Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What's a "tahoe"?
Message-ID: <12910@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 9 Aug 88 00:30:56 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2642@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 17

[This discussion should move, but I have no idea to where it should move...]

In article <2642@pt.cs.cmu.edu> ralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) writes:
>One might wonder [Berkeley] didn't go with Suns [for a second porting
>base], since they have a friend in a high place (Bill Joy), and could
>also presumably get good deals on them :-)

Well, speaking only for myself, I have considered this.  The problem
is incentive, or rather lack thereof:  Porting 4.3BSD to the Sun-2 and
Sun-3 would take much effort (think about all those drivers!...), and
neither machine is particularly fast; porting to the Sun-4 requires
stable Sun-4s (which are now available, but were not a few years ago).
Moreover, the return would be fairly small: SunOS 3.5 is close enough
to 4.3BSD that we do not suffer `porting shock'.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris