From: evbrown@digi.lonestar.org (Evan Brown)
Newsgroups: dfw.general,tx.general
Subject: Dallas/Ft.Worth UNIX Users Group January newsletter
Date: 2 Jan 93 23:44:12 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: Dallas/Ft.Worth UNIX Users Group


                 Dallas Ft.Worth Unix Users Group
         Promoting the Education and Understanding of Unix
                    Unix is a trademark of AT&T

No. 80 Edited and Published by Evan Brown, John Fusselman,
       and John Bittner January, 1993
__________________________________________________________________
                      GENERAL  MEETING  INFO

Meetings are held the first THURSDAY of every month (unless it  is
a  holiday)  at  the Hewlett-Packard facility in Las Colinas (3301
Royal Lane, Irving, TX  75063 - 214-830-8994).

Meeting schedule:
  6:00-7:00 Board Meeting (all members welcome)
  7:00-7:20 Socializing
  7:20-7:40 Introduce Visitors and Club Business
  7:40-8:30 General Interest Presentation
  8:30-8:40 Break
  8:40-9:30 SIG
__________________________________________________________________

                             OFFICERS

Kevin Coyle                 President                     519-3452
Thurman Harden                V Pres                  817/478-5070
Robert Bair                 Secretary                     243-2015
Evan Brown               Treas+Membership                 618-3525
John Fusselman                Editor                      458-5480
Grady Walker               Hospitality                    231-6101
John Bittner            Newsletter System                 250-3673
                          Administrator
Brian Glenn               Book Order VP                   819-3112
__________________________________________________________________

                            THIS MONTH
Thursday January 7                           7PM - HP, Las Colinas

                       Election of Officers

There will be an election of officers of the DFW Unix Users' Group
at the January meeting. Our elective positions are President, Vice
President, Secretary, and Treasurer/Membership  Chairman.  Nomina-
tions  will  be  accepted that night; anyone interested in running
for office, offering nominations or voting on the nominees  should
make plans to attend.
                         Sun Microsystems

Tad Davis of Sun Microsystems will present a program on their pro-
ducts.
                     Special Interest Groups

Don Mathis will  continue  discussing  UNIX  topics  of  interest.
__________________________________________________________________

                        Upcoming Meetings
Feb 4
   << OPEN >>
Suggestions for future meetings can be given to any of  the  board
members.
                            LAST MONTH

                        Main Presentation

                      HP Computer Strategy -
                    Workstation Systems Group

Grady Walker, a Hewlett-Packard program manager in the Workstation
Systems  Group,  presented an excellent program with a little help
from a friend, an HP 715 workstation.  Grady  is  responsible  for
next  generation  technology,  2  to  5 years out, and multimedia.
Grady's presentation gave him the chance to strut his stuff before
the  group,  particularly  because  the  multimedia demonstrations
which comprised a large portion of his presentation included a lot
of  his own work. He is justifiably proud of the results; the mul-
timedia demonstrations are a very impressive display of the  capa-
bilities  of  the  700  series  workstations  from HP and are also
entertaining and informative.

Grady's demonstrations featured professionally produced audio  and
graphics recordings; the voice overs were by professional speakers
and the music was custom produced. "The ultimate in computer  sel-
ling,"  said  Grady,  "allow the computer to make the presentation
while the salesman watches." Grady interspersed the  automatically
running  demonstrations with technical descriptions aided by over-
head transparencies. The result was a very  informative  presenta-
tion about HP and its products.

A complete writeup follows on page 2.
__________________________________________________________________

                           Unix Trivia

The powerful Unix utility, dd, has many uses such as moving  files
from  disk  to  tape  or  tape  to disk with or without additional
conversions; for instance, dd is an integral part of  the  command
string which allows the use of tar to or from a remote tape drive.
In short, dd Converts and Copies files as required.  So why is the
command  named  dd?   Because it's not cc - already taken by the C
compiler, so a sequence based on the next letter  was  used,  thus
dd. Who said Unix commands are arcane and hard to remember?
__________________________________________________________________

