Norton Utilities Under UNIX 386?

[Dominic Dunlop]

In article <3580 at zorba.Tynan.COM>, jtc at van-bc.UUCP (J.T. Conklin) writes:
>In article <3566 at zorba.Tynan.COM> uunet!esegue.segue.boston.ma.us!johnl (John R. Levine) writes:
>>We are indeed porting the Norton Utilities, though reimplementing turns out
>>to be a better word -- undeleting files under Unix is handled completely
>>differently that it was under DOS, for example.
>
>Why even try?

Well, it would fill a much-needed gap...  But seriously, the May 14 issue
of UniNews, ``The Biweekly Newsletter for UniForum Members'' headlines the
Norton Utilities for System V.  It says, in part,

``Peter Weiner, founder of both InterActive Sytems and Segue Software
[which did the reimplementation for UNIX] (and current president of the
latter), says developers used to think UnErase wasn't possible in UNIX,
because it would seem to involve changes to the UNIX kernel.

``Segue's solution, according to Mark Allen Kempe, senior member of Segue's
technical staff, was to add a device driver that lets one change functions
without dealing with the kernel.  The process required in-depth and
real-time analysis of the UNIX file system and sophisticated algorithms
that would point out when to save programs [sic] and when to let them
disappear.  More than 700,000 lines of code had to be reworked to complete
the entire suite of tools and to optimize the code for UNIX.

``The Norton Utilities for System V operates on a variety of 386- and
486-based microcomputers, including the IBM PS/2 Models 70 an 80 and
Compaq's Deskpro 386.  Th package requires the Interactive UNIX (386/ix)
operating system, version 2.0 or higher, or AT&T's System V/386 Release
3.2.

``Interactive will jointly promote the Norton Utilities for System V along
with Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.  Both companies have individual
agreements with Interactive to port the program to their platforms in the
fourth quarter of 1990...

``Ajit S. Gill, vice president of Interactive's product division, says that
a port for SCO's System V/386 will follow shortly.  Ports for AIX and
Ultrix are being considered.''  [Interesting to note that both these OS's
have filesystem structures which differ greatly from (improve markedly on)
that of vanilla system V.]

Can't be bothered to copy-type any more.  Post something to comp.newprod
why don't you, ISC?  Maybe you already did.
-- 
Dominic Dunlop