Xref: utzoo comp.misc:6461 comp.sys.ibm.pc:30885
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!watmum!smvorkoetter
From: smvorkoetter@watmum.waterloo.edu (Stefan M. Vorkoetter)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PC-WEEK Article / OS/2 obituary?
Message-ID: <10530@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Date: 30 Jun 89 17:43:41 GMT
References: <238@imspw6.UUCP> <14774@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: smvorkoetter@watmum.waterloo.edu (Stefan M. Vorkoetter)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 24

In article <14774@watdragon.waterloo.edu> afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) writes:
>
>I second this. IBM appears to be having the same feelings because 
>AIX (or future OSF derivative) is AVAILABLE NOW on everything 
>above (and including?) a PS/2. What possible benefit would OS/2 
>give to users that AIX (or XENIX) with a NeXT windowing 
>environment (which IBM has licensed from Next Inc.) wouldn't satisfy?
>DOS programs? Yea, right.

Even if DOS programs were a reason, AIX (and XENIX I believe) supports
DOS Merge.  I have used this extensively (on my PS/2 running AIX), and found
no problems.  I am running SmoothTalk, a terminal emulation and file
transfer program that I wrote, under DOS Merge.  SmoothTalk is very ill
behaved, writing directly to the display, manipulating the COM hardware,
etc.  It runs perfectly so long as I tell AIX to let it access the serial
port.  If I don't tell AIX this, SmoothTalk complains that there is no
serial hardware, which to all intents and purposes, there isn't as far
as DOS is concerned.  All in all, DOS Merge seems extremely well implemented.

Not that I think that people SHOULD be running DOS programs under *IX

Stefan Vorkoetter
Waterloo Maple Software
watmath!wmsimum!stefan