Microport System V/386 install woes

[wtr at moss.ATT.COM]

In article <1984 at sugar.UUCP> karl at sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer)
writes:
>I'm helping a friend of mine who owns a computer store try
to install $1200 worth of Microport software on a 386/20 clone.
It has three meg of RAM and an 80 meg Seagate drive. 

>First off, the surface analysis program doesn't work.  It bombs.

If you are going with the the seagate drive, try using the seagate
DISKMANAGER software (not actually seagate's, but they distribute it
with their drives) boot dos and use this to do your low level & bad
block scan.  this tends to make installation a lot easier.  this is
not a fault of microport and/or unix, but rather a good point of
dos: it's easier to use a simplistic program loader for basic system
checking/formatting.

>The fact is, installing Microport Unix is still for gurus only
(unless my experiences have been very rare rather than, as I
suspect, pretty common) [...] Sys V/386 install procedures seem to
be as painful as Sys >V/AT ones. 

which are as painfull as System V ones,... (etc. :-)

you have a very good point,  what we need is a decent installation
method that is as painless (as possible) while allowing many
different  configurations of hardware.  up to this point, unix was
for 'gurus' only.  but now that it's being ported down to the
desktop, we must look at making the system admin as friendly as
possible.  unfortunately, the installation is still 'targetted' to
those who have experience in the os.

microport installation is not for the weak stomached ;-)

don't give up.  unix (ala microport) is a real dog the first time
through, but i found my second installation (when i replaced my hard
drive) went much easier and faster.  and i've since gone and
installed on a third machine, with different drive, etc, and i found
that it was no real problem.

good luck!

=====================================================================
Bill Rankin
Bell Labs, Whippany NJ
(201) 386-4154 (cornet 232)

email address:		...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd allegra ]!moss!wtr
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