NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27

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Xref: sparky comp.unix.sysv386:16701 comp.unix.bsd:9179 comp.os.mach:1570 news.answers:4132 Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!gmd.de!jvnc.net!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!snark!esr From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.mach,news.answers Subject: PC-clone UNIX Software Buyer's Guide Summary: A buyer's guide to UNIX versions for PC-clone hardware Message-ID: <1jWcDb#3dtw138y8rql3S1jlt5Z4ZX8=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> Date: 20 Nov 92 21:40:13 GMT Expires: 20 Feb 93 00:00:00 GMT Sender: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Followup-To: comp.unix.sysv386 Lines: 2452 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Archive-name: pc-unix/software Last-update: Fri Nov 20 16:16:32 1992 Version: 8.0 [Note: This issue is being released nearly two weeks ahead of schedule. This is because (a) there have been been big changes in the hardware market since 7.0 --- the 386 is dead, long live the 386, and (b) I received an unusually large number of additions and corrections during the last week, including material for a new major section.] You say you want cutting-edge hacking tools without having to mortgage the wife'n'kids? You say arrogant workstation vendors are getting you down? You say you crave fast UNIX on cheap hardware, but you don't know how to go about getting it? Well, pull up a chair and take the load off yer feet, bunky, because... This is the PC-clone UNIX Software Buyer's Guide posting, current to Nov 20 1992. What's new in this issue: * Fully updated ODT 2.0 info. * Why some HP drives fail under SCO. * The corrected "Programmer's Shop" number. Gentle Reader: if you end up buying something based on information from this Guide, please do yourself and the net a favor; make a point of telling the vendor "Eric's FAQ sent me" or some equivalent. The idea isn't to hype me personally, I've already got all the notoriety I need from doing things like _The_New_Hacker's_Dictionary_ --- but if we can show vendors that the Guide influences a lot of purchasing decisions, I can be a more powerful advocate for the net's interests, and for you. 0. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION. What this posting is. How to help improve it. Summary of the 386/486 UNIX market, including 6 SVr4 products, SCO UNIX (an SVr3.2), and 2 BSD ports. What's new in this issue. II. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. A brief discussion of general hardware requirements and compatibility considerations in the base SVR4 code from UNIX Systems Laboratories (referred to below as the USL code). None of this automatically applies to SCO or the two BSD-like versions, which break out the corresponding information into their separate vendor reports. III. FEATURE COMPARISON. A feature table which gives basic price & feature info and summarizes differences between the versions. IV. VENDOR REPORTS. Detailed descriptions of the major versions and vendors, including information collected from the net on bugs, supported and unsupported hardware and the like. V. UPCOMING PORTS, FREEWARE VERSIONS, AND CLONES. Less-detailed descriptions of other products in the market. VI. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY TABLES. A set of tables summarizes vendor claims and user reports on hardware compatibility. VII. FREEWARE ACCESS FOR SVR4 SYSTEMS. Information on the SVR4 binaries archive. VIII. FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS. Your humble editor's soapbox. An open letter to the UNIX vendors designed to get them all hustling to improve their products and services as fast as possible. IX. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND ENVOI. Credit where credit is due. Some praises and pans. What comes next.... Note: versions 1.0 through 4.0 of this posting had a different archive name (386-buyers-faq) and included the following now separate FAQs as sections. pc-unix/hardware -- (formerly HOT TIPS FOR HARDWARE BUYERS) Useful general tips for anybody buying clone hardware for a UNIX system. Overview of the market. Technical points. When, where, and how to buy. usl-bugs -- (formerly KNOWN BUGS IN THE USL CODE). A discussion of bugs known or believed to be generic to the USL code, with indications as to which porting houses have fixed them. None of this applies to the two BSD-based versions. Readers may also find material of interest in Dick Dunn's general 386 UNIX FAQ list, posted monthly to comp.unix.sysv386 and news.answers. I. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this posting is to pool public knowledge and USENET feedback about all leading-edge versions of UNIX for commodity 386 and 486 hardware. It also includes extensive information on how to buy cheap clone hardware to support your UNIX. This document is maintained and periodically updated as a service to the net by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>, who began it for the very best self-interested reason that he was in the market and didn't believe in plonking down several grand without doing his homework first (no, I don't get paid for this, though I have had a bunch of free software and hardware dumped on me as a result of it!). Corrections, updates, and all pertinent information are welcomed at that address. This posting is periodically broadcast to the USENET group comp.unix.sysv386 and to a list of vendor addresses. If you are a vendor representative, please check the feature chart and vendor report to make sure the information on your company is current and correct. If it is not, please email me a correction ASAP. If you are a knowledgeable user of any of these products, please send me a precis of your experiences for the improvement of the feedback sections. At time of writing, here are the major products in this category: Consensys UNIX Version 1.3 abbreviated as "Cons" below Dell UNIX Issue 2.2 abbreviated as "Dell" below ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 abbreviated as "Esix" below Micro Station Technology SVr4 UNIX abbreviated as "MST" below Microport System V Release 4.0 version 4 abbreviated as "uPort" below UHC Version 3.6 abbreviated as "UHC" below SCO Open Desktop 2.1 abbreviated as "ODT" below BSD/386 (0.3 beta) abbreviated as "BSDI" below Mach386 abbreviated as "Mach" below The first six of these are ports of USL's System V Release 4. Until last year there was a seventh, by Interactive Systems Corporation. That product was canned after half of ISC was bought by SunSoft, evidently to clear the decks for Solaris 2.0 (a SunOS port for the 386 to be released late in 1992). The only Interactive UNIX one can buy at present is an SVr3.2 port which I consider uninteresting because it's no longer cutting-edge; I have ignored it. Earlier issues ignored SCO because (a) 3.2 isn't leading-edge any more and (b) their `Version 4' is a 3.2 sailing under false colors. Can you say deceptive advertising? Can you say bait-and-switch? Can you say total marketroid-puke? However, the clamor from netters wanting it included was deafening. The day SCO landed an unsolicited free copy of ODT on my doorstep I gave in. I don't expect to actually use it, but I summarize the relevant facts along with everything else below. Note that ODT is their full system with networking and X windows; what they call SCO UNIX is missing most of those trimmings. BSD/386 is *not* based on USL code, but on the CSRG NET2 distribution tape. Complete sources are included with every system shipped! Mach386 is basically BSD tools with the monolithic Mach 2.5 kernel and does entail a USL license; it's based on the Tahoe BSD distribution. For a few extra bucks, you can get Mach 3.0 (a true microkernel) with *source*!. AT&T's own 386 UNIX offering is not covered here because it is available and supported for AT&T hardware only. All the vendors listed offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, but they'll be sticky about it except where there's an insuperable hardware compatibility problem or you trip over a serious bug. One (UHC) charges a 25% restocking fee on returns. BSDI offers a 60-day guarantee and says: "If a customer is dissatisfied with the product, BSDI unconditionally refunds the purchase price." Dell says "30 day money-back guarantee, no questions asked". Some other ports are listed in section V. II. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS To run any of these systems, you need at least the following: 4 MB of RAM and 80MB of hard disk (SCO says 8MB minimum for ODT 2.0; Dell 2.1 also requires 8 MB minimum). However, this is an absolute minimum; you'll want at least 8 MB of RAM for reasonable performance. And depending on options installed, the OS will eat from 40 to 120 meg of the disk, so you'll want at least 200 meg for real work. To run X you'll need a VGA monitor and card, and 12-16MB RAM would be a good idea. Installation from these systems requires that you boot from a hi-density floppy (either 3.5" or 5.25"). Most vendors offer the bulk of the system on a QIC 1/4-inch tape; otherwise you may be stuck with loading over 60 diskettes! In general, if the initial boot gets far enough to display a request for the first disk or tape load, you're in good shape. USL SVr4 conforms to the following software standards: ANSI X3.159-1989 C, POSIX 1003.1, SVID 3rd edition, FIPS 151-1, XPG3, and System V Release 4 ABI. 4.0.4 ports conform to the iBCS-2 binary standard. The SVr4 C compiler (C Issue 5) includes some non-ANSI extensions (however, note that as of mid-1992, no SVr4 ports other than AT&T's have been formally POSIX-certified). SCO meets all these except System V ABI and SVID 3rd edition; however, it does conform to SVID 2nd edition. All SVr4 versions include support for BSD-style file systems with 255-character segment names and fragment allocation. In general this is a Good Thing, but some SVr3.2 and XENIX binaries can be confused by the different size of the inode index. You need to run these on an AT&T-style file system. SCO UNIX 3.2v4 (thus, ODT 2.0 but not 1.1) has an `EAFS' file system which adds symlinks and long filenames. Old SCO binaries can be confused by long filenames. All SVr4 versions include the UNIX manual pages on-line. Dell stocks Prentice-Hall's SVr4 books and will sell them to you with your system (in lieu of printed manuals) at extra cost. You can order them direct from Prentice-Hall at (201)-767-5937. Warning: they ain't cheap! Buying the whole 13 volumes will cost you a couple hundred bucks. Esix, Microport and UHC have their own manual sets derived from the same AT&T source tapes as the Prentice-Hall set; Esix charges extra for them, but Microport and UHC both include them with their systems. SVr4 includes hooks for a DOS bridge that allows you to run DOS applications under UNIX (the two products that actually do this are DOS Merge and VP/ix). Most vendors do not include either of these with the base system, however. All these systems support up to 1024x768 by 256 color super-VGA under X. The 640x480 by 16 colors of standard VGA is no problem; everybody supports that compatibly. However, X servers older than the Roell or X11R5 version (that is, MIT X11R4 or anything previous) are hard to configure for the clock timings of your controller and monitor scan frequency unless you have one of the standard combinations USL supports or your vendor has configured for it. There are a couple of known hardware compatibility problems the USL code doesn't yet address. See the KNOWN BUGS section near the end of this document. III. FEATURE COMPARISON To interpret the table below, bear in mind the following things: All these products except BSDI/386, Mach386 and SCO ODT are based on the SVr4 kernel from UNIX Systems Laboratories (USL), an AT&T spinoff. Thus they share over 90% of their code and features. Product differentiation is done primarily through support policy, bug-fix quality and add-on software. The `USL support?' column refers to the fact that USL support is a separate charge from the source license. With the former, a porting house gets access to AT&T's own OS support people and their bug fix database, and the porting house's bug fixes can get folded back into the USL code. These systems come either in a "crippled" version that supports at most two simultaneous users, or an unlimited version. Generally the vendors do allow you to upgrade your license via a patch disk if your requirements, but this invariably costs slightly more than the base price difference between 2-user and unlimited systems. The "run-time" system in the price tables below is a minimum installation, just enough to run binaries. The "complete" system includes every software option offered by the vendor; it does *not* bundle in the cost of the Prentice-Hall docs offered by some vendors as an option. You may well get away with less, especially if you're willing to do your own X installation. The `Upgrade plan' section refers only to upgrades from previous versions of the same vendor's software. The numbers under support-with-purchase are days counted from date of shipment. The intent is to help you get initially up and running. The engineer counts below are as supplied by vendors; .5 of an engineer means someone is officially working half-time. The `Uses USENET' column is `yes' if there is allegedly at least one person in the engineering department who reads USENET technical groups regularly and is authorized to respond to USENET postings reporting problems. The `DOS Bridge' row gives the version number of DOSMerge supplied with the system, if any. DosMerge 2.0 has roughly the caoabilities of DOS 3.0, though it is reported to be quite flaky and hard to configure. DOSMerge 2.2 has the capabilities of DOS 5.0. A dash `-' means the given feature or configuration is not offered. A `yes' means it is currently offered; `soon' means the vendor has represented that it will be offered in the near future. A `no' means it's not offered, but there's some related information in the attached footnote. Vendor SCO Cons Dell Esix MST uPort UHC BSDI Mach386 Base version: 3.2.2 4.0.3 4.0.4 4.0.4 4.0.3 4.0.4 4.0.3 BSD Mach USL support? ?? ?? y y n y ??