HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: murphy@npri6.npri.com (David P. Murphy)
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: DR bad, VAX PRO good
Date: 28 Aug 92 15:13:14 GMT
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA

SCHENKENBERG@Monmouth-ETDL1.Army.MIL claims that Digital Review and
the former Digital News are not worth the price (free, ha ha):

>[stuff deleted]
>
>The problem in the DEC computing arena (and the computer arena in general)
>is that good, factual and informative sources cost money!  These rags appear
>on the desks of MIS types FOC (free of charge).  What do YOU think they'll
>buy when it come down to it?  The free rag and an extra lunch Martini -or-
>one of the chock-full-of informative data trade journals and magazines???
>
>[more stuff deleted]

maybe; i refuse to read DR or DN (i didn't even know about the merge) but
i have a very high opinion of VAX Professional!  hunter goatley, bruce ellis,
and many others contribute valuable articles every issue, and the source is
even on-line!  wonderful stuff!  for instance, eric lafranchi wrote up some
VAXC macros to use machine instructions for string manipulations instead of
calling the VAXCRTL functions; i had been meaning to do this for many months,
and now eric did it for me, including his performance statistics (thanks eric)!
even the !GO VAXFORUM (a q&a column) helps me out sometimes . . . other times
it's something i already knew or that i don't care about, but the "hit" rate
is still respectably high.

this publication is worth many times the subscription rate,
and my employer pays for me anyway :-)

DEC Pro (is it still around?) was slightly interesting once in a while,
but i haven't read it in a long time.

ok
dpm (can you tell i'm a systems programmer?)
-- 
murphy@npri6.npri.com 602 Cameron St. Alexandria, VA 22314 (703) 683-9090

              When every one is dead the Great Game is finished.  Not before.
                              --- Hurree Babu, "Kim"
From: pettigrew_mi@ripple.enet.dec.com (Mike Pettigrew)
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: VMS tuning for a vaxcluster (LAVC)
Date: 1 Sep 92 18:05:19 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In article <1992Sep1.120713.15272@husc3.harvard.edu>, joltes@husc10.harvard.edu (Richard Joltes) writes...
><brydon@dsny25.sinet.slb.com> writes:
> 


[ Detailed theoretical explanation omitted]


> 
> 
>Sure, there will be case-by-case variations (like the example of an RF35-
>equipped server talking to RD-based satellites), but overall I still think
>it's better to keep as much processing as possible local to the satellite.
>Disks are cheap, overall.  Performance tuning on systems that have gone to
>production work is more expensive, IMHO, in lost time and user frustration.
> 
>Polemic ended...hopefully helpful!
> 

That was an excellent theoretical analysis of the situation with respect to
paging over the ethernet, compared to paging from a local disk.

Theory is in complete agreement with careful experimentation on this point.

It is easy to tune your LAVC sattelites to minimize or even eliminate paging
activity.  If you cannot eliminate paging, you get better peformance from a
local paging disk, than from paging across the ethernet.  If you have to buy
hardware to improve performance, your best bet is a memory upgrade.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| -Mike Pettigrew        pettigrew_mi@ripple.enet.dec.com
|                        (206) 661-3032
|                        Digital Equipment Corporation 
|                        Federal Way, Washington, USA
|___________________________________________________________________________
|  Surprises Every Day!
|___________________________________________________________________________
|These opinions are mine and not necessarily my employer's
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: MILLER@TGV.COM
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: re: PATCH on ALPHA ?
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:52:16 GMT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

>> Oh bugger.  So I have to cut a tape whenever I want to send someone a fix?
>> With Patch I can fix things immediately over the phone.  I think it's a
>> foolish decision to leave Patch out.  It's going to make my job a lot
>> harder.
>
>I doubt it. Given all the work that a RISC compiler does on your source
>(even, I suspect, if the source is MACRO32), I think that trying to
>implemement a nontrivial patch to the code that doesn't have unexpected
>side-effects is probably a lot more work than recompiling!

I doubt it.  I've already worked with miles and miles of machine listings
from both the GEM C compiler and the MACRO32 compiler.  I've even found
several compiler optimizer bugs.  I know what I'm doing.

Besides, a lot of patches are trivial, like constant changes.  And
what if I want to patch some native M64 code?

