Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!ethz!ovdluhe
From: ovdluhe@ethz.UUCP (Oskar von der Luehe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: UNIXPC trivia
Message-ID: <5526@ethz.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 90 08:50:19 GMT
References: <1990Aug13.032211.3575@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <1720@yenta.alb.nm.us>
Reply-To: ovdluhe@bernina.ethz.ch.UUCP (Oskar von der Luehe)
Organization: ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 43

In article <1720@yenta.alb.nm.us> dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas) writes:
>Here's some humorous quotations from a brochure I got from Technology
>Resource Center (TRC) in California in 1988, when I bought my unix pc.
>These are REAL!!

	[stuff deleted...]

>"If you get the occasional Intel itch, the UNIX PC can scratch it. [...]
>Imagine, with this option you get the best of both worlds: Unix _and_ MS-DOS"

Don't laugh. It even works!

I was lucky (?) to snarf a DOS Co-processor, and installed it. It really
makes a quite respectable XT clone, benchmarking to about 20% of the IBM
PC. Most of that bad performance is due to the annoyingly slow route
through the Unix machine to access all the periphery, i. e., keyboards,
screen, H & F disks, parallel port, etc. The co-processor itself looks
quite reasonable; it's got 8MHz, and I'm thinking about plugging an 8087
in.

I am amazed by the amount of DOS stuff this processor handles reasonably
well, and I believe that the interface between the DOS and Unix is quite
reasonable, too, given the fact that they seemto have abandoned this
development after version 1.0. I have the machine at home and I use DOS
at work, and the coprocessor sometimes comes in handy.

Does anybody know more about the DOS <-> Unix PC periphery interface?
Maybe I shouldn't ask, but it would be extremely nice to know more about
the co-processor driver to make it faster - has anybody gotten the
source? There is a "dc73.h" file (or some such thing) in the DOS
directory, which looks like an include file for C programs. It's un-
documented - has anybody an idea what this is good for?

>					David

					Oskar


-- 
Oskar von der Luehe		UUCP:	"...!unido!cernvax!ethz!ovdluhe"
Institut fuer Astronomie	+---------------------------------------------
ETH-Zentrum			| There are three kinds of astronomers, those
CH-8092 Zuerich, Switzerland    | who can count, and those who can't.