(a) n n System price: Run-time 2-user 595 - - 384 249 500 695 - - Unlimited 1295 - - 784 449 1,000 1,090 - - Complete 2-user 3090 995 995(b) - 799 3,000 1,990 - - Unlimited 4290 1195 1295(b) 1,607 999 3,500 2,385 995 995(c) Printed docs? y(e) - y(d) y(d) - y(e) y - - Upgrade plan? From SVr3.2 y - y y - y - - - Future SVr4s ?? - (g) (f) - (g) - - - Support W/purchase: 30 (h) 90 (i) 30 30 30 60 30 800 number? y - y - - - - - - By contract y n(j) y n(i) y y y y y Support BBS? y y - y - y soon - y FTP server? y - y soon - - - y y Read USENET? y ?? y y - y n(l) y y # Engineers: Support: 60+ 1 5 2 2 4 2 1.5 1 Development: 55+ ??(m) 10 ~20 3 6 27 5.5 5 Distribution media: 3.5" 1.44MB y y(n) - y y y y - y 5.25" 1.2MB y y(n) - y y y y - y 60MB ctape y y - y y y y - - 125MB ctape - - - - y - y - - 150MB ctape - - - - y y y y - 250MB ctape - - y - - - - - - 2GB DAT - - y - - - - - - Via network? - - y - - - - - - X options: X11/NeWS R3 - - - y - - y - - MIT X11R4 y(o) - y - - - - - y AT&T Xwin 3 - - - - y - - - - AT&T Xwin 4 - - - y - y - - - Roell X386 - - - - y - y - - X11R5 - y y - - - - y soon Open Look - - 4i 1.0 2.0 4i 4i - - Motif 1.1.4 1.1 1.1.4 1.1.0 1.1.2 1.1.3 1.1.3 - soon X.desktop 3.0 - - - - 3.0 2.0 - - Also included: DOS bridge? 2.2 - 2.2 - - soon - soon - SLIP? y - y y - y soon y y(p) PPP? y ?? - n(q) - - soon soon n (a) UHC had a support contract at one time but may have let it lapse. I expect to have better information on this soon. (b) This price is for customer-installed UNIX. If it's factory-installed on Dell hardware, it's $500 less. (c) Previous issues alleged that "No unlimited licenses have been sold yet." Feedback from the net indicates that all MtXinu systems now being sold are unlimited. (d) Extra-cost option. (e) With complete system only. (f) Small media charge. Note: if you upgrade from a 2-user to multi-user ESIX, you pay full price. (g) Free with support contract, charge otherwise (charge ~$500). (h) 90 days or until product is installed successfully. (i) Unlimited free phone support. (j) Charges by the half-hour phone call. (l) UHC says they used to be net-active and want to be again when they can afford the man-hours. (m) Consensys explicitly refuses to release this information. (n) There's an $80 media charge for the diskettes equivalent to the normal 60MB distribution tape. (o) SCO's own X11R4 implementation. (p) At present, you must buy Mach386 Autosupport to get SLIP. (q) Mark Boucher <marc@cam.org> has written a PPP driver for ESIX The SCO information is included by popular demand for comparison purposes. In the price figures, the `runtime' system is SCO UNIX 3.2v4; the `complete' system is ODT with development tools. In general, the SVr4 market breaks into two tiers. The bottom tier is Consensys and MST; low-ball outfits selling stock USL with minimal support for real cheap. The top tier is Dell, Esix, Microport and UHC; these guys are selling support and significant enhancements and charge varying premiums for it. Your first, most basic buying decision has to be which tier best serves your needs. One further note: it *is* possible to buy these systems at less than the list the vendor charges! I found some really substantial discounts in one mail-order catalog ("The Programmer's Shop"; call 1-(800)-421-8006 to get on their mailing list, but be prepared to wade through a lot of DOS cruft). IV. VENDOR REPORTS Vendor reports start here. Each one is led by a form feed. NAME: SCO Open DeskTop VENDOR: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. 400 Encinal Street PO Box 1900 Santa Cruz,CA 95061-1900 1-(800)-SCO-UNIX (sales) 1-(800)-347-4381 (customer service and tech support) info@sco.com --- product info by email, sales requests support@sco.com --- support requests (support contract customers only) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: SCO's package and option structure is (excessively) complicated. At the moment the `bundles' to keep track of are: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO UNIX networking bundle, consisting of: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO TCP/IP 1.2.0 SCO NFS 1.2.0 SCO Open Desktop 2.0: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO TCP/IP 1.2.0 SCO NFS 1.2.0 LAN Manager Client, PC-NFS daemon, PC-Interface server X (X11R4 server/clients, Motif 1.1.4, X.desktop 3.0) DOS Merge (2.2) Note that Ingres (the database) has been removed from the ODT bundle since 1.1. There is a special Ingres price for ODT customers, and Ingres has committed to offering a 50% discount till the end of '92. ADD-ONS: There are piles of them. I was most impressed by the docs for the CodeView debugger and MASM assembler, but the presence of ISAM support would probably be more significant to the ordinary commercial user. SCO bundles with X also include 18 clients (what in marketingese are called ``personal productivity and groupware accessories and controls'') which include: mail, help, edit, paint, term, print, login, clock, color, session, mouse, lock, and admin (official names all prepended with "SCO") as well as DOS, load, and calculator clients. SUPPORT: You get 30 days of free phone support with purchase. ODT support is $895 per year. SCO has BBS coverage and a local support operation in the UK as well as the US; BBS coverage only Germany. Local support is, in theory, to be provided by distributors. FUTURE PLANS: IPX/SPX (Novell networking support) will be added soon. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. SCO provides a Hardware Compatibility Guide with its software. COMMENTS: The docs are impressive; you could get a hernia trying to lift them all. TECHNICAL NOTES: There's an `MPX' kernel available from SCO that supports multiprocessing. Though this is a 3.2 kernel, SCO has added support for SVr4-like symbolic links and long filenames to Version 4. SCO has a standard driver announcement protocol which allows the utility hwconfig(C) to print out detailed configuration info on hardware attached to the machine. SCO's cross-development and DOS emulation support is unusually rich. It includes lots of system utilities for I/O with a DOS filesystem, as well as cross-development libraries and tools in the Development System. Microsoft Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.0 applications are supported (in real mode), and future releases will support Windows 3.1 and associated applications. Graphical MS-DOS applications are supported in CGA graphics mode within an X window, and VGA graphics are supported in full-screen mode. KNOWN BUGS SCO tar(1) chokes horribly on long filenames and symbolic links. This is scheduled to be fixed in the next maintenance supplement, MSv4.2. WHAT THE USERS SAY: XENIX is the UNIX port hackers love to hate, but at 70% of the market SCO must be doing something right. In general, SCO UNIX and XENIX are reputed to be a very polished and stable systems. Unfortunately, they also drive developers crazy because of numerous tiny and undocumented divergences between the SCO way and the USL-based releases. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: The SCO support system is heavily bureaucratized and prone to thrash when processing questions of unusual depth or scope. While probably adequate for the random business luser, hackers are likely to find the contortions required to get to a master-level developer very frustrating. SCO in general has the fairly serious case of corporatitis you'd predict from their relatively large size --- no-comment policies and compartmentalization out the wazoo. On the other hand, they sent me an unsolicited free copy, and I got huge amounts of useful technical and hardware-compatibility info "unofficially" from SCOer Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>. Gee. Maybe I should flame vendors more often... :-) NAME: Consensys UNIX Version 1.3 VENDOR: Consensys 1301 Pat Booker Road Universal City, TX 78148 (800)-387-8951 {dmentor,dciem}!askov!root SOFTWARE OPTIONS: None. ADD-ONS: Basically this is a stock USL system with the stock USL bugs, except the installation sequence has been improved considerably. Good tools for configuration management and system administration on a network of Consensys machines are included. SUPPORT: You get free phone support until your system is installed, to a maximum of 90 days. After that they charge per half-hour of phone time. They like to do support by fax and callback. They have 1 (one) support tech. Ask for Reuben. They have a support BBS at (416)-752-2084. Knowledgeable customers report they're good about supporting the bits they wrote (see below) but terrible at dealing with generic SVr4 problems. FUTURE PLANS: They haven't settled on an upgrade policy yet. There are plans for a disk array product. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. Though most reports say the Consensys PowerPorts board is fine for UUCP use, at least two USENETters have reported problems with interactive sessions; see below. TECHNICAL NOTES: The X stuff is straight off the MIT X11R5 tape, patchlevel 8. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. One `Andy', mailing from <hooplet@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> says "You should also blast Consensys for advertising that they provide DOS file system utilities. They do, but they were written for DOS 2.0! They do NOT work for DOS 5.0..." Syd Weinstein <syd@dsinc.dsi.com> reports: "The most major [bug in the PowerPorts support] is delays in various output codes.... Even if not using the multi-screen stuff, a clear to end of line escape code, and some others, cause noticable delays in the output. (About 0.1 seconds). It makes running Elm a real bitch". He is in touch with Consensys about this. It has been reported on USENET (by Gerry Swetsky <lisbon@vpnet.chi.il.us> among others) that if you drop off of a PowerPorts line without manually closing all your sessions, the unclosed sessions may be accessible to the next person to pick up the line. Gil Kloepfer, Jr. <gil@limbic.ssdl.com>, managing the Houston UNIX User's Group's system, says that during interactive use the board frequently does not handle typeahead properly (this may be related to Syd Weinstein's problems with EOL delay). He also says he hasn't been able to bring up stable UUCP with the board. COMMENTS: Their UNIX product is an outgrowth of their main line of business, selling serial boards. It is easy to configure the OS to support the board. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I've spoken with one experienced wizard using Consensys and seen a detailed email report from another. They're happy, although they both warn that newbies should probably *not* try this at home :-). On the other hand, Consensys has a dismal reputation on USENET; horror stories of nonexistent followup on bugs abound. They'll need to work hard to shuck their take-the-money-and-run image. Better followup on the reported serial-port board bugs would be a big help. Unfortunately, Consensys's favored response seems to be to deny that they have a problem. One customer (J.J. Strybosch, <jjs@ubitrex.mb.ca>) reports that Consensys charged his credit card for more than they quoted him. If you deal with them, watch your credit card statement carefully. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: These guys have the toughest support policy of any vendor and obviously don't want to hear from you once you've gotten past initial boot. A Consensys marketroid that I spoke with twice while gathering this information offered to send me an evaluation copy of their system. They were clearly hoping for some good publicity if I like it. However, I doubt they like me that well any more... Consensys explicitly refuses to say how many development engineers they have on staff. In this and some other matters (such as the way they deal with allegations of PowerPorts problems) they've adopted a corporate style that appears defensive, evasive, secretive, and not conducive to trust. I couldn't make their V.P. of sales understand that this appearance is a serious liability in dealing with UNIX techies and distinguishes them from the competition in a distinctly negative way. NAME: Dell UNIX System V Release 4 Issue 2.2. VENDOR: Dell Computer 9505 Arboretum Road Austin TX 78759 (800)-BUY-DELL (info & orders) (800)-624-9896 (tech support: x6915 to go straight to UNIX support) info@dell.com --- basic Dell info support@dell.com --- support queries SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Basically, there aren't any. You get the development system with all the trimmings for a lower list than anybody else in the top tier. Whaddya want, egg in yer beer? ADD-ONS: Dell bundles a DOS bridge (Locus 2.2, supporting DOS 5.0) with their base system. They also include cnews, mmdf, perl, elm, bison, gcc, emacs gdb, Tex, network time protocol support, and other freeware, including a bunch of nifty X clients! Also included: the Xylogics Annex server for TCP/IP network access. FrameMaker is also included, but runs in demo mode only until you buy a license token from Unidirect. SUPPORT: Dell *does* support their UNIX on non-Dell hardware. They are quite definite about this. They will deal with software problems reported from non-Dell hardware, but you're on your own when dealing with hardware incompatibility problems unless you can reproduce the problem on a Dell PC. However, it is also policy that if you lend them the offending hardware, they will work with the vendor to come up with a fix. You get 90 days of free phone support on a toll-free number, starting on resceipt of your registration card (no card, no support). Yearly service contracts range are $350 per year for the limited license, $500 for the unlimited. There are 6 engineers in their first line and 4 in their second-line support pool. Dell accepts software problem reports from anyone, Dell or non-Dell hardware and whether or not they have a support contract. If you don't have a support contract, don't count on getting a reply acknowledging the report. Dell maintains a pair of Internet servers (dell1.dell.com and dell2.dell.com) which hold patches, updates and free software usable with Dell UNIX. About upgrades, Dell says "If you have a support contract, the upgrade is free, unless we've added something with significant royalty burden to us. We may make a charge at that point. We didn't when we added Graphical Services 4.0 at the introduction of Dell UNIX 2.1. If you don't have a contract, then the cost is basically Media+Royalty+Admin+Shipping." FUTURE PLANS: X.desktop 3.0 will be supported soon. NeWS isn't going to happen at all; they couldn't get it to work reliability. Dell has demonstrated a 486 port of NeXTSTEP at trade shows. Dell is going