>The only exception I can think of is patching the DATA sections in the
>image. But the current patch utility could do that, and I can't remember
>when I last wanted to use PATCH on data sections anyway!

So when is Digital going to fix Patch so that it works on already
loaded images?

-bruce
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
From: claes@rigel.efd.lth.se (Claes Engelin, SKF Data, Sweden)
Subject: Re: DR bad, VAX PRO good
Reply-To: claes@rigel.efd.lth.se
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology,Lund, Sweden
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 07:55:14 GMT

    In article <0095FDCD.594F9B00.10284@WKUVX1.BITNET>, Hunter Goatley
    <goathunter@WKUVX1.BITNET> writes:

>don@zl2tnm.gen.nz writes:
>>
>>In article <6103@npri6.npri.com>, murphy@npri6.npri.com (David P. Murphy)
>> writes:
>>
>>> i have a very high opinion of VAX Professional!  hunter goatley, bruce ellis,
>>> and many others contribute valuable articles every issue, and the source is
>>
>>Does someone have an address for subscription requests?  I haven't seen a
>>VAX Pro for _years_.
>>
>I've included the info below.  

    [...]
    
    Hunter forgot to mention a little detail: VAX Pro have for some
    time now been running an offer, whereby you for a modest (I think
    it's $300) can get a batch of _all_ back issues of VAX Pro. Might
    be useful, if you've been out of touch for a while. If nothing
    else, you can get the complete Hitchhiker series of articles by
    Bruce Ellis -- extremely instructive and entertaining.

    Apart from that, I share the very high opinion of VAX Pro, even if
    some articles are beyond me at times. (How often can you say
    _that_ about a computer rag: that you just don't _understand_ the
    article ;-)      )
--
Claes Engelin       | e-mail:  CLAES@rigel.efd.lth.se (may change anytime soon!)
SKF Dataservice AB  | MEMO:    MEMONET.SM.DSVGOT.G721746 (A Swedish net)
S-415 50 GOTHENBURG | Phone:   +46 31 371943  |
Sweden              | Fax:     +46 31 372505  |
"After you stop believing in Santa Claus, the whole world just goes downhill"
                 - Tom Clancy
From: MILLER@TGV.COM
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re:  MACRO32 vs. Alpha
Date: 31 Aug 92 21:13:08 GMT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List


>Patch not only has not been ported, there are no plans to port it.  The
>support mechanism for correcting images is to replace them, not patch them.

Oh bugger.  So I have to cut a tape whenever I want to send someone a fix?
With Patch I can fix things immediately over the phone.  I think it's a
foolish decision to leave Patch out.  It's going to make my job a lot
harder.

-bruce
From: jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: DR bad, VAX PRO good
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:00:00 GMT
Reply-To: jms@arizona.edu
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department
X-Lunar-Date: 4 days, 15 hours, 11 minutes since the new moon
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Sep1.221944.12789@cpu.com>, gwlester@cpu.com writes...
> 
>	The problem that at least some of us have is that we don't have time to
>read all of sources of information.  I have eliminate DR from my list due to
>the amount of material that I had to read to get new and useful information.
> 

Well, it's a tradeoff, isn't it?  You can read nothing that ever comes to
you, and spend all your time running around re-inventing the wheel.  Or,
you can do nothing but read all day long, have all of the answers, and no
time to do your job.  I still claim that you can't be an effective and
useful system manager without reading DR.  If all you do is kernel mode
programming, that's one thing.  But who has a job description that narrow
these days?

>P.S. - I have a Matco mug for pointing out to DR that VMS does *NOT* run on 
>       any of the PDP-11 series.

It depends on whether you consider a VAX-11/780 a PDP-11.  If you define a
PDP-11 as a system which runs PDP-11 code "native" (i.e., without software
emulators, as in the newer VAX systems), the VAX-11/780 is a fine PDP-11
which happens to run VMS.  Also, since you can microcode it yourself, it
can run WPS-8 as well (and does).

jms

Joel M Snyder, 1103 E Spring Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719 
Phone: 602.882.4094 (voice) .4095 (FAX) .4093 (data)
BITNET: jms@Arizona  Internet: jms@arizona.edu  SPAN: 47541::telcom::jms
Let's send the Russians defective lifestyle accessories!
From: "(Jon Pinkley, Westinghouse (216)486-8300 x1335)"
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Before Ehud flames me...
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 02:57:55 -0400
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

I wrote

>perhaps he should.)  No wonder there is so many Myths to debunk.
                                      ^^
                                      ARE

I had written "No wonder there is so much confusion." but changed it...

Jon Pinkley  jon@clevax.wec.com  ...uunet!tron!clevax!jon (216)486-8300 x1335
From: don@zl2tnm.gen.nz
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: DR bad, VAX PRO good
Date: 30 Aug 92 15:57:08 +1200
Distribution: world
Organization: The Wolery

In article <6103@npri6.npri.com>, murphy@npri6.npri.com (David P. Murphy) writes:
> SCHENKENBERG@Monmouth-ETDL1.Army.MIL claims that Digital Review and
> the former Digital News are not worth the price (free, ha ha):

Digital News never seemed to make it into these parts.

I gave up on Digital Review a couple of years ago ahen they published on
the front page a price comparison of a 32MB SCSI-equipped mips box vs a
half gigabyte XMI-equipped VAX 9000 and claimed that the mips box was one
tenth the price for "equivalent performance"....  <sigh> 

> i have a very high opinion of VAX Professional!  hunter goatley, bruce ellis,
> and many others contribute valuable articles every issue, and the source is

Does someone have an address for subscription requests?  I haven't seen a 
VAX Pro for _years_.

Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                       don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre           don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand             +64-4-495-5052
From: MILLER@TGV.COM
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: STACK LAYOUT IN SPECIAL KAST?
Date: 28 Aug 92 19:12:28 GMT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List


>>> When I'm in the KAST how can I find the saved PC, PSL and FP of the code
>>> I've interrupted, so that I can trace back through the stack.

If this isn't a time critical application you could always just read the
PC and FP out of the PHD.

-bruce
From: GAVRON@VESTA.SUNQUEST.COM
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: RE: moving DDT for CDdriver etc.
Date: 3 Sep 92 18:17:06 GMT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

Date sent:  3-SEP-1992 11:13:44

Glen Everhart suggested a standardizing method for stealing DDBs,
FDT entries, and which could also be modified to steal any other
referential vector:

>   The notion is to produce a UCB extension that looks like this:
>
>        .long   ident-pattern
>        .long   previous-DDB-address
>ucb$a_victimddb:
>        .blkl   nnnn    ;however long this needs to be, look it up
>
>   With such a standard in force, if I find the DDB from ucb$l_ddb
>of the victim device, I can check ident-pattern against my
>own program's pattern, and if it matches I just go ahead and use
>offsets from there to find my driver's UCB and thus its data
>(e.g. the CDdriver UCB). If it does not match, I chain using
>the previous-DDB-address and keep looking for my pattern, and
>when I find it (in usually one or two tries at most), I have
>found my UCB and can go on from there.
>   The pattern choice is arbitrary, and I have no great objections
>to making it two longs, but I think one is enough by prejudice.

Agreed.

>   It is necessary of course that this chain never be removed
>or broken once established, though the contents of the DDB copy
>in the area labelled "ucb$a_victimddb" above could of course
>be altered if one wanted to turn off a program.

Yes! :)
...
>   I would suggest a similar strategy be used for stealing
>FDT table bits also. These can be made to coexist rather nicely
>if one has a structure somewhat along these lines for FDT routines
>to be added to a driver's FDT chain.
[code suggestion removed]

Yup!

>   What say the rest of the forum?

I didn't see anything else along this line from anyone - these sound
like good suggestions.  Why not write up a white paper... I'll be happy
to help out if you need any, and I'm sure there are others.

>Glenn Everhart
>Everhart@Raxco.com
>215 358 5875
>


        Ehud

--
Ehud Gavron        (EG76)
gavron@ACES.COM
The world consults with you when you're cool.
From: SCHENKENBERG@Monmouth-ETDL1.Army.MIL
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: How myths are born...
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 09:22 EDT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

From:   IN%"<@cunyvm.cuny.edu:MACRO32@WKUVX1.BITNET>"  "MACRO32" 26-AUG-1992
 18:45:50.55
To:     IN%"<@cunyvm.cuny.edu:MACRO32@WKUVX1.BITNET>"  "MACRO32"
CC:
Subj:   RE: How myths are born...

