NCR Tower & UNIX versions

[Robert L. Fair]

>Carl S. Gutekunst, Software R&D, Pyramid Technology writes..
>>> >By the way, does the Tower have a Unisoft port?
>>> >	Thanks in advance,
>>>
>>>The answer is yes, ( I think )  NCR UNIX release 1 was indeed
>>>UNISOFT based, and had a number of funnies like the ex problem
>>>above.
>>>
>>>To fix these problems ( & others...) NCR did their own 
>>>in-house port for their UNIX Release 2 (Out Spring 1985) 
>
>Unix release 2 was done by Human Computing Resources of Toronto, Ontario. This
>was allegedly Unix System V, and was developed primarily for the Tower XP. I
>haven't worked enough with it to comment.
>
>I believe that the only Unix software development done at NCR Columbia (where
>the Tower is made) is NCR's System Administrator menu package. NCR San Diego
>was working on their own System V port, but that was for the 9300/9400 series
>of minicomputers. That whole idea got trashed because corporate management
>didn't want the 9300/9400 to compete against Columbia's Tower XP and 68020
>products. 
>
>ncr-sd, are you guys listening? I want to make sure I'm not talking through

But where did you get your information ?? 

Before joining Bellcore I worked for NCR England on Tower & UNIX support, 
and also spent quite a while in the NCR Columbia Development plant 
in Jan/Feb this year.

At that time, NCR were certainly doing there own porting/development work,
including things like brand new new device drivers (one in particular was 
support for the Sky FPA board, which I had quite a lot to deal with). 
Other things which came from Columbia are the new version of 'cc' 
(based on 'pcc') and all the file locking  and power fail recovery stuff.

Also I've met some of the guys from NCR E&M San Deigo, and
don't believe **anything** you've heard about the UNIX 9300.
There were real (practical) reasons for it being dropped.
An independent company in the UK is doing their own
UNIX port (BSD-4.2 I think) onto the 9300,  but they are actually 
microcoding the 9300's processor - the 32-bit chip set is great 
for that, its a real shame more people don't use it.

Rob. Fair.
Bell Communications Research
Piscataway NJ

{gamma|topaz|bambi}!pyuxv!cim2