Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!daveh
From: daveh@marob.MASA.COM (Dave Hammond)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Aquiring porting base machines
Message-ID: <374@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 22 Aug 88 12:36:22 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond)
Organization: ESCC  New York City
Lines: 27

Our firm would like to port a software package to run under various
flavors of Unix, as well as non-Unices, including VMS and DOS.

The Intel-based systems (Xenix,uPort,iAPX,DOS,...) are no problem, as
we have a slew of them and they take only a software purchase to build a
new porting base.  On the other hand, we do not have 3Bs, Vaxen, Suns, and
other non-Intel machines at our disposal.

My question is, what is the prescribed method of building a porting base
of diverse machines ?  When I get pricing sheets from various software
manufacturers, they list pricing for dozens, if not hundreds of various
machines.

Do these firms own all these machines, or lease time on local machines ?
Do they befriend local universities ? Or perhaps wait until someone with
a machine which they don't support wants their software ?

If the machines used as porting bases are not owned by the firm, how can
they be sure the machines will be there when they must build a new release of
their package ?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dave Hammond
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