>>    Why don't we all call Digital Review (Jack Fergreus @ 617-558-4305
>>    and ask that they replace the foolish and inane Bill Hancock with
>>    the accurate and sober Joel Snyder?  I'd rather read a Joel column
>>    than a Bill rag anyday.

Save your money!  A phone call to Digital Review (now Digital News & Review)
will only make 'Ma' Bell' richer (that is, if you haven't been smart enough
to can AT&T yet!) and waist your time!

Thankfully, we now have one less useless, poor excuse for cannibalizing our
dwindling forest resources, really bad sweeps-weeks-news sensationalizing
headliners industry trade-rags for MIS types (Misguides Ignorant Stooges),
since Digital News 'bit the big one' and was absorbed into Digital Review.

I personally won't and DON'T read anything that comes in the same format as
the 'National Inquirer'.

Any magazine, armed to promote the sales of products in the same fashion as
those all too popular heinous 1/2 Hour TV INFOmercials, with comparisons of
MIPS (Meaningless Indexes of Processing Speed) and SPECmarks (Sensationaliz-
ing Performance Evaluation Criteria Marketed As Reliable Knowledge-based
Statistics) reeks of biased, I've got one hand in the till and the other on
your throat, journalism (<- facetious intention).

The problem in the DEC computing arena (and the computer arena in general)
is that good, factual and informative sources cost money!  These rags appear
on the desks of MIS types FOC (free of charge).  What do YOU think they'll
buy when it come down to it?  The free rag and an extra lunch Martini -or-
one of the chock-full-of informative data trade journals and magazines???

Stop filling out those once-a-year, guised as a survey, add-my-name-to-your-
mailing-list rag-wrappers and put an end to this junk mail stuffing your
mailboxes.

IF you really want to make an impact and have some enlightened, factfilled,
usefull and applicable reporting, then send them the message in the right
way.  They won't hear or listen to your phone calls!   But, when the number
of rags in circulation drops, so will their revenues from their back page
advertisers.

       ********************************************************
       *** Hit 'em where it hurts the most.  Their wallets! ***
       ********************************************************
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: Digital Corporate Security - on my tail
From: don@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Don Stokes)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:06:40 GMT
Organization: Victoria University of Wellington

GAVRON@ACES.COM writes:
<fun DEC "security" story deleted>

I ran into DEC's security stormtroopers once.  I noticed a probe on an 
X.25 link once, which I traced back to the DEC Sydney office.  It wasn't 
what I'd call a serious attack (didn't even try to get on), but it was 
in the middle of a serious attack on a number of sites in Aus and NZ, and
I mentioned it in passing to the guy in Aus who was coordinating the 
efforts to stop it.  

It seems he mentioned it to one of the security guys in DEC Aus -- shortly
after, I received a call from the head security honcho for DEC South Pacific
Region, who was most interested.  I got the clear impression that someone's
job was likely to be on the line....

I think in the end he decided it was a simple mistake and there was no 
malice involved (which was my feeling from day one), but I was impressed.

> ** the lady at the circle-K last night told me I looked 17 when
>   I tried to buy beer.  She made my night :-)

<sigh> Last time somebody tried to guess my age, they were wrong by eight
years, in the other direction.  8-(  (Worse, there were three people there,
and they all agreed!)

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                      don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre          don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.           +64-4-495-5052
From: dsroberts@beckman.com
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: Technical idiots
Date: 28 Aug 92 18:41:55 GMT
Organization: Beckman Instruments

In article <920826004543.5b3@VESTA.SUNQUEST.COM>, <GAVRON@VESTA.SUNQUEST.COM> writes:
> Jon Pinkley pointed out that Bill Hancock is a fool.
> I'm sorry to disappoint Jon, but the "Winner of the DECUS Award
> for Technical Excellence" is an idiot.  I had the displeasure once
> of being in the same room and hearing his banal, content-less
> amusing stories-for-idiots.
> 
> Bill Hnacock fills the halls with amusing drivel, and crowds
> like him, and he doesn't know shit, but that's ok, because
> he's amusing.
> 
> I may lose consulting $$$ off of this, but at least when I got
> my last paycheck, I _knew_ it was because I knew what I was
> talking about, not because I was a dickless technically incompetent
> storytelling slob.
> 
> Ehud
> (no, it's not a raw nerve; Bill is a talentless Mac Weenie)
> 
> this mail message copyright 1992 ACES Inc., all rights reserved

