Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!eecs.nwu.edu!phil From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore Subject: Re: Umax 4.3 virtual memory problem Keywords: Umax, paging, cow, bug Message-ID: <65@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> Date: 19 Sep 90 15:22:17 GMT References: <1479@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> <59@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Reply-To: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: EECS Department, Northwestern University Lines: 112 In article , jdarcy@encore.com (Jeff d'Arcy) writes: |>Before I get started, I'd like to remind everyone that I'm posting on my own |>time and do not IN ANY MANNER OR CAPACITY speak for Encore. Just think of |>me as another UMAX user who just happens to write the OS. :-) Understood. Those of you who want to hear me say something positive about Encore, be sure to read the end of this message. |>phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: |>>I disagree. Ever since we got 4.0.0 we have been complaining about the |>>absolutely rotten VM performance. |>So why didn't YOU post? Because I assumed that complaining directly to Encore would be more appropriate and more effective than posting to the world. Usually manufacturers like to get "first shot" at fixing a problem. People at Sun have chided me in the past for posting a problem to the net BEFORE reporting it to Sun. I guess that Gordon Irland was the first to get fed up enough to take the time to research the problem and report to the net about it. |>Now that there's a bandwagon to jump onto you're |>pretty quick to flame Encore, but I didn't see you doing anything to get |>the ball rolling. I have done some things in the past to attempt to "get the ball rolling" on this particular bug and I heard nothing but a deafening silence from Massachusetts. |>You may even remember the last time people started |>bashing Encore in this group; I posted an article asking for suggestions |>on how we could use this newsgroup to our customers' best advantage. I probably should have said something, yes, but I was too busy at the time. I really shouldn't be taking the time to do this, either. The one idea that was suggested by Mr. Irland at the end of his post was shot down by you as being too advantageous to your competitors. And I didn't see that posting asking for suggestions as a solicitation for stating specific problems. |>Sun can afford to do this because they have market share. We don't and |>therefore can't. Here is my suggestion. Find SOME way to distribute to your customers a list of currently known bugs (big and small). If the bug has been fixed in a recent release, update, or patch, then distribute that information as well. If you suddenly fixed the VM problem, how would I find out? And how would I know where to go to get the patches? We (the group participants) have suggested two separate ways to distribute this information (on-line and via hardcopy a la Sun). You didn't like either one of them. Someone (perhaps someone in Encore?) needs to find a way to do this that is to everyone's satisfaction. THAT is how you can help us! |>In an ideal world of educated customers who didn't |>get scared at the mere mention of a system crash and competitors who |>would respond in kind instead of taking the opportunity to slime us in |>their sales presentations, I'd be all for an open bug list. However, |>we don't live in such a world. I agree with that sentiment. I personally don't get scared at the thought of a system crash: I've certainly seen enough of them (from Sun, DEC, and IBM as well as Encore)! EVERY operating system has bugs. Every single one. Heck, even TeX has bugs! But I don't know of any way to convince the blue suits (vernacular for upper level management) of this simple fact. |>>Then FIX them! I'm pretty fed up with the problem at this point. |>>If this computer didn't use whiz-bang 20 layer interleaved super-duper |>>high-speed memory that costs more than my house, I'd just go buy more |>>memory..... |> |>Just that simple, eh? Fix them. Why didn't we think of that? Do you |>really think we're not doing our best to serve our customers, Well, statements like "we can't tell our customers what bugs are in the software that they use because our competitors might use it against us" gives me a small reason to doubt. |>or that |>we wouldn't like to have the highest-performance, most robust SMP UNIX |>box in the world? That goes without saying. |>I'm sure that this problem's visibility has caused |>its priority to rise to the top of the list, but since it's a complex |>problem affecting a large and critical portion of the kernel, I'm sure |>you can appreciate that our turnaround will not be instantaneous. I hope it does get to the top of the list. But I would also like to point out that you have had years to work on this problem. Not just weeks or months, but YEARS. |>We |>do the best we can with the resources we have. If you really want to |>help, how about buying a few more Multimaxes so we'll have the revenue |>to justify hiring more engineers? :-) I would, but they're too expensive! :-) Now for the promised "positive" statement.... Encore's customer service guys are really great! When I first put our encore into production, I had some very very serious problems. These problems took months and some rather drastic action on the part of Encore to fix. But through the entire time, the customer service people that I talked to (the folks in Massachusetts) were truly wonderful, helpful, sympathetic, and understanding. I have had some very positive experiences with Encore. William LeFebvre