SYS V R4 - When will it be released for Generic 386 boxes?
Dick Dunn
rcd at ico.isc.com
Wed Nov 15 12:01:13 AEST 1989
In article <824 at hsi86.hsi.UUCP>, stevens at hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) writes:
> Anyone know who will ship the first binary release of SVR4
> for any type of hardware ? AT&T for the 3B2 ? AT&T for their
> WGS 386 ? I can understand that all the third party suppliers
> have to integrate it with their drivers, etc.,...
>...If I, as an end-user, really can't get my hands on it for
> 6-12 months, then all the fanfare about its release last
> week is really a nonevent.
A demo at a trade show is usually NOT the event marking the introduction of
the product for real end-user sales. Now, I flame as much as anyone about
vaporware and non-announcements (tho I usually do it over in comp.arch:-),
but I contend that as long as the status of a demo is reasonably clear, it
serves a useful purpose.
If you see a V.4 system up and running on real hardware, you have some
reason to think that when vendors say "we'll have it available in nQ90" you
might believe them. There IS a lot of work to be done to make a system
which runs into a system which can be shipped as a product. However,
knowing that the system really exists in some halfway-functional form
still means something.
Perhaps it's easier to see this with hardware. Consider, for example, that
MIPS showed a very fast ECL machine at UNIX Expo. It's not shipping yet;
you can't even order one yet. BUT they're showing you that all the talk
you've heard about ECL RISCs is real; they've got the caches figured out;
they've got the OS running, etc. The "inventing" (the part you can't
schedule:-) is done; the technology exists. There may still be a lot of
work to be done to make the product, but it can be done.
Besides, there's a certain parity here. If people show things at the point
they reach "demo quality", and you see vendor (or consortium:-) X showing
something, but Y not showing anything comparable, you tend to suspect that
X is ahead of Y. If X and Y are both promising something for mid-'90, and
X has a demo but Y doesn't, you might have epsilon more faith that X will
deliver (IF it's a believable demo).
--
Dick Dunn rcd at ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870
...Keep your day job 'til your night job pays.
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