vp/ix and merge

[Greg A. Woods]

In article <968 at digi.lonestar.org> dmason at digi.lonestar.org (David Mason) writes:
> Thanks to all who have Emailed me and responded here.  The consenus
> I am getting is that Merge is more "integrated" with the UNIX environment
> and is easier to set up and maintain, but that VP/ix is a better PC
> emulation and might have fewer compatibility problems. 

I hope you didn't get that from anything I said!  :-)

In hoping to keep this simple..... I would say that Merge makes UNIX
look and feel more like DOS, at the kernel level.  I'm not sure what
you meant by "integrated", but I would say that VP/ix has one hell of
a lot more respect for the UNIX environment and philosophy.

VP/ix has special hooks for allowing protected access to hardware
through the normal UNIX devices.  I've not had to study this much in
quite some time, but last time I looked, it appeared that this
facility would allow me to use normal UNIX security features to
protect access to special devices, such as 3270 emulator cards.  This
was something Merge could not do at the time, and from my
understanding of the design of Merge, it will never be able to do this.

My hazy memory of other aspects of VP/ix and Merge design also gives
preference to VP/ix, mostly because of the UNIX philosophy argument
cited above.

> It sounds like the difference
> between Merge and VP/ix may not be as important as the differences between
> the various UNIXes as a whole, and that DOS under UNIX is one factor
> in a bigger equation.

I would say that the difference between Merge and VP/ix, at the
design level (as per my hazy memory), is as great as the difference
between MS-DOS and UNIX!  :-)

In terms of the differences between various UNIXes, the only trouble
I've ever encountered is with the half-baked attempts to merge BSD and
ATT philosophy and features.

As for general usability of VP/ix, I've had no problems, other than
the normal config problems with terminals and such, which one ususally
experiences with any application designed around the requirement for
dozens of function keys.  I have used MS-C to cross compile
applications, all from one makefile, using the UNIX make to drive
MS-C.  With care in the configuration, any DOS or UNIX commands can be
used at any time, regardless of the current environment.

The only compatability problem I've had was with MS-C 5.01 and VP/ix
1.01.00 under ISC's 386/ix 1.0.6.  But then the MS-C compiler has
compatability problems anyway, since it appears they use some weird
version of stdio, much different from the one in the supplied library.

If you truely believe that there are things you cannot do with UNIX to
do your day-to-day business, why are you trying to run UNIX?  If you
want to keep an existing investment of DOS hardware and software, why
not get a nice integrated network (such as Starlan) to tie things
together?  You don't have to worry about the impact of DOS under/over
UNIX, and your users each get individual workstations.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP
+1-416-443-1734 [h]  +1-416-595-5425 [w]    VE3-TCP	Toronto, Ontario CANADA