Conference hydra::amiga_v1

I just read on USENET that Dale is looking for X11 Release 3 based Amiga X
beta testers!

There is an article in the May 15, 1989 DIGITAL REVIEW page 19 titled
"X Windows Software Converts Commodore PC into X Terminal"

-Tom-

What follows is one of the information sheets I received from GfxBase, the 
Amiga X11 folks.  This one is about SYNDESIS's TSSnet product (DECnet-Amiga)

	SYNDESIS
	20 West Street
	Wilmington, MA  01887
	Phone: (508) 657-5585
	FAX:   (508) 657-5917



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amiga to VAX Connectivity

TSSnet is a software implementation of the Digital Network Architecture
(DECnet) for use on the Commodore Amiga line of personal computers.  With it,
Amiga computers become Phase IV end nodes in a DECnet network that can consist
of over 64,000 different computers running a wide variety of operation systems.
Syndesis TSSnet is a complete Amiga implementation of TSSnet, originally
developed by Thursby Software Systems.

The initial release, available in the second quarter, 1989, will provide
asynchronous DECnet communications (DDCMP) using the Amiga serial capabilities. 
This provides for multiple concurrent sessions between Amiga tasks and tasks
running on any other nodes on the DECnet network.  This release will fully
support X11 for the Amiga from GfxBase, an implementation of the X Window
System on the Amiga. 

Included with this release:

NETWORK CONTROL PROGRAM (NCP)
An intuitive easy-to-use application for complete control of the TSSnet node.
Parameters such as line speed, network state, buffer sizes and numbers, data
about nodes to be accessed by this node, network access control and more can be
maintained from the screens in NCP.  In addition, all counters in the system
tracing numbers of messages and bytes sent and received and numbers of all
types of errors encountered in communications are dynamically displayed and
updated on the NCP statistics screen.

NETWORK VIRTUAL TERMINAL
This provides the ability to log onto other nodes on the DECnet network.  It
uses the DECnet remote terminal facility to open multiple sessions, if desired,
on those nodes.  A VT100 terminal emulator is provided to use the Virtual
Terminal Facility.

TASK TO TASK COMMUNICATIONS
A programming interface at the amiga device level is provided to allow
development of Amiga programs to communication with tasks on other DECnet
nodes.  Full documentation and, of course, Syndesis support will be available
for this easy-to-use interface.


Additional features to be added following the initial release include:

Network Copy - File copying to and from the Amiga, including directory
listings, printing files on remote VAX/VMS printers, and submitting command
files for execution on VAX/VMS systems. 

Remote File Access (File Listener) - Direct file access to your Amiga by other
DECnet nodes. Security is maintained through the use of a username and password
protection mechanism, as other DECnet hosts use. 

Netmail - Electronic mail, compatible with VMS Mail, allowing full mail access
to DECnet networks. 

Ethernet Support - Support for communications over Ethernet data links.

    (All the proper trademark info followed, which I don't want to type in :-)

Following is some info I got from GfxBase about their X11 implementation for
AmigaDos.

		Dale Luck
		GfxBase
		1881 Ellwell Dr
		Milpitas, CA   95035
		(408) 262-1496

X11 Released for the Amiga Computer  (dated 3-May-1989)
-----------------------------------

The first release of X11 that runs on the lowest cost computer in the world
that supports X11 server and clients: the Amiga Personal Computer, is now
available. 
    It supports displays up to 1008X1024 on a special monitor as well as
resolutions down to 640X480 on lower cost monitors.
    X11 on the Amiga takes advantage of the custom blitter chip to speed up
operations.  In many cases the Amiga X11 is just as fast if not faster than X11
machines costing much more.
    The Amiga X11 uses tcp/ip over ethernet for connections to other machines
and a highly efficient shared memory message passing scheme for local
connections. 
    Amiga X11 is more than just a server.  It includes several clients that run
under the native AmigaDOS OS, such as uwm, xcalc, and bitmap.  By including
local client capability in a very low cost workstation, network bandwidth
requirements are lessened compared to a simple X terminal.
    The Amiga xpr supports up to fifty different printers, both b/w and color. 
A single Amiga can be used as a general purpose print server.  Printers that
are supported include: Howtek PixelMaster, HP PaintJet, Calcomp Colormaster. 
The Amiga has standard serial and parallel ports.  There is an optional IEEE488
interface available.
    Amiga X11 coexists with the native windowing operation system of the Amiga. 
Because the Amiga can split it's display into multiple bitmaps with different
resolutions and colormaps, one can be using uwm in one X screen, twm in another
screen, Intuition in the standard Amiga Workbench screen, and any number of the
amazing paint/animation programs available for the Amiga in another screen.
    The X Window System for the Amiga has been tested and works with DEC VAXes,
Sun's, Apollo's, and HP's equipment, and others at the X Connectathon in
February of 1989. 
    Xlib and Xt libraries are planned for introduction later this year.
Price and Availability: X11 for the Amiga is priced at $395.  X11 plus Optical
3 button mouse is $475.  X11, mouse, and ethernet board is priced at $1339. 
Availability is immediate.


