DEC & UNIX & PDP-11's

[scw%ucla-locus at cepu.UUCP]

From:  Steve Woods <cepu!scw at ucla-locus>


The straight and unvarnished WORD!

   The Los Angeles local unix group had a speaker from DEC, Jan Griska
   the project manager for the support of unix.

Yes DEC has decided to support UNIX for the PDP-11.

	Comment:
	It appears that they wish to provide support for the naive user
	community, in particular the new Office automation & (Blech)
	cobol-shop type of site.  They purport to have some neat
	upgrades to UNIX (particulary to device drivers (error logging)
	and a spiffy new Crash dump analyzer (perhaps similar to RSX11's).

  a) They will only provide binary licenses.
  b) the appear to be stuck with a old style licensing with Bell
     so that the will charge by the # of users.
  c) They Will provide Telephone Software Support.
  d) They Will provide DDC support ( starting ~ AUG/SEP).
  e) They have a UNIX system diagnostic (much like the one under VMS).

	comments:
	     He seemed to be unaware or at least discounted the presence
	 of what is now the typical UNIX site (at least 1 resident WIZARD).
	 They do not appear to be interested in providing:
	    1) the patches to device drivers (error logging etc)
	    2) the system patches to support same.
	 even to sites that wish to have DDC and are under a service
	 contract. I got the impression that this could be changed if
	 enough of the sites that have other UNIX arangments (through
	 Bell, UCB etc) would shake the cage(s) of their local DEC
	 sales reps hard/often enough. When several of the people at
	 the meeting mentioned to the speaker an interest in these
	 patches, I sort of got the feeling that he felt that we were
	 trying to get the driver patches to ease our own diagnosis of
	 hardware problems.  When it was pointed out by several people
	 that almost all of the sites represented at the meeting had
	 DEC service, and usually when the CE arrived the local
	 WIZARD(s) could tell the CE at least which device was failing
	 and how (if not which card was failing) and that we were only
	 tring to improve the general level of service that we were
	 getting he was somewhat supprised.

    It appears that they have targeted a some what different sales enviroment
    that the regular readers of unix-wizards, but it looks like they have a
    good product.

    The phone number for further details is:
    ----------
    Jan Griska
    (603)-884-5947