour, especially in the presence of the stuff usually associated
> >>> with a Window box of any kind.
> >> Stan Quayle was re-selling Charon, and according to what he wrote in the past, windoz
> >> wasn't a problem.  What he indicated happened was shutting down many of the services that
> >> normally come enabled in a windoz distribution.  He also indicated that they ran windoz on
> >> one CPU, and dedicated another to the emulator.  So, you had a decent CPU dedicated to
> >> nothing but the emulator, which I guess gave some decent performance.
>
> >> What I haven't seen is a chart of what windoz services were needed, and what ones could be
> >> disabled.  Sure would be better than everyone having to re-discover that information by
> >> trial and error.
>
> >> If you shut off enough of the bloated services on windoz, I've got to wonder how close one
> >> can come to a real real-time OS?
>
> > "If you shut off enough of the bloated services on windoz, I've got to
> > wonder how close one
> > can come to a real real-time OS?"
>
> > You can try it but what chances are there that it will work, or if it
> > does, that the next Windows Update or AV Update or whatever will break
> > something? Realistically it can't be meaningfully done with a Window
> > box, with or without CHARON. Stan sells QNX as a CHARON host for when
> > realtime matters.
>
> > My experience says you can come pretty close to what a lot of people
> > (but not everyone) would class as realtime with a suitably configured
> > Linux. There's lots of stuff you can readily configure, and if it's
> > not configurable enough or doesn't do what you want, you get the
> > source and can have someone change it.
>
> I probably phrased that poorly.  I never intended to imply that windoz could ever be a
> real-time system.  Was just wondering that if it was only doing what you wanted it to do,
> how reasonable would it be.
>
> No sense talking about updates.  Once I got a system doing what I wanted, I'd see no
> reason to do any updates.
>
> I looked at a Linux distribution a few weeks ago.  (Ubunta)  Was hopelessly lost.  Got it
> on a CD that is bootable, into a GUI interface.  Didn't even know how to get to a command
> line environment.  Didn't even see enough to be "not impressed".

Without the monthly security updates, a Window box becomes even more
vulnerable than it already was, even if its only connection with other
systems is Sneakernet. Also it potentially becomes more destructive,
e.g. as a source of infection for other systems. Lots of folk would
understandably be reluctant to work a Window box without updates. Are
you really really sure you don't want the updates?

Wrt Linux: Ubuntu is hip trendy and gets lots of publicity. Is there
any correlation between something's hip trendiness factor and its
ability to deliver something useful? Ubuntu has recently had lots of
publicity for what many consider a backwards move with its GUI, the
new improved "Unity".

I've tried Ubuntu on a couple of occasions before Unity and on both
occasions returned to my Linux of choice, which for several years has
been SuSe (though at work I'm now mostly using Fedora for reasons not
relevant here). SuSe has been untrendy for a number of years now; so
untrendy that it actually came with a traditional *manual* (two in
fact, one for users, one for admins) either in PDF format or even in
paper format if you buy a boxed kit with support.

I don't yet know what the current SuSe 12.x is like, but from SuSe
8(?) to SuSe 11 it's been fine for my needs, including the
realtime(ish) stuff. Different variants of GNU/Linux have a lot in
common underneath, but that doesn't mean they're all going to look the
same. If you are genuinely interested in "thinking different", you
shouldn't give up just because Ubuntu didn't suit.