                       GENERAL INFORMATION

                          CLUB BOOK ORDER

Catalogs will be on hand at the January meeting to begin the  pro-
cess  of  placing  a book order; our plans are to gather orders at
the January and February meetings and to place the orders  immedi-
ately  after  the  February  meeting.  For more information on the
book order read the News item on a following page. As  usual,  all
orders  will  be  accompanied  by  payment in full, cash or checks
only.
__________________________________________________________________

                      HP Computer Strategy -
                    Workstation Systems Group

                           Grady Walker
                          as reported by
                          John Fusselman

Grady Walker of Hewlett-Packard introduced himself by  telling  us
that  he was on jury duty all week; he got selected to serve. As a
result he was able to share with us his experiences  and  tell  us
some  things  not  to  do. First, be sure your drivers license and
voter registration provide identical information;  otherwise,  you
get  two  opportunities  to serve because of being called up twice
since your name will appear on  the  list  of  prospective  jurors
twice.

Second, do not as a member of a jury panel ask  questions  of  the
lawyers. Shy, retiring person that Grady is (Not!) he thought that
surely the last thing the lawyers wanted on their jury was a truly
inquiring  mind belonging to someone outspoken. Puzzled by some of
the lawyers' introductory presentation to the panel, he raised his
hand and expressed a desire to ask a few questions of his own; the
assembled lawyers, seven in all - 3 or 4 each  for  the  plaintiff
and  the  defendant  (we're talking BIG BUCK$ per hour here!), ex-
changed surprised glances and looked to the judge. "Go ahead;  ask
your questions," came the response.

Grady thought he had thus managed to escape  further  service;  at
the least he took advantage of the opportunity to run up someone's
bill, he gleefully reported. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm and in-
terest  were  duly  noted and he was selected for the jury. No, he
did not wear his "Hang 'em high!" tie, having been assured that he
could  have been charged with contempt of court had he done so. We
suppose that the next time Grady will keep a much lower profile in
the courthouse.
                              --  --

Grady began by defining for us "multimedia" as being a combination
of  video,  audio, text, and graphics. The numerous demonstrations
that followed did use all of these elements, in a very  entertain-
ing  manner.   The result is a product that actually tells its own
story, allowing the salesperson to stand aside and  watch  proudly
as the product itself does its own song and dance.

The actual technical presentation began with questions of the  au-
dience  regarding  numerous  technical achievements and offerings;
correct answers were rewarded with small  prizes,  such  as  candy
canes, in honor of the season. The questions included such tidbits
as who offers the most powerful desk top/desk side systems - HP  -
and  other  similar  questions regarding not only the state of the
art but the history of workstation technology.

We were told that HP currently has 89,000 employees in  500  loca-
tions  worldwide.  HP is Fortune company number 26 and has enjoyed
50 consecutive years of profitability. This level  of  success  is
due  in  part  to  the  fact that HP does its own IC designs which
offers a degree of  control,  regretfully  lacking  in  the  past.
Furthermore,  the  current level of high volume competition in the
market has led to small margins; the customer is the winner!

To help gain and maintain customer loyalty in this  fiercely  com-
petitive environment HP provides upgrade paths - typically through
board swaps - of all old architectures they ever produced;  an  HP
400  or 425 can be upgraded to a RISC processor.  This program, we
were told, is a loss leader, but it protects  the  customer  which
helps gain customer loyalty in the long term.

Hewlett-Packard's RISC product line dates from the assembly of the
"RISC  Research  Team" in 1982. The first version of the architec-
ture was completed in 1983 and the entire family was  complete  in
1986.  Finally, the first Precision Architecture shipment was made
in 1987.  Accomplishments of this team include  the  first  single
chip 32 bit CPU, used in the HP9000.

In March of 1991 the Series 700 family of workstations and servers
was  introduced; the initial models were the 720, 730, and 750. At
that time the most powerful offering on the market  was  the  RIOS
from  IBM; the best value - most power for the money - was the Sun
SPARC. The 730 was - and is - such a superior product that  it  is
still  competitive,  beating  the  best  new offerings from anyone
else. In February of 1992, new, low cost workstations, the 35  MHz
705 and 50 MHz 710 models, were introduced.