Progress Report for Mono X11 on the Amiga
-----------------------------------------

Final Release 1.0 started shipping May 8, 1989.  I am enclosing some literature
I send to many industry trade magazines.  Now is the time to get your orders
in, we are shipping from stock, software, mice, and ethernet boards.

The following clients were updated to Release 3 of X11:  xwd, xfd, xlsfonts,
xprop, xrefresh, xwininfo, xwud, xlswins, xkill.

Several changes to the script files to better handle open output files by
redirecting to nil:

Speed up in tile routines.  Numerous bugs were fixed.

The server is now using the original Amiga floating point library.  This
speeded up the server on 68000 base machines.

Some summary benchmarks.  There is a program called xbench that we ran on the
release version.  The results are given in xstones which is some nebulous
measure of performance.  All numbers are for a monochrome system.  Draw your
own conclusions.  These are a few of the numbers.

System		    blits	text	    xstones
--------------      ---------   ---------   -----------
A2000/2620-2m	    14162	26125	    13653
Sun 3/60	    16577	13437	    13343
Sun 3/110	    14266	11250	    11229
Sun 3/50	    10000	10000	    10000
HP 9000/320	    10995	10000	     6424
A2000 2m fast	     9310	10000	     6295  (standard 68000 based Amiga)
A2000 2m fast	     7865	 9739	     5531  (ethernet client = Sun 3/?)
visual 640	     1978	 7668	     3917  (ethernet)

I just talked with Bob Tulley of Syndesis.  He says TSSnet (DECnet-Amiga) will
be shipping in a partial release by the end of the summer, and as a full-blown
implementation (with mail, etc.) by the end of the year.  But it's not gonna be
cheap.  He said about $250.00 for the partial and $350 for the full release
(with a pay-the-difference upgrade plan if you buy the partial release.) 
Coupled with $395.00 for X-11, this makes X for the amiga cost around
$650-$750.  That's a fair amount for software.

Anyway, on a related note, can anyone help me with an Ultrix/VMS transfer
problem.  The X11 Release 3 distribution is available free-of-charge on the
EASYnet, but it's stored on DECWRL, an Ultrix machine.  The files have been
TARed and then split into smaller 'chunks'.  I'd like to get the source down to
my Amiga so I can fiddle with it some, but I can't copy the files from DECWRL
to my VMS account.  Keeping getting that 'user buffer too small for nnnn byte
record' error.

So can anyone tell me how I can accomplish this transfer?  Or, could someone
with access to an Ultrix system convert the files to some manageable format for
me?  (e.g. ZOO or something?)


					Thanks, 
					John

    At least for a while (until disk space gets tight) the X11R3 tape in
    expanded form, i.e. split out into seperate files in seperate
    directories can be found at:
    
    	RLAV::DISK$PEANUT_USER2:[X11R3...]
    
    If X is supposed to be so portable and the Amiga have such powerful
    graphics, it seems a port to the Amiga for a knowledgable C and X
    person should be fairly doable.  Myself being neither hasn't got a
    clue, but would be interested in assisting in any way possible.
    
    -tl

It's also now at 

	WJG::X11R3:		Top level
	WJG::X11R3R:		Root to top level 

Using the root you can easily access subdirectories:

	$ dir wjg::x11r3:
	$ dir wjg::x11r3r:[server]
	$ dir wjg::x11r3r:[lib.clx]

	etc.


John

Hmm... John, you wouldn't be in the process of porting X11 to the amiga
yourself, would you?  Just curious, since you've got the source and have
definitely expressed interest in having Xwindows.

I'll grab the source from somewhere after hours tonight.  Thanks for the
pointers.  In response to .6 (I think) regarding porting X11 to the Amiga, I 
agree.  I've been digging into lots of Xwindows textbooks, overviews, etc. 
with just that thought in mind.  I'm gonna grab the source and see just how 
big of a job it would be. 


					John

Thought I'd take a look. I'd love to have X on the Amiga with a "modem" 
transport to connect back to work but the proces are a bit rich for me
(a 68020 board seems more likely now).

If you've been reading X, your ahead of me!  I've done some programming
under DECwindows/XLIB, but that;'s it.


John

    
    
    I seem to recall Dale Luck talking about the job he did with his port.
    One of the major things that he had to implement were sockets...
    
