Bell Technologies UNIX/386

[pri=-10 Stuart Lynne]

In article <201 at xrtll.UUCP> martin at xrtll.UUCP (Martin Renters) writes:
>
>Has anyone had any experience with the Bell Technologies
>UNIX for the 80386?
>
>In particular, does it work reasonably well, or is
>Microport or XENIX better? Is it lacking anything that
>the other two supply?

Bell Technologies uses the same porting base as Microport. Essentially it is
precisely the same product as Microport. Except that BTI does very little
(if anything) with the standard device drivers; whereas uPort seems to have
used a totally different set of drivers for all of the standard devices.
BTI does provide very good device drivers for the hardward they supply such
as the ICC (smart serial) card or Cartridge Tape drive.

We have both. I currently am running BTI because I had some unidentified
problems that caused me to loose my hard disk while I was playing around
testing my own serial driver. 

I simply couldn't make the "standard" async driver work properly, I wrote my 
own.

I sort of prefer uPort especially the virtual consoles. 

Conclusion, 

BTI is an excellent product for the price; especially if you are
also getting their ICC card or other hardware. BTI is in the business of
selling hardware. Unix is the loss-leader to get you in the door.

uPort has more support for their software and standard AT type hardware but
expect to pay a lot more. uPort is in the business of selling Unix.

Finally, we've switched to Xenix. I'm not (currently) to unhappy with
either the BTI or uPort 386 product, but Rabbit software only provides SNA
RJE software for the Xenix 386 product and I must switch.  Too early to tell
how Xenix 386 will compare.


-- 
{ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532