The key to the power and success of HP workstation is  the  Preci-
sion  Architecture  which  is  fully  scalable,  assuring  upwards
software compatibility; there may be hardware features that  older
software cannot access and utilize to best advantage, but at least
new systems are usable to some degree until new software is creat-
ed to utilize all of the new hardware. For example, perhaps a pro-
gram was developed on a system with 16 CPU registers; such a  pro-
gram  will  run  on  a  later version of the system which has been
scaled up to have 64 registers.  Of course, the old  program  will
not utilize the new registers, but it will at least run as well as
it always had run.

Hewlett-Packard designers take care to balance the overall  design
of  their  workstations; this means that increasing processor per-
formance is accompanied by increasing clock speed, increasing VLSI
density  and  advanced  multichip  modular  packaging,  and faster
memory. Grady passed around sample motherboards from  HP  worksta-
tions to allow us to see HP designs for ourselves; he told us that
the RISC implementation was initially a seven chip  set  that  was
reduced  to  five,  then two and now one chip which incorporates a
floating point unit (FPU) and the CPU into that one chip  -  which
is  immediately identifiable by its $30 cylindrical multidisk heat
sink! Earlier versions were able to get by  with  ordinary  finned
heat sinks; the power consumption of this latest offering requires
a more effective heat sink design, one which incorporates  a  pair
of  parallel  disks  about 2 inches in diameter and about 1/4 inch
apart with the nearest disk being 1/4 inch above the case  of  the
IC. Clearly an impressive amount of heat can be dissipated by this
black heat sink, an indication the underlying silicon chip  has  a
very  large  number  of gates capable of operating at an extremely
high clock rate.

In  addition  to  the  advances  in  performance  offered  by  new
hardware, HP claims a 9 to 18% increase in performance on changing
to the latest version of their operating system; HP/UX version 9.0
has recently been announced.

In response to questions from the audience regarding disk I/O per-
formance in high performance workstations, Grady delivered a short
discourse on SCSI busses. Grady began, "All SCSI's are not created
equal"  and  went on to explain that the SCSI bus specification is
very open and extensive - "not all is implemented by  everyone"  -
hence  SCSI2.  Grady expects another pass at a SCSI standard, then
the industry will have to move on to something else.  Asked  about
IPI,  Grady  pointed out that that disk interface specification is
proprietary.

In the area of group programming and group usage of the  computing
environment,  HP offers Shared X under which two users anywhere on
the net may share the same image; either user's changes  or  addi-
tions  to  this image are thus equally visible to the other. Three
dimensional images may be shared  under  Virtual  Memory  X,  VMX.
Similarly,  the  Phigs  Extension  on X, PEX, allows image sharing
between workstations.

Near the end of the presentation came the obvious  question  after
the  many minutes of auto-demonstration we had observed, "How many
megabytes of disk storage were taken by the displays we've  seen?"
About  a  quarter of the internal 1 gigabyte disk drive was taken,
we were told, about 250 megabytes of video and CD quality sound.

In conclusion, Grady Walker stated that HP is a  leader  on  stan-
dards.   Furthermore,  their incorporation of the graphics and CPU
into the same board means that they are scaled together. With off-
line  graphics,  when  the CPU is swapped, the user could still be
stuck with the same old graphics interface,  thus  gaining  little
net improvement in perceived system performance.

At this point the audience began to  grow  restless,  due  to  the
length  of  the presentation; it was time for a break. Seizing the
opportunity by stating that "the mind can  only  absorb  what  the
butt can endure, too long a wait and your attention wanders," Gra-
dy called up a full color (8 bit) image in an X  window  and  then
proceeded  to  click  and  drag the image - the full image; not an
outline of the window but the intact image in all its  glory  fol-
lowed the mouse cursor about the screen! Yes, this may only demon-
strate impressive graphics performance, but keep in mind  that  an
underlying  theme of the entire presentation was balance - matched
processor, graphics, memory, and disk I/O performance. All aspects
of  the performance of the demonstration equipment were thus indi-
cated to be of the highest level.

Some of the numbers presented by Grady as part of  his  conclusion
are fascinating. A slide showed that whereas the current top level
of performance of workstations is 77.5 specmarks, the  next  level
is  well  over  100, advancing to well over 500 specmarks by 1995.
Clock rates are expected to advance from today's top of 66 MHz  to
100 then 250 MHz by 1995. Tomorrow's system will be able to access
multi-terabytes of disk,  not  today's  236  gigabytes,  and  will
feature 16 gigabytes of RAM, up from today's 384 megabytes and the
soon to be available 768 megabytes.  The higher clock  rates  will
be made possible by advances in semiconductor manufacturing allow-
ing gate widths of 0.35 microns, down from the  current  1  micron
and  new  0.8 micron gate widths. System throughput is expected to
advance from today's 8 Mbytes per second to 12 or more in the next
systems release, to more than 50 Mbytes by 1995.

