Dear Allison,
   
   You wrote:
> Propagandist crock.  If it's in the box it's available.  All you have
> to do is drive the hardware.  The so called "bit" is a simple register
> that can be read or ignored and it happens that VMS reads it and uses it
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^
> as does ultrix...they don't have to though.  I'd likely bet to netbsd
> it's a don't care.
   
   This is all correct, except that "it happens" is not the right way to
put it, IMHO. It's not that "it happens" this way, it's that DEC has done
this extremely stupid and ignorant act, which seriously hurts all KA410
users, for marketing reasons, thus committing a crime of artificial feature
blocking.
   
   Thanks for the info on VAX performance! Being able to put 30
simultaneous users on a KA42-B sounds very reassuring. The two Pentiums
that the enemy (INS) allows users to log into (christopher.ins.cwru.edu and
caleb.ins.cwru.edu) have their login limits set to 80 and 60 users,
respectively. In reality each is usually loaded with about 40 users. If I
can really put 30 users on a KA42-B, then I can definitely compete with
that, since I have 5 of them.
   Your suggestions about the kinds of tasks that different VAXen can do
pretty much agree with I was thinking. However, the tasks that I need my
system to do are somewhat different from the ones you list. First, we are
not completely on our own, and we are part of CWRUnet, the campus-wide
network, so routers, bridges, and nameservers are none of my business.
Second, in your list I don't see a mention anywhere of machines for users
to log into, and most of my machines will be dedicated for this purpose.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 440-449-0299
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: sokolov@alpha.ces.cwru.edu