Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!tymix!cirrusl!sunfire!dhesi From: dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: UNIX sys V4.0 Message-ID: <2608@cirrusl.UUCP> Date: 26 Oct 90 02:09:16 GMT References: <15224@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1990Oct19.092925.4876@isis.cs.du.edu> <1990Oct22.041358.22745@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Sender: news@cirrusl.UUCP Lines: 36 In dlt@locus.com (Dan Taylor) writes: The 88000 ABI for UNIX V.4, for instance, requires a QIC-150 catridge tape for media compatiblity. You may have something else, too, but the STANDARD distribution and transport medium is THAT tape. Those who doubt the importance of this should remember CP/M. Part of the reason MS-DOS became so popular (apart from the fact that IBM backed it) was that for the first time in many years, a standard for magnetic media emerged -- the good old 360 K double-sided double- density floppy disk. Before this happened, the CP/M world had been a mish-mash of strange disk formats with varying densities, track and sector counts, and when everything else matched, different sector "skew" strategies. The result was that there were somewhere between 50 and 100 disk formats in existence. Digital Research, having a virtual monopoly, was in an excellent position to take the lead in setting some sort of disk format standard, but did not do so. When Adam Osborne introduced his Osbourne 1 machine, he justified introducing a new disk format by saying that there was no existing standard to follow. That means that ANY software publisher can create a program ONCE and know that it will work on any ABI- conforming system. Aye, there's the rub. This is where things begin to break down. Most low-budget users don't have QIC-150 tape drives. You need not just any standard, but one that *might have existed even it weren't a standard*. In other words, something inexpensive and relatively ubiquitous. Like 1.44 M floppies, for example. (Or 360 K disks some years ago.) Nobody is going to get rich distributing software for the mass market on QIC-150 tapes. By the time such tape drives become ubiquitous, they will have been obsoleted by DAT. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesi A pointer is not an address. It is a way of finding an address. -- me