Although the steepness of the curve - a quintupling of system per-
formance in little more than 2 years - seems unlikely on first ex-
amination, consider that advances  in  computer  architecture  and
software  will  make  possible  by 1995 multiprocessor systems, in
which the processors will each offer 4  way  processing  with  the
pipelining  offered  by  HP's  Super Scalar architecture. In other
words, not only will processors be considerably more  powerful  by
1995, but several of them may be incorporated into a single system
thereby multiplying their power.
__________________________________________________________________

                             SPONSORS

We want to recognize the following companies for their support.

 Grady Walker                    (214)231-6101
 Leader in UNIX technology
 Hewlett Packard
 3301 Royal Lane
 Irving, TX 75063

 Paul S. Levine                   (214)714-0324
 High Performance NFS file servers
 Auspex Systems, Inc.
 1231 Greenway Drive, Suite 230
 Irving, TX 75038

 David Hayes              metro(817)929-9179
 Vendor-Independent Network Consulting
 N-Team, Inc.
 PO Box 201894
 Arlington, TX 76006

 Lou Marchant             metro(817)589-0949
 Tools for building Quality Software
 Programming Research Corporation
 8701 Bedford Euless Road, Suite 520
 Hurst, TX 76053

 Alma Weaver                    (214) 669-3800
 Placing Contract Technical Personnel
 Oxford & Associates, Inc.
 11910 Greenville Ave, Suite 512 LB#24
 Dallas, TX 75243

 Richard Blickenstaff           (800) 932-2372
 Provides computer consulting resources
 Enterprise Systems Associates, Inc.
 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 260
 Pleasanton, CA 94566

 Ken Hatten                    (214) 453-7264
 GTE Directories Corp.
 P.O. Box 619810, Cube A1-334
 D/FW Airport, Texas  75261-9810

 Garry Clark                   (214)746-4343
 Telebit Corporation
 1950 Stemmons Freeway, Suite 5037F
 Dallas, TX 75207

 Rob Kolstad                   (800) 800-4BSD
 Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
 3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 580
 Falls Church, VA 22042
 E-mail: bsdi-info@bsdi.com

 Becky Swanson                 (214) 660-4202
 Benchmark Publications Group,Inc.
 P.O. Box 180222
 Arlington, TX 76096-0222

 Robert Bair                     (800) 288-1110
 Resource Solutions International
 3030 LBJ FRWY. Suite 300
 Dallas, TX. 75234

 E-mail: 451-5669@MCIMAIL
 Excellence in UNIX Technology Consulting

 Don Mathis                      (214) 238-8744
 Lone Star Industrial Company
 12311 Cross Creek
 Dallas, TX 75243

 INTERPHASE Corporation  (214) 919-9358
 13800 Senlac
 Dallas, TX 75234
__________________________________________________________________

                       The UNIX Job Market

Terry Stubbs with North Dallas Consulting (214) 783-9292 is  look-
ing for 20+ UNIX/C programmers with 2 or more years of experience.

Bill Jackson with The McClane Company (214)  239-1199  is  looking
for 10 to 20 contract programmers to work in the Tennessee area on
mainframe systems in cobol, IMS/DB & IMS/DC, and batching.

JCS Consulting: Contact Nancy Deanaur at 458-1609.

Resource Solutions International: Contact Robert Bair at  214-243-
2015.

Lear Data: Contact Cynthia Kamel at 214-360-9008.

Computer Professionals Unlimited: Contact Zip  Zapotocky  at  214-
233-1773.

