4.2 on 8600 (repeat)
der Mouse
mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP
Sat Nov 30 13:30:16 AEST 1985
> 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?)
> Ricky Palmer
> DEC - Ultrix Group
> rsp at decvax
I wasn't able to find the original article for this, but from the
subject line, I assume someone asked whether 4.2 ran on the 8600.
ULTRIX IS NOT 4.2. IF THEY ASK FOR 4.2, DON'T ASSUME A CLOSE LOOKALIKE
WILL DO!! Functionally, from the user level, it's very close, granted.
BUT.... When we had a uVAXII here for evaluation it had Ultrix, and
when I wanted to put in the /dev/std{in,out,err} driver and the load
average syscall and the other kernel hacks, guess what I found? No
kernel source! UNIX source comes with it (for universities). Ultrix
source costs an obscene amount (we looked into getting it). And UNIX
without source is pretty pointless (for us; for example, we had a grad
student here whose thesis work would have been completely impossible
without the kernel source). Guess what we'll be doing with our
microvaxen! Right, running 4.3 (if they have it by that time) or moving
4.2 (otherwise). With UNIX source, when you find a bug, you fix it.
The fix is available within a few hours, or days for the tough ones.
With a vendor system like Ultrix, you send in an SPR and hope they deign
to pay attention to it. Even when they do, you're lucky if it gets
back, with or without a fix, within a month.
Sorry for such a long and heated posting, but this sort of attitude
"whaddya want 4.2 for when you can have Ultrix for 1000% more" really
gets to me.
--
der Mouse
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