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From: paul@UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU ('da Kingfish)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.workstations
Subject: Re: Information wanted about Apollo series 3000
Message-ID: <8701230329.AA18322@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 22:29:31 EST
Article-I.D.: umix.8701230329.AA18322
Posted: Thu Jan 22 22:29:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 08:40:44 EST
References: <1036@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: paul%umix.cc.umich.edu.UUCP@umix.cc.umich.edu ('da Kingfish)
Organization: University of Michigan Computing Center, Ann Arbor
Lines: 64
Approved: works@red.rutgers.edu

(I saw Mark Weiser's response to this, can't disagree too much with
what he said, but thought I would add this:)

In article <1036@botter.cs.vu.nl> jim@cs.vu.nl (Jim van Keulen) writes:
>I would like to know more about the Apollo Series 3000 workstations.
>These might be an alternative for Sun workstations, but I am not
>familiar with the Apollo products. The penetration of Apollo's in
>academic circles seems to be much lower then Sun's. Is there a good
>reason for this fact?

I think that among sites that picked a workstation two or more years
ago, most went with Sun, especially if they were interested in Unix.
Since then Apollo has come on much stronger in the Unix area, and
their Unix is much better (and improving).

>
>My principal questions are:
>
>- What is the quality of the UNIX implementation? Is it real UNIX or
>  just a UNIX shell around a proprietary operating kernel? 
They have their own proprietary kernel that supports several things
that the current bsd kernel doesn't.  Their Unix environment ("shell"
if you will) runs along with their own interface (aegis).  Overall, I
think the quality is acceptable.  As far as it being "real" Unix, you
will quickly find some differences, some things lacking, but none of
these has been critical for us.

>- What about the network facilities? Is there a fully transparent
>  distributed file system?
Yes, as Mark said.  They have a pretty good tcp implementation as
well.

>- How easy is it to port UNIX program distributions to the Apollo?
As Mark said, depends on what it is.  I've done uucp, sendmail, and
other programs.  The kernel interface is certainly different, (there
is no /dev/kmem, for example).

>- What is the general politics of Apollo with respect to make
>  available kernel sources?
You pretty much can't get them.

>
>If you compare Apollo series 3000 with Sun-52/M workstations are
>there certain advantages of the Apollo over the Sun?
>
In my opinion, the design of the basic Apollo OS is somewhat more
modern than Unix.  I chose Apollo over Sun for the machine I use, and
University of Michigan has going on 200 Apollos, with more on the
way.  Even though I like Apollos, I must say that many people with
Vax/pdp Unix experience, who like to work in that style kernel, know
how to do those device drivers, etc. find the Apollo to be quite
different, and don't care for it.  I had that opinion when I first
started using Apollos, but have developed more catholic tastes in the
meantime I suppose.  Even here with the multitudes of Apollos, I am
quite thankful sometimes for the old reliable Vax 750 with all the
4.3 source code on it.

To sum up, I would say that the decision between Sun and Apollo for
Unix users is probably not as easy as it was > 2 years ago, and
Apollo is worth a look as it stands today.

--paul
paul@umix.cc.umich.edu
seismo!umix!paul