Need DEC 8600+Ultrix Info

[Tim Seaver]

We are considering purchase of a DEC 8600 with Ultrix, and
would like to gather some information so that we know more
about what we'd be getting into. If you can help us out with
the following questions or provide other relevant information,
please let me know. 

1) What sites actually run Ultrix on an 8600? 

2) How reliable is Ultrix, and how responsive is DEC to Ultrix
bug reports?

3) Does Ultrix come with kernel binaries so that we could add
local device drivers if we could write them? Has anyone done this?

4) How do Ultrix/8600 device drivers compare with 4.2bsd/780
drivers? Identical? Minor differences?

5) Has anyone moved 4.2/4.3bsd code to Ultrix? Any problems
encountered? Is anyone working to bring up 'real' 4.2/4.3
on an 8600?

6) Is Ultrix going to track 4.3+bsd? How quickly?

7) How does administration of Ultrix compare to administration
of 4.2bsd?

8) Etc.

We're currently a 4.2 bsd shop, and are mainly concerned with
whether Ultrix would have a major impact on our normal mode
of operation - we make lots of local changes and additions at both
user and kernel levels, fix most bugs quickly ourselves, expect to
do a certain amount of administration on each system.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Please respond by mail - I'll
summarize to the network if enough people want the information I
collect. Many Thanks,

	Tim Seaver
	Microelectronics Center of North Carolina

	tas%mcnc.csnet at csnet-relay.arpa
	decvax!mcnc!tas