ESIX and MCA

[Bill Vermillion]

In article <5720 at crash.cts.com> jca at pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:
>pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
 
>>jca> ... | Small memory model only for
>>jca> ... | Unix?  Get the (*bleep*) out
>>jca> ... | of here!
   
>>Here you surpass yourself in subtlety: your irony here is that *all*
>>UNIXes on 386 allow you to run programs _only in the small memory model_
>>(even if the UNIX kernel actually runs in the large memory model, in a
>>small way :->).
 
>Keep in mind that the 386 isn't the only CPU that has Unix available for it. 
>I put that in my signature after finding out about Coherent's limitations. 
>Even got a nasty gram from someone from Mark Williams Company.  With respect
>to the 286, the signature is approprate.  And keep in mind that your flavor of
>Unix has to support 386 protected mode.  A 386 does not a 32-bit address sapce
>make.  Run Xenix 286 or uPort SysV/AT and you'll see what I mean, then you'll
>read into the semantics of the signature.  You may be narrow-minded enough to
>only see things in the 386, but I see it all over the place.

Well Coherenet is NOT Unix.   And as far as '286 Unix goes (or Xenix), it's
a dead issue as far a major vendors are concerned.

I have a site with many '286 machines.  Using Maynard Maynstream tape
backups.   Wanted to go to the 2.3.2 version of Xenix instead of the 2.2.3.
Maynard said the decided to support only '386 machines.  When I asked about
all their old users with '286s I got sort of "Yah, we found that out" and
"we finally decided to do a driver".  I have been trying for over 3 months
to get an answer of when.  Now my phone calls don't even get returned.  

If you are planning on running Xenix/Unix/*ix in anything less than a '386
you are looking to have to be able to support yourself.  My Xenix vendor
even indicated that the Xenix '386 support is hard to get, as it's all
going Unix '386 on SCO's side.
 
>If you think I can raise hell now, whichever Unix vendor I do decide to go
>with who doesn't give adequete support and bug fixes will have the opportunity
>to hear me do Sam Kinison over the phone.  I personally don't like losing my
>voice over tech support issues since I do that often enough as is, so it would
>be nice to see what's out there now before I buy.  First couple of times, I
>don't yell...it's after that then the person on the other end goes deaf.

Well, if you want that kind of support maybe you better not think about
using Unix!  :-)

-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill
                      : bill at bilver.UUCP