How does Microport System V/AT handle bad blocks?

[william vajk]

In article <871 at sceard.UUCP>, mrm at sceard.UUCP (M.R.Murphy) writes:

Flame mode on...what else would one expect....

> Expense is relative. Anyone care to cite the cost history of a non-academic
> UNIX(tm) license over the years?

Who gives a shit what the relative costs are. They promised something not
yet delivered, a WORKING system. There are hidden costs in running this
crapola compared to something that works out of the box, add them in and what 
have you now ????
 
> A lot of the problems with Microport systems stem from the great variety
> of hardware that is "real close to just almost like" stuff from IBM(tm). 

We'be been over this absolute bullshit nonsense time and again. I was told
that microport would run on ANY 286 AT clone, that they found NO
incompatability problems, and that was the 1.3.6 that I bought. Have they
improved in the past 2+ years ? Certainly they have. But they still scribble
the disks in fsck, even in 2.4 Coupled with your elseif below, it is obvious
that hardware isn't a large part of the solution, especially considering
those who switched to xenix and cut their losses earlier realized little
or no hardware problems. The problems are in the code, get it ?

> That UNIX(tm) works as well as it
> does in the great range of environments in which it has found itself (IBM
> mainframes running UNIX over a CTS base, Univac(tm) 1100 series mainframes,
> on down to 8086's running hacked 22-bit memory management) is amazing. 

Let's keep one thing straight here. We're discussing one vendor with one
product. I could care less about products I didn't buy. It doesn't work
correctly here, and in a lot of other places. Most of us that are in this
newsgroup are unix buffs, Many of us have developed a certain unfavorable
passion for this one vendor based on their failure to make timely repairs.
Spouting about the wonders of the base product from which this one was
derived does nothing good, and is simply a waste of bandwidth.
 
> It is also interesting to note that the prices of the pieces are quite low
> when compared with pieces of similar functionality from vendors such as
> SUN(tm), DEC(tm), Data General(tm), ...

Why do you insist it is ok to steal from purchasers 'because it is cheap?'

> I am not apalled that the drivers don't work right. I am disappointed, some-
> times a bit dismayed, but understanding of the people who tried to get it
> right but goofed up some. If I can, I work around the problem. If I can't,
> then I violate my license agreement (just a little:-) and disassemble the
> offending code, and see if I can fix it. So far, so good.
 
And this is the best bit of all. Here we have a gentleman who proports to
have fixed what microport couldn't or wouldn't in over two years, and he
keeps it to himself. I rather think that this explains a lot more about the
author than he thinks. None of the conclusions are very *nice*.

> We may not, however, be able to accept the individual burden of support
> that systems of this complexity currently demand.
 
Compared to what unix or xenix system ?

Do you think reasonable 'support' for a system includes a sysadmin rehacking 
the code that microport screwed up ?
 
> I disagree. I think that, taking into consideration the problems of support
> in a widely varying hardware and user expertise environment, all of the
> UNIX vendors, not just Microport, have done a rather amazing job.

Nice of you to redefine 'support' again. Support in this context is handholding,
a form of training a user. It is NOT fixing of bugs. It is NOT selling repairs 
that should be free. Essentially the only thing microport has done really well
is to sell deffective code and string the users along through several
upgrades while not fixing some of the original problems.

If it were offered, would you as someone apparently favorably inclined towards 
microport sink your life's savings into their stock ? How about Sun or some
of the other vendors you mentioned. I see. And it has nothing to do with
price. It must have to do with performance. If Henry Ford had made as bad
an automobile as uport has a unix release, we'd all still be riding horses.



Bill Vajk		| A hypocrite is a gilded pill, composed of two
learn at igloo		| natural ingredients, natural dishonesty, and
			| artificial dissimulation.     -Overbury-