SCO UNIX <REPLACES> VMS and ULTRIX on new DEC product line

[Eric Schnoebelen]

In article <29029 at usc> annala at neuro.usc.edu (A J Annala) writes:
- In article <2777E87B.6392 at tct.uucp> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
- >According to annala at neuro.usc.edu (A J Annala):
- >>According to DEC's advertisement in Computer Reseller News, the new
- >>DEC 433MP System (1 to 6 coupled i486 CPU's, 64 MB global shared memory
- >>64 MB/s system bus, 1.2 GB internal hard disk) will not run any variety
- >>of VMS (or even ULTRIX) -- INSTEAD IT WILL RUN SCO UNIX!!!
- >Well, of course it won't run VMS.  VMS is coded in VAX assembler.
- 
- My friends tell me most of VMS is coded in a DEC proprietary language
- called BLISS.  BLISS exists for PDP-11's, PDP-10's, and VAXen -- DEC
- could have chosen to write a new BLISS compiler for the 80386 -- but
- that is not what happened -- instead, DEC adopted SCO UNIX for their
- new machine.  Moreover, in the process, DEC abandoned it's own ULTRIX 
- (DEC proprietary version of UNIX) in order to adopt SCO UNIX.

        One comment.  The reason that DEC most likely went with SCO is
that they have had a multi-processor OS (Unix?) for the '386 class chips
for at least a year.  And DEC certainly could not afford to port Ultrix
for the cost that they were able to purchase SCO's multi-processor
product.

        It costs lots of money and time to port an OS, and I can't see
DEC perceiving that much return from it's '386/'486 based products.  I
would suspect they built it to keep customers who wanted low end Unix
machines from DEC happy.  Remember that DEC also purchases MS-DOS PC's
from Tandy to keep those same customers happy.

        Dollars, not features, and availability, not ability caused DEC
to purchase the SCO product over it's own Ultrix product.

        I will make no comments on the value of the SCO product, since I
have not used it.  I did watch one gentleman install time and time again
in the process of trying to bring up a PICK product recently, but I have
no idea how much of that was related to SCO, the PICK product, or the
gentleman installing (although my bets are on the third!  :-)

-- 
Eric Schnoebelen		eric at cirr.com		schnoebe at convex.com
	... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in
		terror, and you would not have been informed.