home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
- Path: sparky!uunet!worldbank.org!rpcfod
- From: rpcfod@nimbus.worldbank.org (Robert Patt-Corner)
- Subject: Re: deskview/X on 386...
- Message-ID: <rpcfod-270792140242@rpcfod.worldbank.org>
- Followup-To: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
- Sender: news@worldbank.org
- Organization: The World Bank
- References: <9207200114.AA10807@louvre.wbst147.xerox.com> <5442@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> <brian.21.0@Novell.COM>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 18:13:28 GMT
- Lines: 44
-
- We're running it on a Dell 486TE, with the purpose of timesharing DOS, that
- is, putting DOS boxes in the computer room as DOS X-clients for our
- Macintosh workstations. I'm into testing about a week with the following
- tentative results:
-
- 1. Installing DVX is a piece of cake. Getting it to work over the net is
- not.
-
- 2. We purchased the Novell stack, which has been problematic. The stack
- uses its own "standard" link layer (ODI) which has problems talking with
- our SMC Ethernet board or visa versa. Novell was incredibly lame regarding
- support in an official sense -- told me to get lost and talk to my software
- vendor. I did so, and acheived the expected result -- silence. Most
- packages give you 30 or 90 days to get up and running before requiring paid
- support; Novell did not. (Quarterdeck does supply support for awhile).
-
- On the otherhand, and to be fair, Novell staff on the Internet have been
- quite helpful even though it isn't their job "officially". Good on 'em.
-
- The upshot was that I sidestepped the problem using an ODI to Packet
- translator called PDETHER (see threads in Novell newsgroup). Works fine,
- may or may not have a performance hit.
-
- 3. The documentation on the net manager part is pretty poor. There are
- lots of utilities that Quarterdeck didn't document. Call them and ask if
- you need to.
-
- 4. Once up and running the remote X capability over IP (the part I'm
- interested in) was extremely slow *until* I moved and compiled the pc
- bitmap[ fonts over. At that point the speed became quite acceptable.
-
- 5. DVX has (IMHO) a crippling limitation in being only able to send to
- screen 0. This prevents us, for instance, from running programs in color.
- Per Murphy, our target program for the project requires color.
-
- 6. The product itself is reasonably strong but not bulletproof. In tests
- (with many errors on my part of course) it hangs a few times a day,
- requiring reboot. It would probably be much more stable in a canned
- environment.
-
- 7. While windows runs under X, I haven't gotten it to run remotely yet.
-
- Hope that helps. Overall I like this product and consider it extremely
- promising, if frustrating at times.
-