    Does anybody know of a good socket library for the amiga??
    
    
    	brad
    

I'll bet the KA9Q internet stuff has sockets of some sort. I have the 
executable stuff for KA9Q, but not the sources.  I seem to remember someone 
in here does have source though....


For exe, check WJG::AMIGA:NET_AMIGA.ARC


John

Bob Page had a note in comp.sys.amiga indicating that among other goodies a new
internet package from the ka9q guys would be forthcoming soon.......

brad

    Hi Guys,
    
    		Has anyone got any further with X-Lib on the Amiga.
    
    	I don't care about Decnet access via the serial or paralell port.
    	I just want X-Lib to use the Window stuff, so that I can have a go
    at some portable window code......
    
    
    			- Pete -
    
    
    		Yeah .. But dreaming never hurt anyone....

    Hi
    
    		Is the code in wjg::x11r3: already patched ??
    
    			- Pete -

    

>    		Is the code in wjg::x11r3: already patched ??
    

Yes, but you're better off getting the stuff at wjg::x11r4:

I'm sure there are more r4 patches by now too..

john

    How can I tell how patched the R4 files are 
    
    	I know the originals are in DECWRL But I don't want to copy both 
    just to compare them. ?
    
    Did you do any more work on porting it to the Amiga ?
    
    		- Pete - 
    
    	Who is just still decompressing R3 and is about to delete the lot
    !!
    
    

I had ported cpp and imake, investigated all the sources (and learned 
quite a bit). 

A friend from another DEC location (non-AMiga owner) was porting it to his 
68000 based machine which ran Unix (he had it easy!). We were going to work 
together on making X more portable than it is now and I would have done some 
level of Amiga port then. This was back when R3 was in and R4 was close. We 
decided to wait for R4 to do any usefull work. We waited, I got flooded here 
at DEC and with my consulting work and with school so I kinda quietly 
dropped off.

I don't believe the R4 stuff on WJG is patched at all. DECWRL will
have the latest patches so you should apply them from there. I think
there is a VMS version of the patch program (or was it the Unix system I 
did R3 patches on?) 

Some problems you'll encounter:  XLIB is HUGE! If you want local clients
you'll need to make some kind of paged in shared library. Without VM and/or
huge amounts of memory, XLIB is trouble. You can't load it in or compile it
in (unles you only include the called routines and their support stuff, but even
then the images get real big!)... You need to load segments at a time.

I believe the GfxBASE implementation is server only for this reason.

Color stuff (cfb color frame buffer) can get complicated. Your best off
starting with a simple mfb (monochrome frame buffer) server only.


Here's the fun part. Unless you have a local machine to run the clients on 
while your porting the server, you SOL (sh*t out of luck). The local 
client beast must support whatever transport you have on the physical layer 
between it and your amiga (most likely SLIP - serial line IP - or ethernet
with tssnet (DECnet) or TCP/IP). Forget using the systems at work over 2400
baud modem - tooooo much protocol in X to flood a 2400 baud modem.

Then there's the distinct Unix flavor of everything in the source (the DDX stuff
anyway). The developers seemed to like forking children all over the place
and we all know the Amiga doesn't fork well :-) I did manage to emulate
the relavant fcntl() stuff.

I was pretty serious about porting it till I looked into it closely. It's
a fair amount of work for someone who knows X, knows the Amiga and has lots of
time...

I've pretty much decided to wait till Unix comes out for the amiga which should
simplify the port quite a bit.

john

    I got "Protection Violations" on some of the WJG:: rev 4 files when I tried
    to copy them - you might want to check them out.

all set. Sorry!

john

    John ,
    	When you say X-Lib is big .... How Big..?
    
    	I have seen X running on a IBMPC I think.. Any ideas if this is via
    	MSWindows or is it yet another standard ?
    
    	Mail me your DTN and Geographic Location and maybe we can talk
    briefly on this  ..
    
    			- Pete -
    

GfxBase is planning to release MOTIF this year. I have just received a
beta test disk of the MWM and will be trying it out. I do plan to include
trying to use it via DECnet to a VAXstation.

    Cfould some kind soul please post the FAX telephone number of GfxBase.
    
    Thank you,
    Angus

    I've just finished speaking to Dale Luck; I only rang him up to thank
    him for faxing me.
    
    MOTIF for Amiga is now shipping. So far you can only get it from
    GfxBase. Price $99.
    
    The image is twice the size of the X-11 software; Dale recommended an
    extra meg.
    
    I'd love to know how this compares with Amiga X-11. It would make far
    more sense for us to use this rather than Amiga X-11; especially as its
    $300 (hence �300) cheaper than X-11.
    
    Angus