Ultrix and 4.2 and der Mouse

[der Mouse]

Key:
>>>	[ Ricky Palmer / DEC / Ultrix Group / rsp at decvax ]
>>	[ me, see .signature for address ]
>	[ aps at decwrl.UUCP (Armando P. Stettner) ]

> Regarding the news comment by der Mouse on whether or not Ultrix
> is 4.2 or not:
>>> Ultrix-32 runs on the 8600. It runs like the
>>> proverbial "bat out of ...". Contact your DEC salesperson for further
>>> information.
>> (do I recall something about advertising being verboten?)
>> [ my--uh--flame?--to the effect that Ultrix is not 4.2 omitted ]

     First  off:    I feel I must apologize to Ricky Palmer  (and to the
Ultrix group in  general I suppose) for the uncalled-for virulence of my
posting.    He really  didn't deserve it (well, maybe *he* did, but  his
posting certainly didn't).  I realized this about a day later, after I'd
cooled down and the article  had made  its way out  onto the net.  And I
didn't know how to cancel an article (still don't, anyone out there want
to enlighten me?)

> Ultrix *is* 4.2 with a fair amount of work by DEC [ ... ]

     If you did a fair amount of work  on it then it  is not 4.2, it  is
*modified* 4.2 (as you yourself say a sentence or two later).

> There
> in fact should be enough stuff distributed with Ultrix so that you can
> add a driver painlessly (assumming that you require no hacks in other
> parts of the kernel, because there are no sources!).

     My main complaint (read my original).  We *do* require other kernel
hacks, notably in  trap.c (kernel_user traps,  so errors in kernel  mode
can be made to signal a user process instead of panic()ing) and locore.s
(so we  could  grow the cmap  struct for  memory mapping--no sysV flames
please!).

> Further, many of
> the tables and hard coded constants have been removed from the original
> source modules and placed in modules that are shipped as sources so
> that you (the customer) can get at them.

     At least you tried.

> [ a paragraph and a half about how Ultrix is for business and BSD for
>   academia ]

     Exactly.  I forget sometimes there is a real world out there.

> Realize that there is a
> seperate group within DEC with a charter to measure how quickly SPR
> answers are turned around to the customer.

     Well, we have some outstanding VMS SPRs which are a year or two old
(yes we do run VMS on one machine; a historical artifact)....  Maybe the
rest of the company needs to look at their measurements?  (:-)

> I do not believe that the attitude of myself or members of UEG is
> one of "whaddya [you] want 4.2 when you can have Ultrix".  I
> think that you might not have had a very clear understanding of
> what Ultrix is and how it would or would not fit *your* situation.

     I  didn't  say this  was  your  attitude,  or  even  the prevailing
attitude at DEC; that was what I saw at the time in Palmer's posting.  I
think  maybe I do  have  an  idea of  how Ultrix would or would not [the
latter]  fit our situation; we had  a uVAXII with Ultrix on  it here for
evaluation, so I have some sort of idea what Ultrix is like.

> I don't feel sorry for people who complain that /bin/ed is not
> a good full screen editor.

     Point taken, though I feel it isn't quite that extreme; Ultrix does
make some sort of claim to being 4.2bsd [/bin/ed doesn't pretend to be a
full screen editor].  I will try to remember to cool down before posting
in the future.
-- 
					der Mouse

USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,etc}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse
     philabs!micomvax!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse
Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse
        mcvax!seismo!cmcl2!philabs!micomvax!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse

Hacker: One who accidentally destroys /
Wizard: One who recovers it afterward