Buying UNIX for a clone

[Richard A. Lethin]

We built a custom board for the ISA bus to interface to some research
equipment, and have been debugging it using MSDOS.  Soon, we would
like drop this board into a UNIX-based 386 system that we can access
via the ethernet from our SPARCstations.  

I've considering a few options:

The MARS Mariner.  These people are hot to sell, and the system
received a glowing review in the recent issue of SUNExpert magazine
(April'91).  It's a SPARCstation with a 386-board included.  A
reasonably configured system was proced at $11,995.  That price was
for a color monitor, 207 Mb hard disk, 12 Mb of RAM, etc.  This has
the advantage that since our lab is has lots of Suns, it should fit
right in.  We would need to write a device driver to access the ISA
bus, and the MARS people seemed really technically adept and they say
they have decent documentation.  The major disadvantage is price, but
we might be able to get an educational discount.

Buying a cheap clone and installing UNIX.  The important question:
who's version of UNIX?

It seems that everyone is offering System-V.  This is unfortunate,
since I am familiar with Berkeley-style UNIX, but I'm told that System
V version 4 incorporates lots of Berkeley stuff.  Great!  But I'm told
that the versions I'm seeing "out and about" are Beta releases from
AT&T. 

We still need to write our own device driver.  ESIX says that they
don't have much documentation, but that someone could "easily buy the
book on system V and write their own".  But we need a Release 4 book.
All we need is a vanilla device driver that would let me "peek" and
"poke" into our board's address space.

SCO hasn't scheduled a compatible product for release 4; they're
"monitoring the situation closely and waiting for a stable release,
perhaps 4.1 before they start selling a product".

ESIX says their version 4 will be available on May 1.  The person I
spoke to on the phone seemed reasonably adept regarding UNIX and I was
impressed.

Dell will sell me a factory-installed version of System-V, release 4.
I can also purchase a 3.2 UNIX. 

Interactive Systems Corp. Version 4 not available until Q1'92.

So, some questions:

1. Any opinions on the Mariner?

2. What do people think about going with Release 4?

3. How hard would writing a vanilla device driver be?  Has anyone
written such a driver that they would be willing to share?

4. Is Dell UNIX a reasonable product?

5. What are the relative sales of SCO, ESIX, and ISC UNIX?

6. Does anyone have any references to review articles for these
UNIXes?

7. How horribly un-berkeley is System V, Release 3.2?

8. How much more Berkeley is Release 4?

9. Which UNIX should we buy?


Thanks for your opinions!

-- Rich