SysVR3 port for UNIX PC (*LONG*)

[Lenny Tropiano]

In a previous article, I said ...

|>At this current time, I believe were at a stand-still.  To make the 
|>SVR3 port worthwhile, one would need to keep compatibility with the rest
|>of the UNIX pc-specific operating system features. (ie. loadable device
|>drivers, the device drivers themselves, etc...)
|>

In article <2928 at umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> rhealey at ub.d.umn.edu (Rob Healey) writes:
|>	Hmmm, sounds like the reasoning behind the stratagy of a company
|>	named Intel... Appologys to Lenny, but do we lose the
|>	possiblity of a SysVR3 UNIX because it can't support some of
|>	the fringe areas of the UNIX PC? I could live with having to
|>	mkboot/mkunix a 'la 3b2/xxx if that meant I could have Rev 3
|>	or higher UNIX. Opinions of my fellow unix-pc'ers???? If I
|>	can add drivers by relinking and rebooting I WOULDN'T complain,
|>	how about the rest of you? What's the net.opinion here?
|>
...
Ok, want some reasoning!!  I'll give you some :-)

1.  A lot of us have invested a lot of money in hardware for this machine,
    namely Voice Power boards, StarLAN NAU boards, DOS-73 co-processors, 
    Tape controllers, EIA/RAM combo boards, etc.   Now think about it.  
    We'll never see the source to products like these (without paying 
    the piper... and in a lot of cases the sources weren't even written by
    AT&T ... eg. Alloy/DOS-73) Should I just throw away my boards 
    because I can't use the loadable device driver that came with it?  
    (Note your idea about doing mkboot/mkunix is great (and nothing says
    it wouldn't be part of the UNIX port -- if there was one), but without 
    object (.o) files to link to the kernel, it's pretty much useless for 
    these things ...)

2.  Writing hardware specific device drivers (... now that sounds silly,
    all device drivers are hardware specific ...) for this machine will
    be very hard.  Who's going to tell us the information needed to
    control the on-board-modem.  Shall we just forget about that?
    What about the WE838A Dialer/Network chip, that is slated as
    _AT&T Proprietary_, and no one can get specs on...  how are we going
    to control that hardware?

3.  There are some *VERY* big benefits to loadable device drivers.  Relinking
    and Rebooting a machine for device driver development is the pits.
    Trust me, I've done it enough on my 6386E WGS in the office!  Nothing
    like killing 5-10 minutes a shot.  And if the device driver fails,
    God help you ... start the relink/reboot cycle all over again!
    With loadable devices, it can be bound and unbound on a running kernel!

4.  Keeping existing compatibility with UNIX pc binaries ... yes, there are
    lots of Commercial Software packages I'd just love to throw away because
    I can't use them on my machine anymore... :-)  (ie. Paint Power,
    Informix, GSS*Chart, Smart, LPI-F77, etc...)  Most of these are
    compiled with the UNIX pc shared library.  So we'd need to keep
    some sort of compatibility there, plus give the ability to make new
    shared libraries (mkshlib)... 

5.  A lot of programs depend on the window driver, what I'd like to see here
    is to write some sort of "X" based window manager, and have compatibility
    libraries/compatibility modes for the existing UNIX pc applications.
    Even AT&T kept compatibility for TAM applications in their 6386WGS SVR3.2
    port (not that I'm any fan of TAM).  But it does keep the transition and
    migration period to the SVR3.2 UNIX much easier for UNIX pc TAM
    applications..

6.  And one last thing ... do you feel like writing a hard disk device 
    driver for this machine?   I don't... especially since one was already
    written, and it's working (at least the last time I checked ;-)). 
    What I would like to do is enhance on it, add the hooks for 
    additional drives (for John Milton's efforts ...) and make more 
    things "tunable parameters", much like the SVR3.2 is... (ie. NMOUNT ...)

|>	If some company came out with SysVR3 for the UNIX PC but it
|>	DIDN'T have loadable device drivers and shared librarys a 'la
|>	3.5x would you refuse to buy it? Lets have a survey!!! Assume
|>	you could relink the kernel a 'la 3b2/xxx and that shared
...
I wouldn't buy it, for all reasons above. That's why it wouldn't be worth 
it for a company to start something like this.  If someone wanted "true" SVR3
or higher compatibility ... and scrap all the nice things about this
machine (and I do consider loadable device drivers a *feature*) and scrap
all the software for the machine, and scrap all the internal hardware
(on-board-modem, dialer), and scrap all the extra external peripherals,
when why would I want *this* particular machine.   I could EASILY go
sell my two 3B1 machines, the entire thing, two drives [134MB] (one machine), 
one on the other, Tape drive, DOS-73, StarLAN, two EIA/RAM combo boards, 
one with 1.0 extra RAM, and the other fully populated with 1.5), 
expansion box, two Voice power boards, 3.5" floppy, all my documentation 
(hardware reference manual, etc..), and software (Phhhhheeeew.... 
that's a mouth-full) for enough money to buy a UNIX box that runs SVR3.

What I would like to see most of all are all the bugs worked out of
this kernel, get something decent. I think the machine is great (if you
haven't guessed already), and it has a lot of nice features -- its a nice
working UNIX environment!

|>	I'm well aware that there would be NASTY problems porting the UNIX PC
|>	drivers from dynamically loadable ones to statically linked ones
|>	but, the rest of the UNIX world seems to handle the restriction
|>	OK. 
...
Without source?  I doubt it...  I'm not that good at reverse engineering!

...
|>	needed to make this happen? There MUST be enough of us out there
|>	to finance a project like this. Assuming there are only 1000 of
|>	us at $600.00 a head, thats 600,000 dollars. Surely $600,000 plus
|>	some contributions from the crowd could get SysVR3.2 on our
|>	7300/3b1's!?
|>
Yes, I've thought of that.  There are big *legal* and logistical problems
with a group purchase of the source.  I guess if someone wanted to risk
$600 to a project that might not get completed (look at the IDT SCSI
project that was scraped -- probably because of lack of information about
the machine...), then by all means, make your checks out to 
"Lenny Tropiano UNIX PC Donation fund" :-) :-)

|>	Praise to Lenny and Tom for rustlin' up those $50.00 a shot
|>	3.51 OS's! I'm Mooooooooocho grateful guys! What patch disk
|>	sets are needed for it, just a?
...
You're welcome...  Who knows, we might have some more deals down the
road.  Maybe Tom will find a warehouse of 3B1's or PC7300 stashed away, 
some Ethernet boards, or some Development sets ...

I'll keep you posted!

-Lenny
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