True UN*X System V on an IBM PC AT

[dan at prairie.UUCP]

In article <226 at fai.UUCP> stevem at fai.UUCP (Steve Minneman) writes:
>We are looking for a implementation of UN*X System V on the IBM PC AT.
>We have looked at the various versions of XEN*X and are not really happy
>with any of them.  Does anyone out there know of an operating system that
>is REAL for the IBM PC that looks and acts like true System V?

   Microport Systems of Aptos CA (tel 800 722 8649) sells AT&T System V,
Release 2 for the AT running in protected mode.  It includes such things
as vi, terminfo and curses, sdb, mailx (like Berkeley mail), sccs and
the new make, ditroff, C, f77, etc.  The best news is the price:  just
over $400 for the whole thing (run time, development, text processing).

   This is a very new product, and is not entirely mature.  If you get
it, you will be trading SCO bugs for AT&T bugs, especially in lint,
which is very unreliable in this release.  The compiler is very robust,
however, and generates good and accurate code in large model, which is
more than early Xenix did.  Huge model is not supported, and may never
be.  I had little trouble bringing up news, rn, uumail, and a dbm
library.  Being System V, the SV compatibility is no problem.

   Other features include the ability to use the same modem for incoming
and outgoing calls without special arrangments (demand bidrectional
uucp feed is nice!), four virtual terminals on the console, ability
to read and write DOS file systems, including hard disks (shaky, at
the moment), support for non-standard hard drives, and an optional
port of the Berkeley cshell and 'more' (the SV pager is bidirectional,
and is called 'pg').  The ability to run Xenix binaries is coming ATN.

   SV R3 is on the way.  A good guess would be availability at the
end of the calendar year, if AT&T keeps its delivery promises to its
licensees.

   Hope this helps ...



-- 
	Dan Frank
	    {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4}uwvax!geowhiz!netzer!prairie!dan
	    -or- dan at caseus.wisc.edu