Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!stanford.edu!msi.umn.edu!s13.msi.umn.edu!zoo From: zoo@aps1.spa.umn.edu (david d [zoo] zuhn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sequent Subject: Re: Mach as a replacement O/S (was obsolete software) Message-ID: Date: 11 Mar 91 05:59:48 GMT References: <53625@sequent.UUCP> <123459@uunet.UU.NET> <536@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu> <123562@uunet.UU.NET> <12617@sybase.sybase.com> <1443@torsqnt.UUCP> Sender: news@s1.msi.umn.edu Reply-To: zoo@aps1.spa.umn.edu Organization: Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner Lab Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: david@torsqnt.UUCP's message of 10 Mar 91 13:22:06 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: grumpy.spa.umn.edu >>>>> On 10 Mar 91 13:22:06 GMT, david@torsqnt.UUCP (David Haynes) said: David> 1. You can get Mach for the Sequent systems now and have been able to David> get it for at least 3 years that I know of. David> 2. I have never been asked by a university for it. This doesn't surprise me at all. We heard about Mach for the Symmetry when I was working on the systems staff of the local CS dept, which runs an S27 as the departmental backbone machine. We started to look into Sequent's Mach, and what we saw scared us: 1) Sequent said that they would not support anything on that OS. We could not afford to have an unsupported machine as the backbone. 2) No NFS at all. Another *VERY* negative point for our site. 3) A fairly high cost for unsupported software (the number $15,000 sticks in my mind. Things may have changed much in the couple of years since these first looks into Mach. I somehow doubt it, given the rate of change in Sequent OS releases. NOTE: I no longer work for the above mentioned CS dept, and am in no way, shape or form speaking for them or expressing an official opinion of the CS dept. I don't even think we formally brought up the idea with the head honchos, given the lack of support and NFS. david d [zoo] zuhn Univ. of Minnesota Dept. of Astronomy zoo@aps1.spa.umn.edu Automated Plate Scanner Project