Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!bellcore!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu
From: duncan@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Shan D Duncan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Coherent ... A Toy
Message-ID: <4515@uwm.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 90 18:25:38 GMT
References: <1753@anomaly.sbs.com>
Sender: news@uwm.edu
Reply-To: duncan@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Distribution: na
Lines: 64

From article <1753@anomaly.sbs.com>, by mike@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan):
> In article <4446@uwm.edu> burkett@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Edward W Burkett) writes:
>>
>>We just received Coherent and it is a cute little TOY but as it stands
>>that's all it is since you are limited to 640K, most of which is used by
>>the operating system itself. 
> 
> Can you support this claim, like, with some FACTS (ie: the page of the 
> manual which states that you can only use 640k?)
> 
> I have read several accounts on this newsgroup from people who have been
> using Coherent on 2mb machines, and have 1855k available after boot. This
> would seem to invalidate your claim that it can only address 640K. Or,
> does this limitation exist merely because you only have 640K in your XT?
> 
> Furthermore, the ads for the product stated that it had a small, 64k
> kernal. Are you saying that MWC lied to their customers?
> 
> Nothing is worse than an inept user who mis-installs a product and then
> bitches about it.
> 
> MD
> -- 
> -- Michael P. Deignan, President       -- Small Business Systems, Inc. --
> ----------------------------------------- Box 17220, Esmond, RI 02917  --
> -- Internet: mike@anomaly.sbs.com      -- (401) 273-4669 Voice         --
> -- UUCP: ...!uunet!rayssd!anomaly!mike -- (401) 455-0347 Telebit       --


Ed was talking about Coherent booted on a Zenith 386/33 with 2 MB on the
motherboard.  We talked to MWC in March about their product and
they never mentioned then that it would not work with the
standard Zenith 386 controller (ESDI)  [we tried it anyway and it
did work.]


We could not edit a file as large as 45k with the editior they supplied.

Taking to the support people they are the ones that said do not
expect to edit data over 64k and that the enviroment was still
limited by 640k.  I am not sure about this information because he
thought I wanted to SAVE a 64k file and I was out of hd space???

This is where Ed's assumption that most of the memory is taken up
by the OS and editor.

By the way the manual contradicts itself on the device drivers to
access floppy drives.  It took some digging to find out how to
get dos text files over to coherent using their dos command.


So anyone else want to try and see how large a file can be:

Edited?   

Compiled?

The ad specifically states that one has access to a
GIGABYTE of UNIX software in the public domain.  Just how much of
this gigabyte of software would be able to run under coherent?



How about a shell with job control and aliases?  Just for a start...