to move to Solaris someday. However, policy is that they're not going to phase out SVr4 until at least a year after their first *reliable* version of Solaris, in order to provide an upgrade path. TECHNICAL NOTES: The big plus in the Dell code is that they've fixed a lot of the annoying bugs and glitches present in the stock USL tape. The installation procedure has been improved and simplified. You can install Dell UNIX through your network from another Dell box once you've booted the hardware with a special disk provided. Both benchmarks and anecdotal reports make them significantly faster than a stock USL system. Interestingly, Dell's manager for UNIX development tells me this is all due to bug fixes and careful choices of some OS parameters. A source at Dell has asked me to point out that Dell's SLIP can be set up, configured, and stopped while UNIX is running; some other versions (such as SCO's) require a reboot. However, others claim that SCO's can actually be reconfigured without a reboot and that the SCO *manuals* are at fault here for misleading people. Dell device drivers are *very* unlikely to work on other SVR4 versions. Dell includes some kernel extensions (not required, so other SVR4 device drivers should work) to make life in support a little easier. A program called showcfg will list all recognised device drivers and the IRQ, I/O address, shared memory and so on. The device driver has to register this info. Dell has told USL how to do this, it's up to them when or even if they want to use this in a future release. Dell device drivers are also auto configuring, for the most part. Check out /etc/conf/sdevice.d/* and see how most of the devices are enabled, but with zeroes in all fields for IRQ, I/O and memory. Those are autoconfiguring drivers. Dell thinks that this makes life much easier; you only need to set one of the configurations that they probe for! The device registration helps this, by eliminating possible overlapping memory or I/O address usage. (On the other hand, idconfig(1) is no longer helpful, when I/O, IRQ and mem are all zero). The 2.2 release adds a utility `setcfg' which can be used to remove unneeded drivers, shrinking the kernel. Dell UNIX also has drivers for the Dell SmartVu found on some machines (a little four character LED display on the front panel). By default this shows POST values, then disk accesses, finally "UNIX" when running and "DOWN" when halted. You can write to the device. Dell's SCSI tape driver includes ioctls to control whether hardware compression is used. Some Dell systems have a reset button. On the Laptops these are wired directly to the CPU. On the desktop and floor-standing systems Dell UNIX can catch the interrupt; it's used to do a graceful (init 0) shutdown. Other UNIXes will do a processor reset when the button is pushed. About 95% of 2.2 was built using GNU cc for a significant performance improvement over pcc. KNOWN BUGS: Uucico fails when sending more than 12 files to another machine. Fixed in 2.2; a patch is available free from Dell for earlier versions. Performance monitoring of uucp transfers doesn't work. Creating /var/spool/uucp/.Admin/perflog results in uucico logging statistics to the file correctly. However, using uustat -tsysname results in either a memory error or you just being returned to the shell with no output. This bug is known to Dell and being worked on now. Merge is seriously buggy in many areas. It takes ages to start up in an xterm and then sometimes crashes in the process. Attempting to use its simulated expanded memory results in the system becoming slowly corrupted which later results in virtual terminals disappearing and the system gradually locking up. Really fun stuff! And it can only cope with 1.44M discs. These are generic Merge problems, not really Dell's but Locus's fault. There are some dropped stitches in the supplied USENET tools. The nntp server has been compiled for a dbm history file while c-news has been compiled for dbz. With nntpd this only shows on the ARTICLE <message-id> command which either returns that the article with that id can't be found or crashes the server. Also, they forgot to include the nntpd manual page or nntpxfer. A Dell source thinks these things have been corrected in 2.2. Dell's device driver autoconfiguration doesn't properly set up the mouse port on the ATI Graphics Ultra card. You need to either remove all other mouse drivers or use the DOS install program to manually force the mouse IRQ to 5. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: Dell doesn't maintain a list of non-Dell motherboards and systems known to work. And they're not willing to talk about the list they don't maintain, because it would amount to endorsing someone else's hardware. Dell promises that you can bring its UNIX up on any Dell desktop or tower featuring a 386SX or up (it's hard to get the product on to the notebooks). Notebooks can't drive a QIC tape and there aren't drivers for the pocket Ethernet or token-ring adapter. Jeffrey James Persch <using a friend's account> reports that he couldn't get the X supplied with Dell UNIX 2.1 to work with a Microsoft bus mouse hooked to the mouse port on a Compaq 486/33M or Systempro. Andrew Michael <Andrew.Michael@brunel.ac.uk> says "If you're buying Dell UNIX for non-Dell hardware, first try booting the Dell floppy on it. From experience, some BIOS ROMs cause Dell SVR4 to lock up at the point where it tries to talk to the hard disk. If it gets to the point where it asks you whether you want to install or not you can be pretty sure that all is well. An AMI or Phoenix BIOS is OK; be careful of anything else." See the appendix for more. COMMENTS: Dell sells hardware, too :-). They are, in fact, one of the most successful clonemakers, and will cheerfully sell you a Dell computer with SVr4 pre- installed. Their systems are expensive by cloner standards (with as much as a $1000 premium over rock-bottom street prices) but they have a rep for quality and reliability their competition would probably kill for. You can get Dell product information by sending an email request to info@dell.com. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Most people who've seen or used it seem to think pretty highly of the Dell product, in spite of minor problems. A user in England observes: "Dell is the only firm that I found supplying Unix at the real monetary exchange rate, not the usual computer pounds=dollars nonsense. In the UK the 2 user version costs 699 pounds, which is pretty close to the US price in dollars. For those of us who don't live on the left-hand side of the pond (there are a few of us!) that's a distinct advantage." He adds "Dell's UK support is pretty good. Not as good as Sun, but then you don't pay as much! From previous experience, SCO support in the UK is, well, pretty non-existent." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Right now, I'd have to call Dell the market leader in SVr4s. The combination of low price, highest added value in features, and reputation for quality makes them very hard to beat. The only serious negative I've seen is that their support system seems to be very badly overloaded, so you can end up on hold for a while when calling. The techs themselves are sufficiently cranked about this that they'll complain of understaffing and corporate shortsightedness on the phone to a stranger. Dell has recently doubled their support staff and fixed a bad bug in their call-handling system that was freezing the queue for up to two hours at a time. This will certainly help matters. On the other hand, Dell's UNIX development manager responded to the first issue of this FAQ with about three hundred lines of intelligent, thoughtful and extremely candid comment, including a whole pile of hardware-compatibility info and a number of excellent suggestions for improving the FAQ. He has continued to send voluminous, factual feedback to later issues --- an example other UNIX vendors would do well to emulate! NAME: ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 VENDOR Esix Computers 1923 E. St. Andrew Place Santa Ana, CA 92705 (714)-259-3020 (tech support is (714)-259-3000) uunet!zardoz!everex!esixtech ADD-ONS: None. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: ESIX can be bought in the following pieces: Unlim 2-user Base system 784 384 Base system + Networking 866 396 Development system 131 N/A GUI module (X, Motif, Open Look, X.desktop) 610 380 Note that the base system without networking cannot be upgraded to the base system with networking; you'd have to replace at full cost. SUPPORT: Purchase buys you unlimited free phone support. However, be warned that there are only two engineers assigned to the job and they are swamped. Esix offers a support BBS at (714)-259-3011 and 3013 (the 11 line has a Trailblazer on it). They plan to bring up an Internet server in the near future. FUTURE PLANS: They don't plan to support DOS Merge because it's still horribly buggy. Later in '92 they plan to release a multiprocessing UNIX. TECHNICAL NOTES: Stephen J. Friedl and D'Arcy Cain <darcy@druid.uucp> have written a device driver for Everex's STEP systems that can control the LED array on the front of the box. Relative to 4.0.3, 4.0.4 includes numerous bug fixes, a rewritten SCSI driver, and better SCO binary compatibilty. The GUI package is significantly different, changing from a home-grown ESIX implementation of X to a licenced implementation of AT&T's xwin implementation (with ESIX support for additional video cards added in. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. ESIX supports an unusually wide range of peripherals. They advertise support for the Textronix X terminal. No one has reported any incompatibility horror stories yet. KNOWN BUGS: According to Esix, this port uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it must have the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. James D. Cronin <jdc@tropel.gca.com> writes: When developing X applications under Esix, watch out for mmap(2) failure. This is caused by an incorrect version of mmap() defined in libX11.a and libX11.so. This bug existed in Esix 4.0.3, and continues in 4.0.4 and the recently shipped Xwindow bug fix it (which seems to have more bugs than the original version). One workaround is to remove the offending file, XSysV.o, from libX11.a and link with the Bstatic option. COMMENTS: Another subsidiary of a clonemaker (Everex). They don't sell bundled hardware/software packages yet. Esix will sell you manuals troffed off the SVr4 source tapes for somewhat less than the cost of the Prentice-Hall books. The content is almost identical but the organixation into volumes a little different. Unlimited free support sounds wonderful, and might be ESIX's strongest selling point. However, ESIX users on the net have been heard to gripe that in practice, you get the support you've paid for from Esix --- that is, none. That isn't at all surprising given Esix's staffing level. If this guarantee is to be more than a hollow promise, their technical support has to get more depth. Evan Leibovich <evan@telly.on.ca> is a long-time netter who makes his living as a consultant and owns an Esix dealership. He says you can get ESIX at a substantial discount from him or other dealers, also that dealers are supposed to do first-line support for their customers (which he does, but admits other dealers often fail to). Evan is obviously devoted to the product and probably the right guy to email first if you think you'd be interested in it. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Ron Mackey <rem@dsiinc.com> writes "In general, we are pleased with ESIX. We still have problems driving the serial ports at speeds greater than 9600 baud. We also still see occasional PANICs. These appear to be related to problems with the virtual terminal manager." This may be the generic USL asy problem again. William W. Austin <uunet!baustin!bill> writes "The support from Esix seems to be usable if (a) you are a hacker, (b) you know unix (sVr4 internals help a lot), and (c) you get past the sales guy who answers the help line (Jeff [Ellis] is *very* helpful). If I were a computer-semi-literate, commercial user who only wanted his printer to work, etc., I might be up a creek for some problems (no drivers for some boards, no support for mouse tablets, etc., but that's what VARs are for). All in all, the support is at least a little better than what I expected for free -- in many cases it is *far* better than the support I got from $CO (is SCO really owned by Ebenezer Scrooge?)" [Note: Jeff Ellis has since left.] A longer appreciation from Ed Hall <edhall@rand.org>: "I had a problem with the ESIX X server. I got through to technical support immediately, and was promised a fix disk. The guy on the phone was actually able to chat with on of the developers to check to see if the disk would solve the problem. The disk came four days later." "On the other hand," he continues, "I get the feeling that ESIX has only made a mediocre effort to shake out the bugs before releasing their system-- or even their fixes. For example, they `repaired' their X server, but the new server only ran as root (it made some privileged calls to enable I/O ports)--they quickly had to release a second update to fix this new problem. They obviously fixed a lot of things in the new server, and performance is improved quite a bit as well, but the stupid error they made in the first "fixed" version should have been found with only the most minimal of testing." "They've done some work on the serial driver, but there are still some glitches (occasional dropped characters on a busy system at 38400bps, and a real doozy of a problem--a system panic--when doing simultaneous opens and ioctl's on a tty0xh and ttyM0xh device. This latter problem was due to my using the M0xh and 0xh devices improperly, but panics are inexcusable. No idea if this is a SYSVR4 problem or due to their fixes.)" "So my impressions of them are mixed. Perhaps I just lucked out in geting such rapid response on my support call, but I was impressed by it nonetheless. On the other hand, their QA needs work..." