Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: COMPLAINTS about ISC UNIX V/386 (386/ix 1.0.4)
Message-ID: <8289@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 87 03:40:19 GMT
References: <751@vixie.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 67

In article <751@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes:
| The documentation that comes with the system is lousy.  Three binders were
| included (I got the "applications platform," since I needed most of the 
| things it included and it was the cheapest way to get them).  These binders
| are: "Using 386/ix Products", "Managing 386/ix Products", and "Supplement".

I don't think they're that bad, but certainly not world class
documentation.
| 
| The LP driver prints about 1 CPS.  I've heard of this problem, but I thought
| ...
I didn't have that problem.

| 
| VP/ix is ISC's way to run MSDOS applications on a UNIX/386 system.  This
| part of the system seems reasonably well done, except that the "pop-up menu"
| is supposed to come up when you hit "SYS REQ", but I found two things out
| from long experimentation: (1) ALT+SHIFT+SYSREQ is the only thing that
| works, only if pressed in that order (i.e., SHIFT+ALT+SYSREQ won't work),
| and (2) if you hit CONTROL+ALT+SYSREQ, an odd message appears which tells

My documentation says that you press ALT-SYSREQ, followed by 'm' to get
the menu, 'n' for the next virtual screen, and 'p' for the previous
virtual screen. Worked flawlessly for me.

| So, to sum up my first impressions: this thing SUCKS.  I went with UNIX
| instead of Xenix because I didn't want something whose roots were in sysIII
| and PCDOS (no flames, please, I've seen the arguments about this), and I
| went with ISC over Microport or BellTech because I figured it would be the
| fastest and most solid of the three (I also needed ESDI support).
| 
| 		* * * I AM NOT IMPRESSED * * *
| 

I was not impressed that the C compiler kept blowing up trying to
compile things like dhampstone. I was not impressed that the performance
of compiled programs was about 20-30% slower than Xenix/386. But I
thought overall that the product deserves a better rap that you have
given it.

| I'm sure that the programmers at ISC are competent and concientious.  This
| is an early model of this product, and I expected a few bugs.  If I could
| speak directly to the ISC team, I could probably get my problems solved
| quickly, but since ISC won't sell through me unless I commit to $50K/year
| in sales (who would do this without seeing the product first?  Come on!!),

You are *definitely* doing something wrong! My wife's company talked to
them and got a free evaluation copy (she would probably sell $50k if she
used it) and the company seemed to be totally helpful about letting her
try it. The vp/ix worked very well, although it did hand in one
operation, for general DOS usage it was fine, and the ability to run DOS
programs is certainly a highly useful feature.

I was able to run a number of really ill-behaved programs, such as
games, with diddle the EGA directly. When I changed terminals it worked.
I think I would rather have DOSmerge than vp/ix, since it can be run
from remote terminals, but DM isn't available for Xenix/386 and vp/ix
(they tell me) is. I think your criticism is out of proportion to the
problems with the software.

BTW: does your vp/ix use 100% of the CPU when nothing else is running?
It looks like the idle loop runs at low priority all the time. How about
DOS as an idle daemon???
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me