Coherent: does it have AWK, GNU, ...?

[M.R.Murphy]

In article <1990Sep4.093103.4683 at utgard.uucp> chris at utgard.uucp (Chris Anderson) writes:
>In article <1990Sep2.093805.13164 at NCoast.ORG> ac119 at cleveland.freenet.edu writes:
>>
>>Very interesting to see Coherent mentioned here.  I just saw the ad for it
>>in PC Mag (9/11 issue).  This is a $99.95 software product that compares 
>>itself to something selling for $1,495!
>
>Wrongly so.  It is not in the same class as Xenix/286.  Coherent does
>*not* have virtual memory... you are limited to what will fit into
>your system's RAM.  Coherent is compiled with small model... 64k
>text and data.  This rules out *any* of the GNU software.  Coherent
>does not have a C compiler that supports any other models.  I'm not
>sure that you can run news on it.  Maybe C news, if the shell is up
>to it.
It certainly isn't in the same class as Xenix/286. It stays up for months at
a time. It is in the same class as V7. Coherent doesn't have virtual memory.
It does have swapping. Therefore, you are not limited to what will fit in
your system's RAM. BTW, small model in Coherent is the same address space size
as a PDP-11. It (Coherent) has i/d space and shared text segments. It's no
toy. uEmacs (GNU, no?) fits. So does elvis (a vi clone). Awk works (with bugs,
not the same bugs as on SV3.2.2, but bugs). Awk does FP calculations with no
FP chip. Good for the thrifty. Cron works, no observed bugs. Can one say the
same of Xenix/286?
>
>What it does have is a uucp that works.  It fits in roughly 10Mb of
>disk space fairly easily.  Yacc/lex/other development tools (keep
>that small model compiler in mind, though).
It was easy to port Berkeley Mail, smail2.5, and Deliver2.0. UUCP mostly
works, but has minor warts. Porting Berkeley UUCP shouldn't be too much pain.
>
>In other words, MWC is comparing itself against a product that does
>*much* more.  Faster?  You bet, especially since you don't have to
>take virtual memory into account.  It's roughly the same as Minix,
>without the source code and support that Minix has.
>

I would dispute that Xenix/286 will do *much* more. It looks like Coherent
will do most everything that V7 would do. That's a quite reasonable amount.

The support for Minix is the net, the sources, and the book. Support from
PH? :-)

Cnews will fit. Pathalias will not as written. When folks have megabytes of
memory, they fit the algorithm to the size. When they don't, they use another
algorithm (or send the product back :-). BTW, the smail2.5 as ported uses
a minimal paths file with a smart host. Hand edited, no big deal. Probably
better than keeping a 900kb paths file around, anyway.

It's more than Minix, and less. No sources for utilities or system. But the
Minix stuff can be ported to it, and it's fun to do. It's a fair bit faster
than Minix. Elvis was up and running less than an hour after unsharing the
stuff from alt.sources.

>BTW, we bought it.  And sent it back.

And got your dough back, too. With no hassle?

We bought it, too. And kept it. Also the drivers kit, with sources for
drivers. The price is right, and the manual alone is worth the money.

If you want to run pathalias out of the box on the full maps, don't buy
Coherent to do it. You'll be disappointed. If you want an inexpensive system
that is fast and capable of doing interesting things, then buy it or not.

We run an archive server for Coherent stuff. For the fun of it.
echo "help"|mail uunet!sceard!farfel!archive-server
to get started. farfel is a system that cost less than $1K. Including the
OS. And the modem. And the 40Mb disk. I was thinking of using a Sun 4/whatever
with 4Gb of disk and 24Mb of RAM, but I couldn't find one for less than $1K.

This posting should not be construed to indicate that the poster does not
have great respect for the various and sundry folk who brought out Xenix/286
SV3.2.2, and Sun4/whatevers. It may be taken as read that I miss the small is
real good and let's use little tools all piped together attitude of V7.

Disclaimer: I'm a satisfied user, nothing more. Your mileage may vary.
Read the manual first. Don't believe everything you read, this included.
-- 
Mike Murphy  Sceard Systems, Inc.  544 South Pacific St. San Marcos, CA  92069
mrm at Sceard.COM        {hp-sdd,nosc,ucsd,uunet}!sceard!mrm      +1 619 471 0655