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: The tech I spoke with at Esix seemed knowledgeable, bright, and very committed to the product. Nevertheless, when I asked what he thought distinguished ESIX from the competition, he had no answer. This reinforced the feeling I got from the spec sheets that Esix has kind of an also-ran mentality, with no market strategy or clear priority for improving SVr4 that positions it against its competition. It doesn't have Dell's steak-with-all-the-trimmings appeal, it's not pushing price like Consensys or support quality like UHC or performance like Microport. (I'm told that at one time, Everex was the price leader). When I asked Esix's chief marketroid about this, he said that he thinks ESIX's best asset is that the product isn't going to go away, and muttered unkind things about the possibility that Dell would deep-six their SVr4 in favor of Solaris 2.0. This does not a long-term strategy make. Despite numerous "repositionings" since I wrote the first version of this comment in May 1992, I've seen no reason to change any of the above. NAME MST UNIX VENDOR: Micro Station Technology, Inc. 1140 Kentwood Ave. Cupertino, CA. 95014 (408)-253-3898 sales@mst.com (product info & orders) cs@mst.com (support) ADD-ONS: None. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: C Development System Networking X11R4 and X11R3 Motif Open Look SUPPORT: 30 days of support free with purchase. 1 year of fax/email support is $299, 1 year of phone support is $599. FUTURE PLANS: They expect to upgrade to Motif 1.2 and X11R5 Summer '92. No plans for 4.0.4 yet. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: They've promised to email me a list of hardware known to work, which will appear in a future posting. They decline to release information on hardware known *not* to work for fear of offending vendors. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. The DOS support is only 2.0-compatible (< 32-meg DOS partitions). COMMENTS: Another outfit offering stock USL real cheap. They were actually the first to try this (in Fall '91) and were the price leader until Consensys blew past them. These guys really want to sell you preinstalled UNIX on their clone hardware. Configurations range from $1349 to $5599 and look like pretty good value. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I have one experience report from Ray Hill, <hill@ghola.nicolet.com>, who's been running MST on a 486 for a month or so. He says it works; elm, cnews, and trn are up, so standard UNIX sources compile up and work fine. His only criticism is the relative skimpiness of the printed docs. Harlan Stockman <hwstock@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov> writes "MST has been very helpful at every step of the way; phone and e-mail support have been timely." Geoffrey Leach <geoff@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com> warns that some of the files (specifically, socket library headers) necessary to build X11R5 are bundled in the networking option --- this may meen you have to buy it even if you don't actually intend to network any machines. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Anyone who's been to a hobbyist computer expo in the last five years knows that the low-price clone-hardware market is full of small, hungry companies run by immigrants, often family businesses. Their English is sometimes a little shaky but (in my experience) they're honest and their product is good, and their prices are *real* aggressive. MST seems to be one of these outfits. Since Consensys ended their promo MST is now the low-price leader in this market. NAME: Microport System V Release 4.0 version 4 VENDOR: Microport, Inc. 108 Whispering Pines Drive Scotts Valley, CA 95066 (800)-367-8649 sales@mport.com (sales and product info) support@mport.com (support) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Networking (TCP/IP, NFS) Software Development User Graphics Module (X GUIs) Graphics Development Module (X toolkits + man pages). DOS Merge ADD-ONS: A few freeware utilities are included, notably kermit(1) and less(1). They include a single-user copy of a program called `JSB MultiView'. It's a character-oriented desktop program that front-ends conventional UNIX services for character terminals and also provides a calendar service and pop-up phone-book. It's something like a character-oriented X windows; each on-screen window looks like a terminal to the application. SUPPORT: The base price includes printed docs. This is effectively the same content as the Prentice-Hall SVr4 books; both are troffed off the SVr4 source tapes. They have been very lightly edited for the Microport environment. The base price includes 30 days or 1 year of phone support respectively depending on whether you bought the base or complete system. Support is said to be excellent for serious problems, not so good for minor ones (this is understandable if one assumes their support staff is very good but overworked, a hypothesis which is plausible on other evidence). They have a support BBS at (408)-438-7270 or 438-7521. However, the level of activity is low; one customer said (late February) that they hadn't put anything useful on it in six months (Microport responds that they've been too busy hammering on r4 to spend lots of energy on it). FUTURE PLANS: DOS Merge will be folded into the system soon. Also working on improved performance for the Adaptec 1742 and other SCSI controllers, expect that in May. Microport believes they have a lead in multiprocessing SVr4 UNIX and intend to push it. File-system support for CD-ROMs is coming. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. Math co-processors: Cyrix 20/25/33, Intel 80387 20/25/33, Weitek. No one has reported any incompatibility horror stories yet. Bernoulli boxes and Irwin tapes won't fly, but who cares. TECHNICAL NOTES: When I asked what differentiates Microport from the other SVr4 products, the answer I got is "performance". The Microport people feel they've put a lot of successful work into kernel tuning. And, indeed, benchmarks from independent sources show that Microport's fork(2) operation is quite fast. Other vendors show about 60 forks per second on the AIM Technologies SUITE II benchmarks; Microport cranks 80. This is the most dramatic performance difference the AIM tools reveal among any of these products. Microport's other benchmark statistics are closely comparable to those of its competitors. Microport also offers a symmetric multiprocessing SVr4 which will run on the Compaq SystemPro, the ALR PowerPro, the DEC 433MP, and the Chips & Technologies Mpax system. Microport has moved the socket headers and libraries necessary to build X out of the networking option package into the development system, so you don't have to buy an extra module to hack X. KNOWN BUGS: According to Microport, this port uses the stock USL 4.0.4 libraries. Thus it must have the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD-compatibility string functions. David Wexelblat reports that "Microport's enhanced asy driver does not work correctly (or at all) for hardware flow control - you can't open the ttyXXh devices under any circumstances. This was true in 3.1, and is still true in 4.1. The good news is that SAS (Streams-FAS) works fine for modems. But SAS won't work with the AT&T serial mouse driver. So I've got asy on my mouse port and SAS on the other one on my dumb-card. [...] Microport is still prone to silly errors. The Motif development system, which is described in the release notes as being included with the Motif runtime system in the 'complete' package, is in fact missing from the tape. They have it available seperately, but I had to call them to get it. The 'pixed' application for X.desktop 3.0 is compiled with shared libraries that are not included with the release. Hence it does not work. I had to call them about this, too." COMMENTS: These people sold a lot of shrink-wrapped UNIXes years ago before going chapter 11. They're back, leaner and meaner (with a total staff of just 15). Microport says it's primarily interested in the systems-integration market, where customers are typically going to be volume buyers qualifying for deep discounts. Thus, they're relatively undisturbed by the certainty that their high price point is losing them sales to individuals. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I've received one good comprehensive experience report, largely favorable, from David Wexelblat <dwex@mtgzfs3.att.com>. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Microport is a small, hungry outfit with a lot to prove; they've already gone bust once (I was a customer at the time :-() and they haven't yet demonstrated that they've got a better strategy this time out. They're perhaps a mite too expensive for the support quality they can offer with less than fifteen people, and kernel-tuning isn't going to win them a following on hardware that every year swamps those tweaks with huge increases in speed for constant dollars. It may be that they're counting on the symmetric-multiprocessor version to be their bread-and-butter product; there, at least, they're offering something that is so far unique and promises performance levels unattainable with conventional hardware. And, like UHC, they have techies answering the phones and the techies have a clue. This certainly improves them as a bet for wizards and developers. If multiprocessing is important to you, and/or you're looking for a small outfit where you can develop personal working relationships with the tech people who matter, Microport might be a good way to go. They've offered to send me a copy of their OS gratis for review and evaluation purposes. NAME: UHC Version 3.6 VENDOR: UHC Corp. 3600 S. Gessner Suite 110 Houston, TX 77063 (713)-782-2700 support@uhc.com SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Networking package (TCP/IP). X + Motif X + Open Look ADD-ONS: None reported. SUPPORT: The base price includes printed docs. This is effectively the same content as the Prentice-Hall SVr4 books; both are troffed off the SVr4 source tapes. 30 days free phone support with purchase. All their engineers take tech-support calls for part of their day. They have 2 doing it full-time. The product manager is a techie himself and takes his share of calls. A support contract costs $1195 for one year. This includes 75% off on all upgrades. They are in the process of bringing up a BBS with a window into their bug report and fix/workaround database. It was emphasized to me that UHC wants to be known for the quality of their support, which they feel is the product's strongest differentiating feature. FUTURE PLANS: X11R5 by mid-May or thereabouts. They have it running now but don't consider it stable enough to ship. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. The asy driver in version 2.0 won't talk to the NS16550AFN UART, which is supposed to be pin-compatible with the standard 16450. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. COMMENTS: They claim that according to USL they have the largest installed base of SVr4 customers, and to have been first to market with a shrink-wrapped SVr4 (in 1990). UHC also claims to have performed and maintained IBM's official UNIX port for the MicroChannel machines. A subsidiary of Anam, "a holding company with a diversified portfolio". WHAT THE USERS SAY: The only comment I've yet seen on the UHC OS was an extended description of a successful installation by a satisfied netter. He made it sound like a good solid product. I have one absolutely incandescently glowing report on UHC support from a developer named Steve Showalter <shwasl@Texaco.COM>. He says: "We've been running UHC's OS for about a year now...been EXTREMELY happy with it. The support we receive is without a doubt, the finest we have received from any vendor." Duke Smith (c/o somesh@watson.bm.com) writes: "Another absolutely incandescently glowing report on UHC support: I called the Programmer's Shop about UHC & wound up talking to UHC tech support to find out if the sucker would run on my machine. The guy took considerable time to explain all the different things that might be causing the problem, and emphasized that the same hardware problems which were probably causing Consensys not to run would also hose UHC. This led me to contact ALR tech support (also a glower) who took all of 1-1/2 days (not including shipping) to do the necessary upgrades, on warranty because apparently their ads that it will run Unix are covered by warranty. The glowing thing about UHC is, the guy helped me get a competitor's port working, and I told him he was gonna get in dutch with the marketroids and his response was that maybe I would remember them the next time I or someone I knew needed a system. He's right. I'll use Consensys until I can afford something better for my own system (it's still better than DOS...), but from now on my clients will get pointed toward UHC, not Consensys, whose absent-parent attitude is going to keep them from ever becoming anything but the destitute hacker's Unix vendor." On the other hand, William G. Bunton <wgb@succubus.tnt.com>: "So, I give a thumbs up for the product. I give a thumbs down for the company, and it's enough that I'm taking my future business elsewhere." He tells a horror story about the 2.0 version involving a three-month runaround, a letter to their VP of marketing, and lots of broken promises. Apparently UHC does sometimes drop the ball. