semi-review of Bell Tech Unix for the 386

[Karl Lehenbauer]

I've been running Bell Tech Unix System V/386 for the last couple of weeks,
and I thought I'd share with the net my impressions, both good and bad.
Many of my remarks will apply to all AT&T/Intel/ISC-descended 386 Unix
Systems.

First of all, this thing is *fast.*  Doing big makes on things like
news, I have found that, with identical disk hardware, a
16 MHz machine with 64 KB of 0-wait state cache runs nine to ten times
faster than an 8 MHz 286.  While some of the performance is certainly
attributable to the faster clock and such, certainly the architecture
of the 386 in native mode with an OS that can take advantage of it is
a significant part.  Also, with it's 4 GB segment size, most of the 
Sys V programs that come over the net run on or near the first try, 
rather than producing the segmentation violations 286 Unix people are used to.

BTU comes with two system admin manuals, install notes, and a box of floppies.
I understand you can get it on tape.  Installation was pretty straightforward,
but I was unhappy to see that it displays some stuff like "Unable to write
bad track table!" and such, and a thing in the install notes says to ignore it.
This is bogus, and I imagine it crept in from the Multibus version, like
that they didn't want to become non-binary-identical (other than drivers, 
Dimitri?).

BTU comes with all the stuff that's usually unbundled.  You get cc, sccs, f77,
yacc, lex...all that stuff.  Nroff/troff are not included, because, according
to BT, they haven't gone through the validation suite and aren't up to the
quality of everything else, but they'll sell it to you, so it's sort of still
unbundled.

I was really disturbed to see that, after a couple of weeks, process and
system accounting had gobbled up 5 MB of disk space.  This sort of thing
does not give novices warm fuzzy feelings.  I knew to look in /usr/adm, as
well as other places, to see what was eating my space.  This is pretty
absurd.  I think it should be shipped with process accounting off.

Although as a Unix product, it beats the pants off the 286 *Unix* systems
that are available, BTU's pretty spare.  You don't get kermit.  You don't
get dosdir or doscp and you don't get a driver that supports most dumb
serial boards, like you do with some others.  (Which reminds me, why the
#W$%&* must cu be so damn picky about letting me get on my lines.  I need
kermit to see if I'm getting to the modem, and such, because if cu can't
place the call, it won't connect you to the port.  This is ludicrous.)

I'm super, super happy with the product, as a Unix system.  I'm looking forward
to 3.1 and X support.  Maybe I'll even buy a blit card.  I'm unhappy, though,
that, as shipped, this is still a guru-only or near-guru-only product.

I do not think that the average DOS user is going to be able to get and
keep it running without spending a lot more time than they want to.  There're
problems with sysadm (the user-semifriendly system administration utilities),
too.  At least, I couldn't figure out how to get it to do everything that
needed to be done with the uucp config files.  I guess we'll have to wait
for Next or, gack, AIX, for a reasonably user friendly (and admin-friendly)
Unix.

To conclude, the AT&T/Intel/Interactive Systems/Bell Tech/Microport 386 Unix
is a complete and robust Unix, bringing "full" Unix to the PC-clone world
for the first time.  It is great for people looking for inexpensive ways to
run "real" Unix.  It is not, in its current state, going to replace OS/2 or
make serious inroads into DOS.  Pity :-)  (An aside, usage numbers
underflate Unix's actual impact in the PC-clone world because many Unix ATs
are multiuser, and hardly any DOS and OS/2 systems are.)
-- 
-- backups:  always in season; never out of style.
-- karl at sugar.uu.net aka uunet!sugar!karl