MSDOS 4.01 and SCO Xenix: Bad mix?

[Mike Stefanik/78125]

yee at aix02.aix.rpi.edu (Lester W Yee) writes:
>HELP!!!   I just spoke with a SCO pre-sales technical representative and 
>he indicated that MSDOS 4.01 and SCO Xenix are incompatible with each other.
>I was talking with the rep about SCO sys rel 3.2.2 and told me that it would
>only build the kernel correctly with DOS 3.3.  Now, my problem is that the
>computer came with DOS 4.01 and I have no way of go back down to 3.3.  Anyway,
>it looks like I can't use the product.  I also doubt I can use a previous 
>SCO rel either.. ARGG!!!  Has anybody installed SCO Xenix using 4.01??? 

Are you talking about DOS and XENIX using different partitions, or what?
If you just want XENIX on your machine, simply delete the DOS partition
and install XENIX.  If you want to share the disk between the two operating
systems, I couldn't see why not ... the "would only build the kernel correctly
with DOS 3.3" sounds a bit ridiculous ...

>Also, why is Xenix filename limited to 14 characters in length?  That is not
>much better than DOS 11 characters, worst than OS/2 which is suppose to 
>support 256 characters filename.  The sales rep was mentioning something about
>conforming to Posix standards.. What are Posix standards?  [...]

POSIX conformance means that the operating system in question conforms to
a set of standards on how operation systems should "behave"; note that POSIX
is not an implementation standard ... it doesn't matter how you do it, just
so long as you do.

I agree that 14 characters are a little light (32 would be a nice number),
but since UNIX allows both upper and lowercase in filenames, it allows more
variations than does DOS.  The reason for the limitation is that directory
entries are fixed-length records in a file, and long filenames would end up
wasting alot of disk blocks.  The BSD variable-length directory record
structure allows much longer filenames, and uses the space more efficiently.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Stefanik, Systems Engineer (JOAT), Briareus Corporation
UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
"If it was hard to code, it should be harder to use!"