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: I found both the people I talked to friendly, candid, technically knowledgeable, and willing to answer sticky questions. I came away with a very positive impression of the outfit's operating style. There are experienced UNIX developers who value dealing with a small, responsive outfit where they can develop good working relationships with individuals. UHC says it likes to sell to wizards and might be a good choice for these people. The second time I called (*after* I'd formed the above impressions) one of their guys offered to trade me a copy of UHC UNIX with all the trimmings for an autographed copy of _The_New_Hacker's_Dictionary_. So they have taste, too. I'm too ethical to let this sway my evaluations, but not too ethical to take the software... :-) NAME: BSD/386 VENDOR: Berkeley Software Design, Inc. 3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 580 Falls Church, VA 22042 USA (800)-800-4BSD bsdi-info@bsdi.com SOFTWARE OPTIONS: None. You get an unlimited user license, binaries *and sources* for the entire system. What more could you want? SUPPORT: The purchase price include 60 days of phone support. A telephone-support contract is $1500 per year; email-only support is $500/year. Either kind includes upgrades. FUTURE PLANS: Capability to run SVr3.2 binaries (including SCO binaries), 3Q92. They intend to add a DOS bridge by the end of '92. The current release (0.3) is a fairly stable beta. Rob Kolstad sez: "Our release date for production goes like this: * Gamma release in late July * Gamma updates to ever-growing subset of beta testers until release exhibits good stability * Production release in late September" HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. New drivers are being added all the time. Multiport serial boards aren't supported (they're working on it). The Orchid graphics co-processor is not supported. Rob Kolstad says BSDI has been very pleased with the cooperation they've received from systems vendor Technology Power Enterprises. He says: "In a world of commodity products, they differentiate themselves by good service. When we (as operating system developers) have any problems with their boxes, they're happy to help us out in finding and fix problems -- even when the problem is hardware!" Dave Ingalz of that company has developed a BSD/386-ready configuration for people who might wish to buy one; call 510-623-3834. TECHNICAL NOTES: Alone among the 386 UNIX versions described here, this version is *not* based even in part on USL code and has no AT&T license restrictions. Rather, it derives from Berkeley UNIX (the CSRG Networking 2 release, somewhere between 4.3 and 4.4). Many of the BSD/386 tools, including the compiler, are GNU code. This system's libraries, header files and utilities conform to X3J11, POSIX 1003.1 and POSIX 1003.2 standards. COMMENTS: What these people are trying is audacious --- something functionally like the SVr4 merge, but starting from a ported BSD kernel and with System V compatibility hacks, rather than the other ways. By all accounts the product is in far better shape right now than one would expect for a beta pre-release, which argues that the developers have done something right. WHAT THE USERS SAY: The few who've seen this system display an evangelistic fervor about it. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: I expect this will become a hackers' favorite. All this, and sources too...I salivate. I am tempted. Not sure I'm ready to change OSs at the same time as I switch machines, though. SVr4's got better continuity with the 3.2 I'm running now. Ghu, what a dilemma! When I mentioned that I'm doing elisp maintenance for GNU EMACS these days, Rob Kolstad, one of the principal developers, offered me a copy and a year of support if I'd field their (so far nonexistent) EMACS problems. NAME Mach386 VENDOR: Mt. Xinu 2560 Ninth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 (510)-644-0146 mtxinu-mach@mtxinu.com ADD-ONS: Kernel sources! You get can sources for the Mach 3.0 microkernel for $195 over base price. SOFTWARE OPTIONS: The base package includes: Mach 2.5 kernel and utilities, 4.3 BSD interface, GNU utilities (GCC, GDB, GAS, EMACS, BISON), and on-line reference manuals (man pages) for Mach and 4.3 BSD. The following options are available: Networking (SUN NFS, TCP/IP networking from the Berkeley Tahoe release, on-line NFS man pages). X (X11R4 with programmer's environment and complete X manual pages). On-line Documentation (Complete source for Mach and 4.3 documentation, including Mach Supplementary Documents, System Manager's Documentation, 4.3 BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents, 4.3 BSD User's Supplementary Documents). Optional Microkernel Add-on, Mach 3.0 (Complete Mach 3.0 microkernel source code; complete build environment with tools to modify and rebuild the Mach 3.0 microkernel; binary BSD server which runs on top of the microkernel in place of the standard /vmunix kernel; source for an example of a server (POE) running on top of the Mach 3.0 microkernel and sources for some utilities which are kernel-dependent. SUPPORT: You get 30 days phone support with purchase. A support contract is available for $150 quarterly or $500 per year; this includes upgrades. There is a support BBS open to contract holders only. An ftp server at autosupport.mtxinu.com carries patches, enhancements and freeware adapted for the system. That site also hists an NNTP server carrying support newsgroups for MtXinu users. This service is called "auto-support". A user writes: " They post bug reports/fixes, allow general user discussion, and let registered users download updates. I have mixed feelings about auto-support. The user activity on the news groups is pretty low, but Mt Xinu responds to bug posts VERY quickly. Major updaes seem to occur about every 2-3 months. The cost is $150.00/quarter or $500/year. If you want the sources to the 386-AT drivers and the build environment for the kernel, you need to buy an auto-support subscription." FUTURE PLANS: They plan to move to OSF/1 this year. X11R5 and Motif support are also in the works. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the Appendix for details. Color X windows is supported on VGA boards via extended 8-bit color mode. Toshiba and Toshiba-compatible floppy drives and controllers work. All current motherboards tested have worked. There were a few problems with early Compaq DeskPros. They add "Please note that we do not support the microchannel bus, EISA extended modes, IBM PS2, and some NCR machines. We are, however, considering new devices so let us know your interests!". TECHNICAL NOTES This product is essentially a 4.3 port built on the Mach project's microkernel technology. This is a truly nifty architecture which builds a 4.3BSD-compatible kernel out of a collection of communicating lightweight processes. The distinction between user and kernel mode almost vanishes, and things like the schedular and virtual-memory manager which are normally embedded deep in the kernel become semi-independent, modifiable modules. COMMENTS: Very appealing for the educational market --- lets CS students and hobbyists tinker creatively with the guts of UNIX in a way that would be impossible under more conventional UNIXes. It's not clear who else will be interested in this. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Eric Baur <ecb@ventoux.assabet.com> writes: "The system is a very faithful emulation of BSD43 on top of Mach. For our purposes it is a super deal. For about $2000.00 in hardware and $995.00 in software we have a Mach development platform that integrates almost seamlessly into our network development environment. As a general-purpose UNIX (whatever that means) Mach386 gives up a lot in features to the System V vendors. (Virtual terminals, DOS emulation, etc etc) For the home hacker, it seems like it would be a good deal. You obviously could never run "shrink-wrapped" software, but most public domain and GNU stuff should port easily." Mark Holden <l00017@eeyore.stcloud.msus.edu> adds "Mt. Xinu's tech support is absolutely top-notch, and I've found them quite willing to deal with matters even after the official support runs out. [...] Not that Mach386 is without its quirks. I've had problems getting a Western Digital ethernet board to work correctly, and things required a fair bit of tweaking to set things on a smooth course, but then I've never worked with a BSD that didn't." REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: Right now, this product is a solution looking for a problem --- a solution I find technically fascinating, to be sure. But even the company admits to not being sure who its market is. I wish 'em luck. KNOWN BUGS: Bugs reported in previous Guide issues with UUCP on bidirectional serial lines have been fixed. Eric Baur reports: "Fortunately, I got the micro-kernel add-on only as an example for Mach 3.0 development. It is not nearly as stable as the mach 2.5 based production kernel. Our 486/33 EISA machine usually hangs within minutes after booting the 3.0 kernel...Mt Xinu is completely up front about the limits of the 3.0 stuff and is very helpful about trying to debug it." V. UPCOMING PORTS, FREEWARE VERSIONS, AND CLONES. There are three other commercial SVr4 UNIX ports on the market for which I do not yet have detailed information. I hope to cover them in future issues. They are covered in section VI, along with freeware UNIXes and UNIX clones. PromoX UNIX: This is said to be a bare-bones port by an outfit that mainly sells hardware. The price quoted is $595 for a complete 2-user + devtools system. PromoX Systems 1050 East Duane Avenue, Suite B Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Tel: (408) 733-2966 Email: promox@cup.portal.com SORIX: This is a SVR4 UNIX port enhanced for real-time work, offered by Siemens AG. Siemens AG AUT 189 Gleiwitzerstr. 555 8500 Nuremberg 1 Tel: 0911/895-2203 Email: sorix386@norisc@kommu@unido@Germany.EU.net (sales and product info) Email: sorixhot@norisc@kommu@unido@Germany.EU.net (support) I don't yet know if this version is going to be sold in the US. In the info I have, prices are quoted in Deutschmarks. NeXTSTEP 486: NeXT has a 486 port of the NeXT environment scheduled for beta release in 4th quarter '92. There are some freeware alternative UNIXes available for the 386/486. None of these are yet complete and mature hacking environments, but they show promise (and require much less in minimum hardware to run). They are: 386BSD: Under development by Bill & Lynne Jolitz & friends (this is the same 386BSD project described in Dr. Dobbs' Journal some time back). This OS is based on the NET/2 tape from Berkeley and strongly resembles the commercial BSD/386 release described below, and like it is distributed with full source. The aim is to produce a full POSIX-compliant freeware BSD UNIX. Version 0.1 is now out, including FP emulation, SCSI support, coexistence with DOS, and many more new features. There's no passwording yet, but the system is otherwise fairly complete; I have seen it run. There's a lot of traffic in comp.unix.bsd about this project. Linux: This is a POSIX-emulating UNIX lookalike, being written from scratch and currently in beta. At the moment, it's less complete than 386BSD because it doesn't leverage as much pre-existing code, but the kernel and development tools are up and usable. No TCP/IP yet, but they have local sockets for X. Linux is changing so fast that more description would probably be more misleading than enlightening. There's an active linux group on USENET, comp.os.linux, and a (now less active) linux-activists mailing list; to subscribe, mail to "linux-activists-requests@niksula.hut.fi". Up-to-the minute info is also available by fingering torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi. Hurd: This is the long-awaited and semi-mythical GNU kernel. It's being worked on by the Free Software Foundation (the people who brought you emacs, gcc, gdb and the rest of the GNU tool suite) but it's not ready for prime time yet. It's said to be a set of processes layered over a Mach 3.0 kernel. The 386BSD and Linux developments both lean heavily on GNU tools. There is one other not-quite-freeware (cheapware?) product that deserves a mention: Minix: This is a roughly V7-compatible UNIX clone for Intel boxes, sold with source by Prentice-Hall for $169 (there's an associated book for a few bucks more). It's really designed to run in 16-bit mode on 8086 and 286 machines, though the UK's MINIX center offers a 32-bit kernel. UUCP and netnews clones are available as freeware but not supplied with the base system. A large international community is involved in improving Minix; see comp.os.minix on USENET for details. These freeware and "cheapware" products exert valuable pressure on the commercial vendors. Someday, they may even force AT&T to unlock source to stay competitive... Finally, there is a class of commercial UNIX clones that claim to emulate UNIX or improve on it without being derived from AT&T source. The major products of this kind for 80x86 machines seem to be Coherent, QNX and LynxOS. The following information about these has been supplied by various USENETters: COHERENT is a small-kernel UNIX-compatible multi-user, multi-tasking development O/S for $99.95 that uses less than 14Mb of disk space, runs on most 286-386-486 CPU systems, has a 64k limit C compiler and over 230 UNIX commands including text processing, program development, administrative and maintenance functions. It resides on a partition separate from DOS and can access the DOS file system with the DOS command. It has no network or Xwindows support, but cnews and rn have been ported and it has its own newsgroup, comp.os.coherent. It is fully documented with both a comprehensive 1200 page manual and an on-line manual. Mark Williams Company provides excellent support including a UUCP access BBS and has just announced Release 4.0, the 386 version of COHERENT. QNX is a POSIX-compliant microkernel OS with real-time capability, targeted to mission critical, performance sensitive applications like factory automation, process control, financial transaction processing, and instrumentation. They claim an installed base of over 200K systems worldwide. The microkernel is only 7K and implements a message-passing model; other pieces can loaded in at runtime, supporting anything from a small real-time executive up to a full multi-user time-sharing system (including transparent DOS emulation supporting Windows 3.1 in protected mode). QNX networking supports standard protocol suites, but uses very fast, lightweight protocols for QNX-to-QNX node communications; QNX machines on a network can be treated for most purposes as a single large multiprocessor, and the OS itself can be distributed across multiple nodes. Here is contact information for the vendor: Quantum Software Systems Quantum Software Systems 175 Terrence Matthews Cr. Westendstr.19 6000 Frankfurt Kanata, Ontario K2M 1W8 am main 1 Canada Germany voice: (613) 591-0931 x111 (voice) voice: 49 69 97546156 fax: (613) 591-3579 (fax) fax: 49 69 97546110 usenet: stuartr@qnx.com QNX support is offered via voice and FAX hotline and a BBS. There is also a newsletter and an annual international users' conference. LynxOS is a 386 UNIX specialized for real-time work, available from Lynx Real-Time Systems Inc. of Los Gatos, California. It includes TCP/IP, NFS, X, etc. Most of the development tools are GNU. The kernel is pre-emptable and supports threads and dynamically-loaded device drivers. VI. