"Smart" serial boards for the 80386

[Dimitri Rotow]

In article <300 at romed.UUCP>, pete at romed.UUCP (Pete Rourke) writes:
> In article <655 at wb3ffv.UUCP> howardl at wb3ffv.UUCP (Howard Leadmon ) writes:
> >In article <235 at belltec.UUCP>, jim at belltec.UUCP (Mr. Jim's Own Logon) writes:

Pete - 

/* FLAME ON */
I wasn't aware that USENET was becoming such a forum for personal political
attacks.  A little heckling is part of the fun and personality of USENET, but
when you misstate the facts to grind a personal political axe you simply lose
credibility.  I'm not sure why you decided to engage in character assasination
with someone with whom you've had no personal correspondance, but I can't let
your misstatements go unanswered.  Let's look at what you said:
/* FLAME OFF */

> I don't know that I would be so defensive about flaming or mud slinging.
> We, stopped selling Bell Tech equipment, after reading a published article
> being passed out at Uniforum 1987 in Washington, by the chief mud slinger,
> and flaming artist Dimitri. At that time, Dimitri had grandstanded for
> Microport Unix over Santa Cruz Xenix, denouncing the Xenix product.

I gather you don't like the article Bob Glossman and I wrote for UNIX/WORLD!

Some Facts:

We helped Microport get started, we distributed the product, we loaned Chuck
Hickey and company equipment, we appeared in his advertising, and we even 
gave it away free with disk drives.  Without our support (and the support of
companies like us) you wouldn't have a comp.unix.microport group to flame in. I
wrote a comparison article for UNIX/WORLD magazine that compared IBM Xenix,
SCO Xenix, and Microport because our company was the only one simultaneously 
distributing and supporting all three.  The article was reviewed and approved
by UNIX/WORLD's editorial board, and contained third party checks on 
performance figures done by Neal Nelson Associates.  At the time it was written,
the article was the straightest, most accurate description of the the three
systems available from the only company supporting all three. At the time the
article was written, SCO was suffering from dreadful tech support and too
many releases (problems now cured) and the world was yearning for an 
alternative ... who wouldn't be excited about a non-proprietary alternative?
The article, by the way, concluded that Microport was a great idea, albeit
rough about the edges, and the "best buy" for System V purists whereas SCO
continued to be the leading commercial release.  Sure, we got excited about
Microport.  No, we didn't "denounce" Xenix.  So what?

> 
> Then after realizing that his equipment did in fact function well with
> SCO Xenix, he switched back, and to my amazement, he was allowed at the
> Santa Cruz Developers Forum. 

At the time we helped Microport get started, we had already been supporting SCO as well as IBM Xenix for over a year.  We still do support SCO.  Are you
suggesting that Bell Tech did something wrong by supporting both SCO and 
Microport?  We have always supported SCO releases throughout our product line,
and we continue to do joint ventures and joint development activities with SCO.
Don't flame at me for having the integrity of calling the shots as I saw them
in my UNIX/WORLD article despite the fact that my pre-existing commercial 
interests depended on SCO.

> 
> Now we're off on Bell's the Greatest Unix?

Not our words!  If you read our literature, postings, advertising, etc,
you see that we don't have "a UNIX."  We are simply Intel's publisher for their
own Intel/AT&T commercial shrink-wrapped binary product.  Again, are you 
suggesting that we're doing something wrong by supporting IBM, SCO, Interactive,and Intel/AT&T?  What's wrong with trying to bring the UNIX community direct
access to the latest, hottest efforts in UNIX being done at AT&T and Intel, 
without any devaluing proprietarization?  Why should only Bill Gates, Doug
Micheals, and Ron Fisher be able to buy UNIX direct?  Why shouldn't you 
(well, maybe not you) and other USENET people enjoy direct access to Intel/AT&T?

> 
> Seems like Bell's leader changes tunes faster than most folks change 
> underclothes, and vacillates like a windshield wiper. In an article 
> in the 386/ix mail group, it would look like Dimitri himself wrote all 
> of the best parts of the Intel/Interactive/Bell drivers, and half of the
> UNIX itself.

Let's stick to the facts:  If you read the position papers on UNIX Bell Tech 
circulated going back to 1985, you'll see we've always backed the idea
of a standard, complete System V that sells for the same price as DOS.
We helped SCO initially because it was the best thing going, then we
added support for Microport when that looked like it might help.  We supported
Intel/AT&T because that was zeroing on the same goal.   We added support for
386/ix from Interactive because it seemed that an industry consensus on binary
compatible real System V's would help the critical mass supporting low cost
releases based on the Intel/AT&T subsidized development effort for the '386.

We think the UNIX market needs binary compatibility and critical mass
selling for the same price as DOS.  We'll always back any effort to make that
happen even if it means we have to support (as we do now), 3 or 4 different
operating systems.

We dropped Microport support because of limited resources: SCO and Interactive
have overwhelmingly larger market share than Microport (no one can say in two 
years of trying that we didn't do our share of helping Microport!), and that
if you must pick only one "generic" release to support then you should first 
pick the root of all generic releases, the Intel/AT&T release.

You know, Pete, the whole UNIX market is spreading new wings and soaring high
on the strength of the '386.  This is an exciting, dynamic time to be alive
in the UNIX market, a time that those of us who have worked with UNIX for 10
or 12 years have waited long to see.  A key part of what's taken us all here
is the UNIX community's willingness to tell it like it is technically, hold
fast to what's right, and to try to avoid personal character assassination in 
lieu of contributing technical advances to the common good ... Can we get 
back to improving UNIX and just skip the personal political intrigues?

Thanks to all in this group for putting up with such a long reply!

Dimitri Rotow, Bell Technologies