Gee, Ehud, don't mince words, tell us how you really feel :-)

Actually, I've been thinking about this for a few days, and while I agree that
there is relatively little CONTENT to Hancocks presentations (I even attended
his PSS when I was fairly new to DECUS, and came away knowing little more than
I went into it with), I wonder if anyone could point out examples of him
actually being consistantly WRONG.  Yes, his jokes are banal.  He displays a 
real attitude that I would not desire in a consultant during his talks, but 
what has he been wrong about?  What specifically makes him "technically 
incompetent"?
-- 
   Don Roberts                   Internet:  don@beckman.com
   Beckman Instruments, Inc.     Phone:     714/961-3029
   2500 Harbor Bl. Mailstop X-12 FAX:       714/961-3351
   Fullerton, CA  92634          Disclaimer:  Blame me, not Beckman.
   People are as happy as they decide to be - A. Lincoln
From: GAVRON@ACES.COM
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Digital Corporate Security - on my tail
Date: 2 Sep 92 14:20:36 GMT
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

Date sent:  2-SEP-1992 07:16:46


        So I get this message on my voice mail saying "This
        is Arthur Leets; please give me a call at 508-493-8064*."

        So I call this number to discover that LO AND BEHOLD
        someone has decided that I have HACKED INTO AND DISCOVERED
        A WAY TO PATCH INTO THE DTN (Digital Telephone Network,
        a DEC-Internal telephone system).

        After twenty minutes of talking to the guy, I discovered
        that apparently someone had gotten my comment making the
        patches to PHONE available on Vesta.Sunquest.COM" and over the
        course of traversing DEC security it had become a patch to
        DTN...

        I told him Ray Kaplan, an independent security consultant
        based in Tucson, would be highly amused, but then I decided
        some of you might also be... he made my day** :-)

        Ehud

--
Ehud Gavron     (EG76)
gavron@Spades.ACES.COM

* number not changed to protect the guilty

** the lady at the circle-K last night told me I looked 17 when
  I tried to buy beer.  She made my night :-)
From: Arne Vajhxj <ARNE@ko.hhs.dk>
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: VMS tuning for a vaxcluster (LAVC)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 11:35 +0200
Organization: Macro32<==>Vmsnet.Internals Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

> >>Okay, but what about the situation of one satellite vaxstation on a lightly
> >>loaded network?  I think page read I/O's should be considered separately
 from
> >>page write I/O's.  Does this satellite system do page read I/O's any faster
> >>over the ethernet versus to local disk?  [I would imagine that page write
> >>I/O's would be dependent entirely on the relative disk speeds of the local
> >>versus boot node disk speed.]
> >
> >Nope.  The local disk's still faster.  When I and a friend did VMS tuning
> >studies for <a former employer> we found that even on an unloaded net the
> >local disk was faster.  Mind you, this was using VAXstation IIs with between
> >5 and 16MB and RD54s.  Mileage on newer systems may vary, but I'd bet that
> >the local disk still beats Ethernet traffic.
> >
>
> Depends on your hardware. We have a VAX 4000 model 500 with RF35's serving a
> bunch of VS3100's, some with disks (RZ23) and some without. I can assure you
> that the local disk is not faster in this situation. I had a diskless 3100
> paging to the 4500 for a while; the machine is now at my house and has a local
> RZ57 as a standalone system. It most definitely *felt* faster when it was
 paging
> to the 4500; I have no measurements on this, however (except that an RF35 is
> waaaaay quicker than an RZ57).

I think, that two important aspects has been left out of this discussion.

A fast server-machine with a fast disk may be much faster than a local disk,
if the server is doing nothing else.

But often such a powerfull server will often support many workstations and
if they are all active, then performance may decrease a lot.

Another common configuration is to have a general purpose machine as a server.
A VAX 65x0 with RA92's may be a good server if it is empty, but if it has
80 interactive users it may be a rather slow server.

So the question about what is fastest local or remote disk depends both on the
server power AND the load on the server.

One conclusion may be, that a local page-file will make the user of the
workstation less dependent of other activities, which may be considered
an advantage.

                                                          Arne

Arne Vajhxj                             local DECNET:  KO::ARNE
Computer Department                     PSI:           PSI%23831001304030::ARNE
Business School of Southern Denmark     Internet:      ARNE@KO.HHS.DK