Evan Brown will bring a  printout  from  the  network  News  group
<misc.jobs.offered>  to  the  meeting.   Please  do not remove the
printout, Evan only brings one copy to the meetings.
__________________________________________________________________

                           In The News

                       Election of Officers

As the anouncement on page 1 urges,  please  plan  to  attend  the
January meeting to help nominate and elect a new slate of officers
for DFW-UUG. Kevin Coyle regrettably will not be able to  continue
serving  as  President due to professional and personal demands on
his time.
                          Book Order VP

The officers of DFW UUG want you to help us welcome  Brian  Glenn,
our  new Book Order VP. Brian is related to John Glenn; John's his
uncle in fact. John lives in Michigan - and is not  now  nor  ever
has been a US Senator. (This is what happens when one asks a silly
question; yes, we asked if he were related to John Glenn). Brian's
daytime  phone  number is (214)819-3112; the corresponding mailing
address is 201 Regal Row, Dallas, 75247.

Current plans are to have the publishers' catalogs at the  January
meeting  and  to  place  a  book order at the February meeting. Of
course, orders will be accepted in January as well, but we want to
give  everyone a chance to hear about the order and respond before
the order goes out. Brian plans  to  place  orders  on  a  regular
basis,  more  or  less  often depending on the time and effort in-
volved.
                           C. E. Weekly

Thanks to Ted Paone there will be on hand at the January meeting a
copy  of  Contract  Employment  Weekly, the pulse of the temporary
technical industry a national (and  international)  compendium  of
contract  recruiter  advertisements  and news relating to contract
employment. In addition to weekly printings mailed to subscribers,
the  publisher maintains a database of subscribers - your partici-
pation is optional - for the convenience of recruiters and  poten-
tial  employers.   Subscriptions  mailed within the US are $55 per
year (52 issues) or $30 for 15 issues; there  is  also  a  special
trial subscription of 5 issues for $15. A limited number of copies
of the subscription form will be available for those interested.
__________________________________________________________________

                             C TAPES

To obtain the use of one of the  three  sets  of  the  C  training
tapes,  simply call Grady Walker and either Grady or his coordina-
tor will assist you. If this is the first you have heard of  these
tapes,  they are excellent for anyone needing an introduction to C
programming or simply to brush up on the finer  points  of  C  and
their  use  is free to members. The tapes were professionally pro-
duced by AT&T and are well worth the time it takes  to  view  them
for anyone other than the most skilled C programmers.
__________________________________________________________________

                          ADVERTISEMENTS

NOTE:  Ads will be printed on a space-available basis as a service
to members of the DFWUUG [Ed.]
                              - o -
Networks that net, workstations that work.  We connect anything to
 anything  (almost). If your network is getting the better of you,
 get help from the best.
                  N-Team. Inc. metro 817-929-9179
                              - o -
Mac to Unix Connectivity: Apple consultant with extensive Unix ad-
 ministration  and network experience will help your Macs and Unix
 systems communicate and share printers and data. Call Tom Karches
 at (214)942-9459
                              - o -
Software Engineering provides expertise  in  object-oriented  pro-
 gramming,  specializing  in  the application of O-O techniques to
 real-time programming problems using  C++  and  UNIX  or  MS-DOS.
 Call Jack Carden at (214) 418-6283.
                              - o -
Benchmark Publications Group, Inc. offers a full array of document
 preparation  services, as well as publishing consulting.  For ad-
 ditional information and  literature  contact  Becky  Swanson  at
 (214) 660-4202.
                              - o -
For employment and consulting opportunities contact Howard  Olpin,
 Stephens  Recruiting  Group,  Computer  Division.  Phone 214-233-
 8575.  Howard has 32 years of experience in software  development
 and 11 years in UNIX.  Windows, C++, with UNIX+DOS especially HOT
 now.
__________________________________________________________________

                       Other UNIX Meetings:

The CACTUS (Austin UNIX Users Group) meets the third  Thursday  of
  each month at the Dell computer building.

The HOUNIX (Houston UNIX Users Group) meets the third  Tuesday  of
  each month.

The HUGS (Houston SunMicrosystems UNIX Users Group) meets  at  the
  Houston Sun Office at 12 Greenway Plaza on the 15th floor.

The San Antonio UNIX Users Group meets the third Wednesday of each
  month at the Sun Microsystems office.

For more information contact Evan Brown.
__________________________________________________________________
-- 
------------------------------------------------
       Dallas / Ft.Worth UNIX Users Group

Evan Brown              evan@dfwuug.lonestar.org