Xenix reliability (Was: Re: Bell Tech 386 SysVr3)

[Earl H. Kinmonth]

>>>Anyone who thinks Xenix is reliable has NEVER seen a truely reliable system.

I have run SCO Xenix 86 on an ATT 6300 and now run SCO Xenix 286 on an
ATT 6310. In three years I've had only one crash that required a file
system rebuild, and that came with a catastrophic failure of a memory
expansion board. I run 9600 baud file transfers on a leased line in
concert with 1200 baud transfers through a modem plus cpu intensive
tasks (nroff) without a problem. Moreover, the ATT 6310 is NOT on their
list of tested machines.

Some months ago I asked for comparisons of Microport vs Xenix through
the net. The testimonials for Microport tended to have a one or more
lines of the variety, "It's been really great once I got ..., ..., ...
to work." In my case, Xenix has worked straight out of the box, and
when they say they will call back on a problem, they do.

My impression is that you pay something of a premium for SCO and in
return you get premium service. Depending on how you value your time,
it might make sense to go with lower priced alternatives, and then
again, it may not.

I was amazed at how much you could get out of an 8086 box like the
6300. Except for graphics, I had pie-in-the-sky OS 2 capabilities,
three years ago on my 6300 with Xenix 86.

E H. Kinmonth Hist. Dept.  Univ. of Ca., Davis Davis, Ca. 95616
916-752-1636/0776

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