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY TABLES These tables summarize vendor claims and user reports on which hardware will work with which port. To save space in the tables below, we use the following *one-letter* abbreviations for the OS ports: S SCO UNIX version 3.2v4 C Consensys UNIX Version 1.2 D Dell UNIX Issue 2.1 E ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 M Micro Station Technology SVr4 UNIX P Microport System V/4 version 4 U UHC Version 3.6 B BSD/386 (0.3 beta) X Mach386 A `c' indicates that the hardware is claimed to work in vendor literature. A `y' indicates that this has been verified by a user report. A `.' indicates that whether this combination works is unknown. An `n' indicates that the vendor advises that the combination won't work. A `*' points you at footnote info. A blank column indicates that I have received no vendor info on the hardware category in question. The following general caveats apply: * All ports support EGA, VGA, CGA and monochrome text displays. * All ports support generic ISA serial-port cards based on the 8250 or 16450 UART. According to the vendors, the asy drivers on Dell, Esix, Microport, BSD/386 and Mach386 support the extended FIFO on the NS16550AFN UART chip. Indeed, Dell tech support will tell you this feature was present in the base USL code. UHC says its 2.0 drivers *don't* talk to 16550s but says that will be fixed in March '92. A user reports that SCO has supported the 16550 since 3.2.2. * I have not bothered listing ordinary ST-506/IDE/RLL drives, though lists of them are given in vendor literature. This is a very mature commodity technology; anything you buy should work with one of the supported controllers unless it's defective. * Vendors' supported hardware lists are not models of clarity. Some iterms may be listed under a couple of different names because I don't know that they're actually the same beast. I have been very careful not to make assumptions where I am ignorant; thus, some hardware may appear less widely supported than it actually is. * These tables are grossly incomplete. Also, be aware that there is a fundamental design problem in the ISA architecture that can cause 8-bit boards used in a system with 16-bit boards to flake out even if they're actually compatible. Jeremy Chatfield of Dell describes it this way: "We've seen (and fixed) this with several card combinations. If you have an 8 bit card and a 16 bit card in the same address range, then the address decoding on the ISA bus will find that the 128KB range includes a 16 bit card. It therefore programs itself for 16 bit I/O. If you then do I/O with the 8 bit card, every other data byte is garbage. You will also have a reboot problem, because the 16 bit card usually starts in 8 bit mode and has to be switched to 16 bit mode. If the switch back to 8 bit mode is not made, and the address range is the c0000-d0000 range, close to the VGA BIOS, the VGA BIOS accesses are screwed, because they are performed in 16 bit mode because of the above PC H/W architectural problem. We include a deinit sequence in all the 16 bit device drivers that causes a shutdown to reset the accesses to the safer 8 bit mode. Of course, after a panic, the machine still has boards set up in 16 bit mode, so you might observe the problem then. This affects *all* PC OS's. I have seen cases where DOS failed to reboot because of the same nonsense (network card in 16 bit mode in same address region as VGA BIOS). Clever programming can resolve in several ways." All the SVr4 systems inherit support for a fairly wide range of hardware from the base USL code (version 4.0.3 or 4.0.4). This includes: * All PC disk controllers (ESDI, IDE, ST-506 in MFM and RLL formats). * The Adaptec 1542B SCSI adapter. Note: you'll have to jumper your SCSI devices to fixed IDs during installation on most of these. * Western Digital's 8013EBT Ethernet card, and its equivalents the WD8003 and WD8013. SVr4v4 adds the 3Com 3C503. * VGA adapters in 640x480 by 16 color mode. * "C" protocol serial mice like the Series 7 and Series 9 from Logitech and the PC-3 mouse from Mouse Systems (however, we've had one report of an ostensible PC-3 clone called the DFI200H not working). See the "HOT TIPS" section for details. SCO UNIXes from 3.2.2 up and ODT 1.1 also support all these devices. If you can fill in any of the gaps, or convert a `c' to `y', send me email. S C D E M P U B X Systems ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . c . Acer (all 386/486 models) . . . c ACCELL 486/33 ISA and 386/40 ISA . c . . ADDA AD-428P-25, Portable 486/25, 486/33, AD-328D-25 . c c . ALR Business VEISA 386/33-101 c . . . ALR (all 386 and 486 models) c . . . applicationDEC 316,316+,325,325C,333,425,433MP c . . . Apricot LS, LS 386SX, XEN-S 386 c . . . Arche 486, Master 486/33 . . c . AST (models not specified) . c c . AST Premium (models not specified) c . . . AST Premium 386,386/33,486/25T*E*,486/33T*E* c . c . AT&T 6386 machines . . c . Compaq (models not specified) c c c . Compaq DeskPro 386/33. c . . . Compaq DeskPro 486s/20,486/25/486/33L,386/20,386/25 c . . . Compaq Portable III 386, SystemPro c y y y y y y . CompuAdd Model 333 c . . . DEC DS486, DECpc 433, DECpc 433T c . . . DECstation 320,325,425 c y . c . Dell 310,325,325P,333P,316SX,316LT,320SX,320LT. c y . c . Dell 433P,425E,433E,425TE,433TE,4xx[DS]E,486[DP]xx. c . . . EasyData 386 model 333 c . . . Epson Equity 386/20PC,386/25,386SX; Epson PC AX3,AX3/25 . c c . Everex (models not specified) y . . . Everex 33,386/20,486,486/33 . c c . Gateway 2000 (models not specified) . . c c y Gateway 2000 (486/33 ISA) . . . y . Gateway 2000 486/25 c . . . Groupil Uniprocessor 25MHz Tower c . . . GRiDCase 1530,1550SX . . c c High Definition Systems 486/25 ISA and 386 SX/16 ISA . y . . High Definition Systems 386/40 ISA c . . . HP 486 Vectra series c . . . IBC 486 c . . . ITT 486 y . . . Micro Way Number Smasher 486/33 c . . . Mitac 386, MC3100E-02, S500 c . . . Mitsuba 386 c . . . Mitsubishi PC-386 c . . . NCR 316,316SX,3386 c . . . NEC 386/20,486/25, BusinessMate and PowerMate y . . . NEC 386/33 BusinessMate c . . . Noble 386 c . . . Nokia Alfaskop System 10 m52, m54/55 c . . . Northgate 33 . c c . Northgate 386/33 . y . . . Northgate 486/33 c . . . Olivetti 386/486 machines c . . . Olivetti XP-9 y . . . Packard-Bell 386x c . . . PC Craft PCC 2400 386 c . . . Phillips 386, P3464 486 . c c . Primax (models not specified) c . . . SNI 8800-50, 8810-50, PCD series c . . . Schneider 386 25-340, 386SX System 70 c . . . Siemens Data Systems Model WX200 c . . . Starstation c . . . Tandy 4000 y . . . Tatung Force 386x c . . . Tatung Force TCS-8000 386, TCS-8600 386 . c c . Tangent (models not specified) . y . . Tangent 386/25C . c y . Tangent 433E (486/33 EISA) . c c . Televideo (models not specified) c . . . Televideo 386/25 c . . . Texas Instruments System 1300 c . . . Toshiba T3100,T3200,T5100,T5200,T8500,T8600 . c c . Twinhead (models not specified) y . . . Twinhead 800 (486/33) . c c . Unisys (models not specified) c . . . Unisys PW2 Series 800/16,800/20,800/25 c . . . Victor 386 25, V486T c . . . Wang MX200, PC 380 c . . . Wyse 386 n . . . Wyse Decision 486/33 (intermittent crashes) c . . . Zenith 386 and 486 machines S C D E M P U B X Motherboards ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . AGI y . . . A.I.R. 486/33EL w 256K cache . c . ALR . c . AMAX c . c . AMI (model not specified) y c . AMI Enterprise II (33 & 50) y . . Amptron AMD386/40 . c . ARC n . c . Cache Computer . c . Chips & Technologies chipset y . c . Chips & Technologies 33DX c c . Club AT . c . DataExport y . c . Dell . c n . DTK (model not specified) y . n . DTK 386/33 . . c EISA Tech 80386SX MHz y . . . Eteq 386 y n . . Eteq 486 . c . Free Technology (model not specified) . . . y Free Technology 486/33 EISA board y . . . Free Technology 486/50DX y y . . Gigabyte GA-486US 33MHz 256K Cache c . . . Intel 302 . c . Microlab c y c y c Micronics 386/25 c c y c y Micronics 486/33 ISA y . . Micronics 486/33 EISA . c . Mitac . . . Modular Circuit Technology 386/SX 16Mhz y . . . Motherboard Factory 386/40, 486/33 (Northgate's OEM) . c . Mylex (model not specified) c c . Mylex MI-386/20 y y y y . Mylex MAE486/33 y . c . OPTI 486 . c . Orchid . c . PC-craft y . . TMC Research Corporation PAT38PC 25/386,33/386 y . . TMC Research Corporation PAT38PX 33/386,40/386 Notes: * These two tables probably way *understate* the compatibility of most ports. Most ISA or EISA motherboards will work with all of them. However, Jeff Coffler <coffler@jeck.amherst.nh.us> reports: "I couldn't get the Cache Computer CPU board to work at all with Dell UNIX, even though they claimed they work with SCO. Flaky, timing-related failures." * A source at UHC describes the DTK boards as "dogshit" --- he says they generate a lot of spurious interrupts that DOS is too cretinous to be bothered by but which completely tank UNIX. He says DTK seems uninterested in fixing the problem. Other correspondents confirm that this has been going on for several years. Avoid these boards till further notice. * Dave Johnson <ddj@gradient.com> reports that since upgrading from a 386 to an Eteq 486, they've had lots of UHC random panics due to page faults in kernel mode. UHC is looking into this. * Some of the cards morked `supported' for SCO require the AGA EFS (Advanced Graphics Adapters Extended Feature Supplement). (EFS's may be downloaded for free via UUCP or FTP'd from uunet, but there is a media charge if they are ordered on physical media from SCO). S C D E M P U B X Video Cards Max Res ChipSet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- . . c y * . . Appian Rendition GRX 1024x768x256 TIGA34010 c . c y * . . Appian Rendition II, IIXE 1024x768x256 TIGA34010 c . c . . . . Appian Rendition III 1280x1024x256 TIGA34020 . . . c . . ARC V-16 (Paradise) ???? ???? . . . c c . AT&T VDC 600 (Paradise clone) SVGA ???? c . . . . . AST motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C31 c . . . AST VGA Plus 800x600x16 WDC c . y . c . c ATI Ultra 1024x768x256 Mach 8 . . y . c . c ATI Vantage 1024x768x256 Mach 8 c . c c n y ATI Wonder+ SVGA N Wonder c . . . . . ATI Wonder XL 1024x768x256 ???? . . . c c . ATI (type not specified) ???? ???? . . y . . . . Boca SuperVGA 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . Chips 451 800x600x16 N C&T451 c . . . . . Chips 452 1024x768x16 N C&T452 c . . . . . Compaq Advanced VGA 640x480x256 N ???? c . . . . . Compaq Plasma 640x400x2 N non-VGA c . . . . . Compaq LCD VGA 640x480x16 N ???? c . . . . . Compaq VGC 640x480x16 N ???? c . . . . . Compaq AG1024 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . . Compaq QVision 1024x768x256 ???? . c . . . c Compuadd Hi-Rez card w/1meg 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . Cornerstone SinglePage 1008x768x2 ???? c . . . . . Cornerstone PC1280 1280x960x2 ???? c . . . . . Cornerstone DualPage 1600x1280x2 ???? c . . . . . Cornerstone DualPage 150 2048x1560x2 ???? c . . . . . DEC 433w 1280x1024x256 ???? c . . . . . DEC motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C30 c . y . . . . Dell motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C31 . . y . . c . Dell VGA 1024x768 ???? . c y c c y c y Diamond SpeedStar 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . Diamond Stealth 1280x1024x16 S3 c c . . . c Eizo MD-B07, MD-B10, Extra/EM 1024x768 ET3000 . . c . . . Everex ViewPoint VRAM SVGA+ ???? . . c . . . Everex ViewPoint True Color SVGA+ ???? . . c . . . Everex UltraGraphics II EV-236 1664x1200 mono c . c c c c Genoa 5300/5400 superVGA SVGA N ???? c c . c . c Genoa 6000, 6400 SVGA N ???? c . . . . . Grid 1500 laptop 640x400x2 CGA-like y . c c . . Hercules monographics display 720x348 mono c . . . . . HP UltraVGA 1280x1024x16 S3? c . . . . . IBM 8514/A 1024x768x256 8514/A c . y . . . . IBM VGA VGA VGA c . . . . . IBM XGA 1024x768x256 XGA c . . . . . IBM XGA-2 1024x768x256 XGA-2 c . . . . . Imagraph ITX 1280x1024x256 ???? c . . . . . Intel motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C3x c . . . . . Matrox MWIN1280 1280x1024x256 N ???? c . . . . . Matrox PG-1281-CV 1024x768x256 ???? . . c . . . MaxLogic SVGA ???? . . . . c . . Microfield V-8 1280x1024 ???? c . . . . . Microfield I8 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . . Miro Magic 1280x1024x256 N ???? . . . . * . . Mylex GXE (EISA) 1280x1024 TIGA34020 c . . . . . Number Nine GXi 1024x768x256 ???? . . c . . . Oak Technology OTI-067 1024x768x256 ???? c . . . . . Oak Technologies Oak 077 1024x768x256 Oak 077 c . . . . . Olivetti EVC-1 1280x1024x256 ???? . c . . . c Optima Mega/1024 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . Orchid Designer SVGA ET3000 c . . . . . Orchid Fahrenheit 1280x1024x16 S3 c c y c c c Orchid ProDesigner 800x600 ET3000 c c y y y . y Orchid ProDesigner II/1024 1024x768 ET4000 . . * y . . Orchid ProDesigner IIs 1024x768 ET4000 c . . . . . y Paradise VGA Plus SVGA PVGA1A . c c c c c Paradise VGA Professional SVGA PVGA1A c c c . c . . Paradise VGA 1024 SVGA WD90C00 c . . . . . Paradise 8514/A SVGA+ ???? c . . . . . QuadRAM QuadVGA SVGA ???? . . . c c . Qume Crystal 1024x768 T4000 c . . . . . Renaissance Rendition II 1024x768 ???? y c y y c . c Sigma Legend 1024x768 ET4000 . . . c c . Sigma VGA/H ???? ???? c . c c c . STB EM-16 VGA, EM-16+ VGA SVGA ET3000 c . . . . . STB Extra-EM SVGA ET3000 . c c c . c STB PowerGraph w/1meg 1024x768 ET4000 . c . . . c Swan SVGA with VCO chip 1024x768 ET4000 c . c . . . Tecmar VGA AD SVGA ET3000 c . . . . . Toshiba Grid 1500 laptop 640x400x2 CGA-like . c . . . c TRICOM Mega/1024 1024x768 ET4000 c . . c . . Trident SuperVGA ???? T880 c . . . . . Trident TVGA 8900 1024x768 T8900 . . . c c . Tseng Labs VGA 1024x768 T4000 . . c . . . Vectrix VX1024 (TI-34010) 1024x768 ???? c . . . . . Verticom MX/AT 800x600 ???? c . c c c . Video7 FastWrite VGA 800x600 x2, x16 ???? c . . c c . Video7 VRAM VGA 800x600x16 Video7 c . . c c . Video7 VRAM II VGA SVGA Video7 c . . c c . Video7 VEGA EGA 640x380 Video7 c . . . . . Video7 VGA1024i SVGA Video7 c . y . . . . Zenith/Bull motherboard video 1024x768x256 WD90C31 In this table, an `SVGA' resolution code signifies the following resolutions: 1024x768 at 2 and 16 colors, 800x600 at 2, 16, 256 colors, and 640x480 at 2, 16, 256 colors. SVGA+ adds 1280x1024 at 2 or 16 colors. Some non-interlace boards are marked with N. Caveats in interpreting the above table: * All super-VGA cards will work at VGA resolutions and below (that is, resolu- tions up to 640x480 in 16 colors). * Because color is of secondary importance for most UNIX applications, I list only the highest dot-density resolution of a board that supports more than one. Some boards have lower resolutions with