Comments on the Data General Aviion

[Frank W. Peters]

Hello,

     In the course of a bidding process for a network server and workstations
for our campus one of the leading bidders was Data General, who bid their
new Aviion series of workstations and servers.  We've found information on
these systems (beyond DG sales literature) to be quite sparse (the most
we've gotten is from an article in MIPS magazine that reviews a pre-release
system).

     We are interested in hearing from anyone who is currently using one of
these system (or otherwise has first hand knowledge of their workings).  Our
intended use for these systems makes their networking implementation of prime
concern.

     
     The sorts of questions to which we'd like answers:

     o  How is it's networking support in general?  Do its user programs
	(telnet. ftp) behave in a 'standard' way (that is, in a similar
	manner to the programs on a BSD system)?  Does their FTP implementation
	allow establishment of an anonymous-FTP account?  Do all of their
	programs seamlessly support the Domain Name System for host name
	resolution?  Can its printer control system (I assume based on the
	system V lp rather than the Berkeley lpr scheme) be integrated with
	the network printing capabilities of the BSD boxes on our net (in
	both directions)?

     o  How 'standard' is it's sockets implementation?  Will software written
	for BSD sockets compile on this Box without significant modification?
	We'd particularly be interested in knowing what networking code you
	have ported to it and how hard the port was.

     o  Is it's implementation of NFS full featured?  Does it include all of
	the permission options available in, for instance, Sun's and DEC's 
	implementations?

     o  How has your luck run in finding third party software vendors who
	have ported or are now porting their software to this platform. 
	This is another critical question in our considerations.  This 
	box is totally new and currently has almost no software available.
	I'd be interested in any impressions at all about how much will be
	available and how soon.

     o  Any major bugs/problems/weaknesses in any portion of the system that
	we should be concerned about?

Thanx
--Frank
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==================================/        |===================================
| Frank W. Peters                /Starkville                                  |
| Systems & Networks Programmer  /       * |   Internet:Peters at CC.MsState.Edu |
| Mississippi State University   \         |   Bitnet:  Peters at MsState.BITNET |
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| Mississippi State, MS 39762     /        |   FAX:     (601) 325-3299        |
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