Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!texbell!egsner!u-word!egs
From: egs@u-word.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Buying a 386 clone -- want advice
Message-ID: <10600002@u-word>
Date: 5 Apr 89 08:46:43 GMT
References: <3177@imagen.UUCP>
Lines: 67
Nf-ID: #R:imagen.UUCP:3177:u-word:10600002:000:3094
Nf-From: u-word.UUCP!egs    Apr  4 13:32:00 1989


Written 3:17p Apr 3, 1989 by bright@Data-IO.COM
-In article <29177@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@buit4.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:
-<The biggest problem with UNIX on the PC is there is no single version.
-<Different versions came from different sources and perform (pardon my
-<repetitiveness) differently.  
-
-Unix suffers from two killer problems:
-1. Lack of media compatibility.
-	Silly unix vendors invariably invent a new file format. I haven't
-	seen one yet where you could write a 5.25" disk under one
-	vendor's unix and read it on another's.

        Well, I don't know about that.  Nearly every system I know can
read a standard 1600 bpi 9-track tar/cpio tape.  And in the PC/386
world, all systems can write a MS-DOS floppy and read each others tar
and cpio floppies.  ( case in point, I received some source from a
vendor on a Xenix tar floppy, and read it on my Microport system, with
no problem what so ever )

        As to putting a file system on a 5.25" floppy, what's the point.
It's not reliable enough or large enough to support a unix file system (
and I know about Brandons home directory being on the 5.25 on the old
ncoast )

-2. Lack of binary compatibility.
-	Can't compile on one unix and run on another, even if the
-	hardware is the same. Source code compatibility simply isn't
-	good enough.

	Well, for the PC/386 machines, you have binary compatablity
from nearly all the vendors today.  My Microport system is currently
running the text prep tools from the Interactive 386/ix distribution (
which is not currently installed on any hardware ) with no problems at
all.  Bell Tech, Microport, Interactive, AT&T, Everex, and soon SCO
will share the same ABI for the 386.  AT&T and Interactive can
currently run Xenix binaries on their release of System Vr3.2

	The same thing is happening for the 88000 from Motorola.  The
manufacturers of 88000 machines have gotten together and defined an ABI
for the CPU.  It is also happening on other processors, such as the
AMD29000, and the Sun SPARC.

-The irritating thing is that these problems are easilly solvable, but
-unix vendors suffer badly from nih.

	And they are being solved, or are solved already.  See above.

-An MS-DOS application developer can write and test a piece of code, and
-can run it on 25 million DOS machines. Unix application developers have
-to buy a dozen different machines, recompile and test on each, and stock
-inventory on a dozen different permutations. This isn't practical for the
-small developer, which is where most applications come from.

	And with careful coding ( not that common in the PC world ) any
vendor can write an application that can be ported between System V
machines in less than a day, and to more diverse systems ( such as BSD
based systems ) in less than a week.

	By the way, JBA Inc. is a "small developer."  Just a point of
reference.

------
Eric Schnoebelen,			JBA Incorporated, Lewisville, Tx.
egs@u-word.dallas.tx.us				...!killer!u-word!egs
	"...we have normality"..."Anything you still can't cope with is
therefore your own problem..."	-- Trisha McMillian, HHGG