more colors. * This list is not exclusive. Many (perhaps even most) dotted combinations will work. UHC claims that any SVGA based on an ET3000, ET4000, Paradise or Genoa chip-set will fly; Dell echoes this with regard to ET3000, ET4000, WD90C0xx cards, and the same is probably true of all other vendors. * The Renaissance GRX-II is the same board as the Appian Rendition II; the company changed its name. The II/XE is compatible with the Rendition GRX and the Appian Rendition II, it differs in architecture in that it supports more DRAM and runs a little faster than the older cards. All Rendition II type cards run at a maximum resolution of 1024x768-256, the Renditon III runs at 1280x1024-256 with its full VRAM set. * Consensys's list is just MIT's list of cards certified to work with X11R5; Consensys is careful to note that they haven't tested all these themselves. * An ESIX reseller says all the TIGA34010-based video cards are pretty much alike and ESIX will drive any of them. ESIX also supports 720x348 resolution on cheap Hercules-compatible monochrome tubes, and the Everex UltraGraphics display at 1664x1200 resolution. * Beware the Trident and Oak chipsets. Many clone vendors bundle these with their systems because they're cheap, but they break the Roell server and some other X implementations. Also, they appear to argue with the WD8003EP net card, and no re-arrangement of the jumpers seems to fix it. * Third party server technology from companies like MetroLink can support higher performance, higher resolution TIGA and proprietary technology. * Dell's 2.2 adds X11R5 servers for VGA 640x480, 800x600 and for the Tseng Labs ET4000 and WD90C11 in up to 1024x768 16 or 256 colour. Appian Rendition II (formerly Renaissance) for 1024x768 TIGA 34010. Highest performance from the ATI Ultra 1024x768 256 colour, and highest resolution from the 1280x1024 256 colour JAWS (Dell proprietary card developed in association with Lotus and MicroSoft) * The Orchid ProDesigner IIs (top speed 80 MHz, not the 75MHz version) works with both X386-1.2D and X386-1.2E (beta). It works ok with the ESIX 4.0.3 X11R4 stuff at any resolution under 1024x768. But the driver does *not* work with 1024x768 (timings are way off). The vanilla ProDesigner II does work correctly with both the X386 and the Esix X11's (R5 and R4, respectively). Note: this info may change in ESIX 4.0.4, which uses a different X. * The Qume Crystal is a private-label version of the Tseng Labs VGA card. S C D E M P U B X Mice ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . y c y y y y (Logitech-compatible) 3-button serial mice (C protocol) c . y c c n y (Logitech-compatible) 3-button bus mice (C protocol) . . . c . n . ATI Wonder+ bus-mouse port y . . . . . . ATI Graphics Ultra bus-mouse port c . . . . . . HP C1413A Mouse y . y . . . . IBM PS/2 keyboard mouse c . y y c c n y Logitech MouseMan (M+ protocol) c c y y c c c c . Logitech Trackman (serial, M+ protocol) c c y c c n y Logitech Trackman (bus, M+ protocol) c . . . . . . Logitech hi-res Keyboard Mouse c . y c c . y Microsoft 2-button (serial, M protocol) c . y c c n y Microsoft 2-button (bus, M protocol) c . . . . . . Olivetti Bus Mouse c . . . . . . Olivetti hi-res Keyboard Mouse . . . . . . c SummaMouse c . . . . . . Summagraphics Bitpad Notes: * See the discussion of mice at the beginning of this section for details. * BSD/386 says it supports all 1200-9600 baud serial mice, specifying Logitech as an example. This is probably true of all vendors. * The MouseMan and TrackMan require a patch obtainable from SCO to run under ODT 1.1; they're fully supported in 2.0. * X11R5 (X386 1.2) supports all of the known mice on SVR4 in a native mode, bypassing the mouse driver. This wasn't true with X11R4 (X386 1.1b). So if you're using X386 1.2 exclusively, you can use (say) a MouseMan regardless of which SVR4 you're using. * Dell 2.2 includes an auto-configuring mouse driver that's supposed to work with about anything. Non-factory-installed 2.2s may require a patch from support to handle the Logitech Mouseman. S C D E M P U B X Multi-port serial cards ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . . AMI lamb 4 and 8-port . . y c c n Arnet (models not specified) c . y . . . Arnet 2,4 and 8-port and TwinPort c . . c c n AST 4-port . . . . c n Central Data c . . . c n Chase Research c . c . c n Computone (models not specified) c . y . . . Computone Intelliport c . . . . . Computone ATvantage-X 8-port c . . . . . Comtrol Hostess-4 c . . c c n Comtrol Hostess-8 . c . c y n Consensys PowerPorts c . . . . . CTC Versanet 4AT and 8AT c . y . . . Digiboard 4 and 8-port . . y c c n Digiboard DigiChannel PC/8. y . y . y n Equinox c . . . . . Kimtron Quartet 4-port y . . c c n Maxpeed c . . . . . Olivetti RS232C Multiport board c . . . . . Quadram QuadPort 1 and 5-port y . y . c n Specialix . . y . c n Stallion OnBoard . . . . c n Stargate (models not specified) c . . . . . Stargate OC4400 (4-port) and OC8000 (8-port) c . . . . . Tandon Quad serial card . . y . c n Technology Concepts c . . . . . Unisys 4-port Notes: * Only SCO, Consensys, Dell, Esix and Microport listed multiport cards at all. As some are `smart' cards which require special device drivers, you should *not* assume that a board is supported on a particular port unless the vendor explicitly says so. * MtXinu says they have *no* multiport support right now. * The Consensys PowerPort card has troubles; see the vendor report on Consensys for details. * The Chase, Computone, Intelliport and Specialix cards will run under SCO using a vendor-supplied driver. * The Maxpeed SS8-UX2 doesn't support RTS/CTS flow control, and requires its own config scripts rather than using inittab and gettydefs. * Peter Wemm <Peter-Wemm@zeus.dialix.oz.au> writes: "In 2.1, Dell's drivers (direct from Stallion) are flakey. I have been annoying the living daylights out of the developers (Stallion) here in AUS, and their new drivers have an `interaction' problem with the reboot mechanism in dell's kernel. A reboot causes the VGA card to be disabled." Jeremy Chatfield of Dell replies: "We haven't seen the problem he reports. Most likely the problem he's seeing is an icky [generic] one for UNIX on a PC." He then proceeds to detail the 8-16 clash described at the beginning of this section. S C D E M P U B X Disk controllers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . c c c . . Adaptec 2320/2322 (ESDI) c . c . c . . Adaptec ACB 2730C (RLL) c . y . c . . Adaptec ACB 2732C (RLL) c . . . . . Compag 32-bit Intelligent Drive Array Controller c . . . . . Compag 32-bit Intelligent Drive Array Expansion . . c . c . c CCAT100A (IDE) . . . c . . Chicony 101B y . y c c . . Data Tech Corp 6280 (ESDI) . . . c . c DTG 6282-24 . . c c c . . Everex EV-346 (ST506) . . c c c . . Everex EV-348 (ESDI) . . c c c . . Everex EV-8120 (IDE) y . c . . . . Lark ESDI controller . . c c c . . OMTI 8240 (ST506) . . c . . c . PSI Caching controller (ESDI) c . c . . . . SMS OMTI 8620 and 8627 (ESDI) . . y . . c . Ultrastor 12C, 22F y . y . c c c Ultrastor 12F c . c . . n . Ultrastor 22C (caching EISA version of 12F) . . y . c . . Ultrastor 22CA c c y c c . . Western Digital 1003 (RLL) c . . . . . Western Digital 1005 . . y . . . Western Digital 1006V-MM2 (ST506) y . y y c . c Western Digital 1007 A,SE2 (ESDI) c . . c . . Western Digital 1009 SE1/SE2 Notes: * All these ports should support all standard PC hard-disk controllers (ESDI, IDE,ST-506 in MFM and RLL formats). S C D E M P U B X SCSI controllers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . . . Adaptec 152x (non-bus mastering ISA host adapter) y c y c y y c c y Adaptec 1540, 1542 c . n . . . . . Adaptec 1640 (MicroChannel version of 154x) c . y c y c n c y Adaptec 1740,1742 (EISA) (1542 emulation mode) c . . y . * c . Adaptec 1740,1742 (EISA) (enhanced mode) . . . c . . . Always IN2000 y . c c . . . BusTek BT-542B y . c c . . . BusTek BT-742A (EISA) (mPort specifies Revision F) c . . . . . Compag SCSI Option Adapter and Compression Adapter c . . . . . . Corollary SCSI-CPU . . . c c . . DPT PM2102 caching controller (MFM emulation) c . . c . . . DPT PM2102 caching SCSI controller in SCSI mode . . c . . . . Everex EV8118/8110 c . c . . . . Future Domain 1660, 1680, 885, 860 y . . . . . . IBM HardFile (their SCSI host adapter for MicroChannel) . . . c . . . Mylex DCE (EISA) c . . . . . . Olivetti ESC . . . . c . . PSI caching controller c . . . . . . Storage Plus SCSI-AT "Sumo" . . . c . . . Ultrastor 32k 12u c . y c c c . . Western Digital WD7000 c . y . . . . . Western Digital WD7000-EX (EISA version of WD7000) Notes: * UHC started shipping a native-mode 1740/1742 driver in mid-April. It requires a full SCSI-2 tape drive. * BSDI says they plan to support the 1740 in native mode in the production release. * The BusTek 542 is a clone of the Adaptec 1542. At least one respondent thinks it works better and faster with the Adaptec drivers than the Adaptecs do! The BusTek 742 has more complicated antecedents; it's an EISA clone of the 1542, not necessarily compatible with the 1742. * There's a known bug in the Adaptec 1742 firmware that produces hangs when it's used with certain SCSI tape drives, including the popular Archive 2150S. * Bill Austin <uunet!baustin!bill> writes: "the 1740 patches on ESIX [4.0.3a] do work but only bring the speed up in enhanced mode by about 15% over standard (643Kb/s vs 535Kb/s) in writing, although the *read* speed has nearly tripled (2,833 Kb/s) (this is using "iozone 16"). This may give some idea of what improvement to expect from native-mode 1740 operation. * Wolfgang Denk <wd@pcsbst.pcs.com> reports that SCO ODT 2.0 running an Adaptec 1542 cannot work with the following Hewlett-Packard drives: HP 97536 SL HP 97536 S HP 97544 A source at SCO says "This problem is known to us. In some not-yet-clearly-understood fashion, these HP drives interact badly with our implementation of scatter/gather disk transfer ordering. There are two different workarounds: you can turn off scatter/gather in the SCSI disk driver, or you can get updated drive control board ROMs from HP." S C D E M P U B X Network cards ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c . . . . . . y 3COM EtherLink I 3C501 and 3C502 c . c y c . . c 3COM EtherLink II 3C503 c . . . . . c . 3COM EtherLink 16 (3C507) c . . . . . . . 3Com 3C523 & 523B EtherLink/MC c . . . . . . . 3Com 3C523 EtherLink/MC TP . . . c . . . . Everex EV-2015, EV-2016, EV-2026, EV-2027 c . . . . . . . HP 27245A EtherTwist Adapter Card/8 ISA TP c . . . . . . . HP 27247A EtherTwist Adapter Card/16 ISA TP c . . . . . . . HP 27250A ThinLAN Adapter Card/8 ISA BNC c . . . . . . . HP 27248A EtherTwist EISA Adapter Card/32 c . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter c . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter II (short and long card) c . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter 4/16 c . . . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network Adapter/A c . c . . . . . IBM Token-Ring Network 16/4 Adapter/A c . . . . . . . Microdyne (Excelan) EXOS 205, 205T, 205T/16 c . . . . . . . Racal Datacomm NI6510 ISA and ES3210 EISA . . y c c c . c Intel PC-586 aka iMX-LAN/586 . . . . . . c . Novell NE2000 y c y y c c c c c SMC & Western Digital 8003 and 8013 and variations . . y . . . . . WD TokenRing card Notes: * SCO support of SMC EtherCards and the 3C507 requires a patch available from their BBS. * Dick Dunn <rcd@raven.eklektix.com> opines "Somewhere along here, somebody needs to note that the 3C501 is a miserable-misbegotten-son-of-a-lame-she- camel-and-a-desperate-jackal Ethernet card, at least in UNIXland. It has serious problems in any serious multi-user system because of various hardware idiosyncrasies which are on the order of can't-walk-down-the- street-and-chew-gum." Do tell, Dick! S C D E M P U B X Tape drives ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- c y y c y . c . Archive 2150S or Viper 150 21247 (SCSI, QIC-150) c . c c . . c Archive Viper VP150E c . . c c . . Archive Viper 60 21116 c . . c c . . Archive Viper 150 25099 c . . c c . . Archive Viper 2525 25462. y . . c . . . Archive 60 - 525MB (QIC-02 and SCI) c . . c . . . Archive 4mm 4520 DAT c . . c c . . Archive Python models 25501-003, -005 and -008 (SCSI) c . . . . . . Archive Python DDS 4520NT and 4521NT DAT drives c c * c c . c Archive XL (5580 & friends) . . . c c . . Archive 3800 . . . . c . . AT&T KS22762 and KS23495 (SCSI) c . . . . . . Bell Technologies XTC-60 . . c . . . . Caliper CP150 c . . . . . . Cipher CP-60B, CP-125B . . c . . . . Cipher ST150S-II c . . . c . . Cipher ST150S2/90 (SCSI) n . . c . . . CMS Jumbo - 60MB QIC-40 n . . . c . . Emulex MT02/S1 +CCS INQ (SCSI) . . c c . . . Everex Excel Stream 60, 125, 150 . . c c . . . Everex5525ES (SCSI) . . c c . y . Everex EV-811, EV-831, EV-833 c . . c c . . Exabyte EXB-8200 (SCSI) c . . . . . . HP 35450A (SCSI) . . . . c . . HP 88780 (SCSI) . . . . c . . HPCIPHER M990 (SCSI) . . . . c . . NCR H6210-STD1-01-46C632 (SCSI) c . . . . . . Mountain 8mm Cartridge y . . . n . . Mountain FileSafe 150MB (QIC-02) c . . . . . . Mountain FileSafe 60-300MB (QIC-02) c . y . . . . . Sankyo 525ES (SCSI) . . . . c . . Sony SDT-1000 (SCSI) . . . c . . . Tallgrass 150 - 525MB SCSI c . . . . . . Tandberg DQIC (SCSI) . . . . . . c TUV DAT c . y . c . . . Wangtek 150SE (SCSI) c . c c y . . Wangtek 5150ES (SCSI) c . . c . . . Wangtek 60 - 525MB (QIC 02 and SCSI) c . . c . . . Wangtek 6130 - HS 4mm DAT. c . . y c . . Wangtek 5125ES ES41, 5150ES ES41, 5150ES FA0 (SCSI) c . . c c . . Wangtek 5150ES SCSI-3 (SCSI) c . . c . c . WangTek 5150PK QIC-02 (QIC-150) c . y . . . . . Wangtek 5525 (SCSI) c . . c c . . Wangtek 6130-F (SCSI) c . . c c . . Wangtek KS23417, KS23465, KS24569 (SCSI) Notes: * All SVr4s inherit USL support for QIC-02, QIC-36 1/4", or SCSI tape interfaces, using QIC-24 (9-track, 60MB), QIC-120 (15-track, 125MB) or QIC-150 (18-track, 150MB) formats. * A user says of Dell: it appears that anything using Wangtek QIC02/QIC36 controllers works; this should include the Wangtek 525MB, Cipher ST150S2, and Archive 2150S drives. * UHC specifies the following tape controller/drive combinations: Wangtek PC-36 + Wangtek 5099-EN, Everex 811 + Wangtek 5150-EN, Bell Tech + Wangtek 5150-EN, Archive SC499-R + Archive External FT-60, Archive VP402 + Archive Viper 2150L, Everex 811 + Archive Viper 2150L, Bell Tech + Archive Viper 2150L, Archive VP402 + Archive Viper 2150L. * UHC claims that Any floppy tape supporting