System/6000 questions.

[Peter Jeffe 512.823.4091]

In article <40900001 at sunb6> voss at sunb6.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>	I am considering the purchase of a System/6000 Model 320.
>Before signing away my life to IBM, I've got some questions, and this
>seems to be the best place to ask them....
>
>1)  Will an RS 6000 act as an NFS server?  client?

Yes.  Yes.

>2)  Does it support SLIP?  Compressed SLIP?

Yes.  Not at present.

>3)  How fast can you push the 320's serial ports?  (I'ld love 56 kbps [ISDN])

The configuration menu shows 38.4, but check with your rep.

>7)  Compared with porting a BSD program to SYS V, or SYS V to BSD,
>    how difficult is it to port programs to AIX?

AIX3 has attempted to be posix/ansi/bsd/sysv compliant, with a hierarchy of
priorities where conflicts occur.  Having ported several BSD programs to AIX3,
I can say that aside from the well-known portability issues, I have found no
suprises, and had a real easy time of it.

>8)  Does AIX support the BSD three R's, rlogin, rsh, rcp?

Yes, yes, yes.

>9)  What do you think of AIX in general?  (I'm a BSD bigot myself.)
>    One person told me half jokingly:
>	"throw out the best of BSD, and the best of SYS V,
>	 what is left is AIX."
>    What do you think?

I think that's a bit silly; much of the kernel is drawn from both sources,
and I can say from first-hand experience that the tcp/ip/socket code is almost
indistinguishable from BSD tahoe, except where we've fixed bugs.  As for the
rest, it seems well-structured and reasonably lean, considering that IBM has
put in a fair amount of security code and other "enhancements" aimed at
satisfying customer demand.  I believe that other systems (including BSD 4.4)
have had to do the same.

>10) Does AIX come with /usr/man/man* or just /usr/man/cat* ?

It uses "info", which contains complete system documentation, from how to
write device drivers to command reference.  I believe man uses this data and
formats it in the standard way.  The data is avaliable on CD, and can also
be loaded on hard disk.  My experience is that it's a bit slower than a
traditional man, but it's much more comprehensive.  It also features hypertext
links, which can be useful.

>17) How many buttons on the standard mouse?

Three.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Jeffe   ...uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmchs!auschs!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe

        first they want a disclaimer, then they make you pee in a jar,
		   then they come for you in the night