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From: bill@alembic.acs.com (Bill Hatch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ESIX (and other) SVR4
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.002451.1044@alembic.acs.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 00:24:51 GMT
References: <1332.28096bc1@sleepy.bmd.trw.com>
Organization: Colman Research
Lines: 43

In article <1332.28096bc1@sleepy.bmd.trw.com> bstrong@oz.bmd.trw.com writes:
>
>I was wondering if anyone who has purchased ESIX SVR4 has any comments/
>insults/praises about it.  We are considering purchasing for file serving
>purchases.  Also, to anyone, what other companies besides SCO, Interactive,
>Microport, Intel and ESIX now or will offer SVR4 for 386 hosts and which
>do you prefer?  I don't mean to start any flame wars, I'm just trying to
>do a little checking around.  THANKS for any help.

We have been using Intel V.4 on a HP Vectra RS/C 20 Mhz for about 2 months.
The principal use is as an integrated ANSI C software development system
with multiple character terminals.  The hw configuration is:

	10 Mb RAM
	300 Mb HP SCSI external disk
	250 Mb WangTek SCSI cartrige tape
	12 Port Megaport i/o controller
	HP LaserJet II printer

For our intended purposes with 1 or 2 users this system has worked fine,
especially considering that Intel is about $1000 cheaper than the competition.
G++1.37 and GCC1.37.1 with the Mike Bloom Coff patches also work well on
this system.   On the down side we have noted the following problems
which do not immediatly impact us:

- There is a conflict between Xwindows and the Megaport driver - you can
  run either Xwindows or multiple terminals but not both.
- All of the functions in Xlib appear to have been renamed to have 14
  character (or shorter) names as opposed to the long names used in
  some public domain X source that we tried to compile.  
- The UCB file system had a tendency to crash - we just reloaded with
  S5 and the problems went away.
- There is a hard limit of 2 Mb on file size.  I tried to rebuild the
  kernel to remove this restriction but was not successful.
- A Logitech 3 button mouse was required for Xwindows.

- The upper limit on addressable RAM is 16Mb.

These are problems that I would expect to see resolved in later releases.
-- 
Bill Hatch  (301)470-3839(w)  (301)441-1675(h)
Coleman Research, 14504 Greenview Drive, Laurel MD 20708
All opinions expressed are my own - dont blame my employer or alembic systems