the QIC-107 physical and QIC-117 logical interface specs and QIC-80 or QIC-40 recording formats should work. This is probably true of other vendors as well. * BSDI says it supports almost any Wangtek 1/4" standard 3M streamer with a QIC-02 or QIC-36 interface. However, they admit that the Archive SC402 QIC-02 controller will not work. * Floppy tapes don't work on Dell; USL provides the support, but it collides with Dell's code for auto-detecting the density of a diskette. * SCO's tape compatibility table lists drive/controller pairs; not all drives listed have been included here. They allege that any QIC-02 drive should work. Unofficial sources inside SCO claim any SCSI drive ought to work. * A source at SCO says the CMS Jumbo is neither compatible with QIC40/QIC80 nor Irwin "standards", vendor supplies their own driver which SCO does not support. He also said "CMS is in general fairly UNIX-hostile; don't buy their stuff if you have a choice." On the other hand, Jerry Rocteur <jerry @lncc.com> praises their hardware and says he found them quite helpful and knowledgeable. Your editor has no experience on which to base an opinion. * The Emulex MT02 is a QIC02 bridge controller for the SCSI bus -- lets you take an old QIC02 drive and run it on a SCSI bus. It is said to use a very old version of the SCSI spec; caveat emptor. * John Plate <plate@infotek.dk> writes: "According to a fax from the Archive manufacturer Maynard, [the XL 5580 drive only works with ESIX 4.0.3] if the tape drive is "drive" two! Which is the same as disabling the second floppy drive and then set a jumper on the tape drive." S C D E M P U B X Non-Winchester mass storage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- . c . . . Bernoulli 90MB exchangeable SCSI . . c . Hitachi, Toshiba (models not specified) . . . c Maxtor RXT-800HS . c c . Storage Dimensions XSE1-1000S1 optical disk . y c . SyQuest cartridge media . c . . . Tandata . c c c Toshiba TXM-3201A1 CD-ROM . c y c c Toshiba TXM-3301B CD-ROM . . c c Toshiba WM-C050 . c c c Toshiba WM-D070 WORM drive VII. FREEWARE ACCESS FOR SVR4 SYSTEMS. US4BINR is an archive dedicated to binaries (executable compiled program) for UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4) on 386/486 PC computer. Our goal is to provide easy access to precompiled programs. Those programs are (hopefully): Up to date. Documented. Useful or fun. Uploads annoucement are made in comp.unix.sysv386 and comp.unix.sys5.r4. US4BINR carries PD, Freeware, shareware, games, etc... US4BINR is a non profit organisation. To get more info, email the following message to request@us4binr.uucp or request%us4binr.uucp@uunet.uu.net reply Put_your_email_address_here help quit VIII. FREE ADVICE TO VENDORS: As a potential customer for one of the SVr4 ports, it's to my advantage to have everybody in this market competing against one another as hard as possible. Accordingly, some free advice to vendors, which I'm broadcasting to all of them and the public so as to put just that much more pressure on each vendor. :-) SCO: You have a serious image problem with many hackers which you've exacerbated recently by falling behind the SVr4 leading edge and then engaging in what certainly appears to be an attempt to sucker careless buyers with deceptive product naming. But the reaction to this wouldn't be nearly so vehement if it didn't come on top of years of discontent with more technical choices. There's too much stuff in the SCO kernel and admin tools that's different from USL and *not better*; too much stuff that raises weird little compatibility problems that shouldn't be there. Verbum sap. This different-but-not-better problem is perfectly reflected by the one thing about the otherwise-excellent SCO documentation that sucks moldy moose droppings; the rearrangement and renaming of the reference manual sections. Your technical writers entertain a fond delusion that this helps nontechnical users, but all it really does is confuse and frustrate techies with experience on other UNIXes. Lose it. Everybody but SCO: SCO's documentation set is to die for (except in the one respect noted above), and they add a lot of value over the base UNIX with things like ODT DOS and CodeView. Only Dell comes even close to matching SCO in the nifty add-ons department, and even they have a lot of room for improvement. If you want to outcompete SCO, you have to be *better*; this means (at minimum) supporting a windowing debugger and ISAM libraries and DOS support that goes beyond 2.0. Consensys: Fix the Powerports bugs everyone is reporting. They're doing you real damage. Nobody expects real support from an outfit selling at $1000 below market average, but you've *got* to make your own hardware work right or look like idiots. Beyond this, I think you have a serious attitude problem. So far, you're the only outfit out of nine to refuse to divulge information for the comparison tables. While you have a perfect right to do so, it smells bad --- as though you think you have weaknesses to hide. I tried to discuss this with your VP of sales (Gary Anderson) and got back very little but evasions, suit-speak, defensiveness, and attempts to divert me from the issues (and I don't mind admitting that the conversation made me pretty angry and didn't end very pleasantly). This man's behavior is all too consistent with reports of Consensys's dismissive behavior towards customers and continued refusal to acknowledge technical problems. In this corner of the industry we have a tradition of collegiality, mutual trust, informality, and candor. If you plan to be here for the long haul, you need to learn how to work with that rather than fighting it. Behaving like IBM will only get you hammered. Consensys and Esix: Get a real support address. Bang-path accessibility doesn't impress anyone any more --- in fact, it looks faintly quaint. You guys ought to be support@everex.com and support@consensys.com to follow the simple and logical convention SCO and Dell and Microport and UHC have established. Dell: Don't get fat and lazy. You've got the lead in the SVr4 market at the moment and you've got the money and resources to keep it, *if* you use them. If you staff up your UNIX support operation so customers don't get pissed off by infinite hold, *and* keep your prices the lowest in the upper tier, no one will be able to touch you. Don't let Microport et al. get ahead of you in releases and new technology, and try to reverse that creeping corporatitis (the no-comment-on-unreleased-products policy is a bad sign). Everybody but Dell: Offer all the free software Dell does --- and *more*. All it will cost you is the media, right? Even if you have to plaster CONTRIBUTED SOFTWARE, NOT SUPPORTED on it, include perl, elm, bison, gcc, emacs, gdb, mush, patch, compress, etc on your distribution tapes. Heck, include some *games* (SCO includes games with UNIX but not the full ODT product; and makes some games available for download on their BBS). Nethack, empire, zork, stuff like that. Your engineers use and play with all this in-house anyhow, yes? And you're selling to guys just like your engineers. They'll love you for it. Trust me. Set up a `sales' address to take product queries if you don't already have one. Everybody but Dell and SCO: A Dell person warns that the kinds of tweaks to the source made by porting houses can break X/Open (XPG3) conformance. Dell and SCO test every build with VSX (the X/Open-approved XPG3 test suite) and Dell reports that it often finds places where seemingly innocuous bug fixes cause XPG3 violations. Other UNIX vendors would be well advised to do likewise. Set up an 800 number for tech support. Support customers hate spending time on hold, and they hate it like poison when they have to *pay* for the hold time. The more overloaded your support staff is, the more important this gets. Verbum sap. Esix: You're *boring*. You seem to make a decent product, but there's nothing I've seen about ESIX that'd make me say "I might want to buy ESIX because...". Position yourselves; pick something like price or support quality or reliability or add-on features and push it hard. Warning: if you decide to push support, *hire more engineers*. Your rep for following up on support problems is bad enough that your "unlimited free support" ain't much of a draw; especially now that your two best support guys have quit. Esix, MST, UHC: Get 800 numbers for product info, too. MST: Set up a support@mst.com alias to your cs address, see above. What would that take, a whole five minutes? :-) If you don't start planning for 4.0.4 now, you'll get left behind this spring and early summer whan all the other vendors move to it. On present trends, your software prices are cheap enough; you'd probably get more sales mileage out of pulling down the hardware prices for your pre-configured systems. Everybody but MST and Microport: Set up a `sales' alias to your info and orders email address. A universal convention for this means just one less detail prospective customers need to remember. Microport: Your complete system is way overpriced relative to what other vendors in the top tier are selling. If I were a corporate customer, there is no *way* I could justify spending the $1K or $2K premium over Dell's price --- not when Dell has the rep it does for quality and features. You aren't offering anything but a crippled copy of JSB Multiview to justify that premium and that ain't enough. There's some evidence that you've got a technical lead on the competition. Push it; push it *hard*. You're first off the blocks with 4.0.4; keep that up, be first out with a stable 4.0.5. Market yourselves as the leading-edge outfit, court the hard-core wizards as their natural ally, detail somebody who's fluent in English as well as C to listen and speak for you on USENET, and keep the promises you make there. UHC: You've decided to push support; that's good, but follow through by getting that 800 number. Don't lose those small-company virtues of candor and flexibility, trade on them. Your policy of having all techs clear up to the product manager take turns on the support lines is a damned good idea, stick with it. And I'm sufficiently impressed with what I've heard from your guys that I think you might be able to fight Microport for the friend-to-wizards mantle, too. Maybe you should try. Everybody except BSDI: BSD/386 includes *sources*. For *everything*. Be afraid; be very afraid. In effect, this recruits hundreds of eager hackers as uncompensated development and support engineers for BSDI. Don't fool yourselves that the results are necessarily going to be unfocused, amateur-quality and safe to ignore --- it sure didn't work that way for gcc or Emacs. The rest of you will have to work that much harder and smarter to stay ahead of their game. BSDI: Don't you get complacent either. The 386BSD distribution is breathing down *your* neck... The most effective things you can do to to seriously compete with SVr4 vendors are: a) emphasize standards conformance --- POSIX, FIPS, XPG3, etc., and b) follow through on your support promises. Just another flaky BSDoid system isn't really very interesting except to hobbyists, even with sources --- but if it were proven a reliable cross-development platform it could capture a lot of hearts and minds among commercial software designers. Everybody: Do something about your product names! Even the cases that don't appear to be deliberate deception are very confusing to the customer. If you're releasing an enhanced 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 that's what you ought to *call* it. I recommend: Consensys UNIX Version 1.2 --> Consensys UNIX 4.0.3 revision 1.2 Dell UNIX Issue 2.1 --> Dell UNIX 4.0.3 revision 2.1 ESIX System V Release 4.0.4 --> Esix UNIX 4.0.4 revision 4 MST SVr4 UNIX --> MST UNIX 4.0.3 Microport System V/4 version 4 --> Microport UNIX 4.0.4 UHC Version 3.6 --> UHC UNIX 4.0.3 revision 6 The fact is, all these idiosyncratic version-numbering systems do you no good and considerable harm. At worst, they make it look like you're trying to pull a scam by deceiving people about the level of the base technology. At best, they parade your internal revision number (which conveys no useful information unless one is an existing customer considering an upgrade already) and obscure the really important information. Do your product differentiation elsewhere, in substance rather than nomenclature; it's not useful here. You're *all* badly understaffed in support engineering, and it shows. Boy does it show --- in poor followup, long hold times, and user gripes. The first outfit to invest enough to offer really first-class quick-response support is going to eat everyone else's lunch. Wouldn't you like to be it? IX. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND ENVOI Some of the material in this posting was originally assembled by Jason Levitt <jason@cs.utexas.edu> of "Open Systems Today". Grateful acknowledgement is made to him for permission to re-distribute and update this information. Many netters sent me email contributing technical information, feedback, and comment. Thanks to all. It's in combinations of individual mission and collective cooperation like this one that the net really shines, and I'm grateful to everybody who's worked with me to improve the signal/noise ratio. The level of cooperation I've experienced from vendors' program managers, techies and marketing people since the first issue has generally been outstanding. Particular high marks go to Jeremy Chatfield at Dell, Kristen Axline at Microport, John Prothro and Sam Nataros at UHC and Bela Lubkin at SCO, with very honorable mentions to Jeff Ellis at Esix and Rob Kolstad at BSDI. By cooperating intelligently with this FAQ, they've done a great job of serving the market and representing their corporate interests. One dishonorable mention goes to Gary Anderson, V.P of sales at Consensys and the only person I've encountered who's behaved like the classic stereotype of the slippery, stonewalling marketroid. An impression of this kind is exactly what Consensys needs to solve their credibility problems...NOT! So far, I've found that the technical merit of each of these eight products (insofar as I have data to judge; I haven't actually used any of them yet) seems to correlate pretty well with the degree of cooperation I've received. I wasn't explicitly expecting this result, but I'm not surprised by it either. -- Send your feedback to: Eric Raymond = esr@snark.thyrsus.com