IBC computers and Xenix

[Chris Lewis]

In article <67 at mdi386.UUCP> bruce at mdi386.UUCP (Bruce A. McIntyre) writes:
>In article <May.18.03.23.27.1989.22151 at pilot.njin.net>, scohen at pilot.njin.net (Stephen Cohen) writes:
>> I am interested in purchasing a IBC (Integrated Business Computers) 
>> 386:120 computer.
>> approximately 40 users.

>This system is an AT CLONE (Mylex/AMI motherboard) 16mhz, 4mb memory
>running SCO386V2.2.3 and with smail, vnews added.

People should also be aware that IBC manufactures and markets (or at least
used to) some 386 systems that are emphatically *not* AT style computers.  
So you should check.

Almost a year ago one of our clients was having trouble with their IBC
computer.  The system had a 386 main CPU, a 680x0 I/O processor, had SCSI
I/O ports (150Mb disk, 150Mb tape), no console adapter, mucho serial ports
etc. etc. all on two humongous boards without *any* PC/XT/AT slots.
Running some sort of mutant version of Microport UNIX (Microport denied any
responsibility for support - IBC had to do the port because all of the
drivers were different from a more standard "AT clone" style 386).

This machine was intended to run a moderately simple Informix application.

Didn't work very well.  System crashed on average a couple of times per week.
Even without crashes, the filesystems appeared to simply corrupt themselves
over a period of a day or so.  At one point we were reloading the Informix
database once a day because it was getting corrupted.  We completely
reinstalled Microport several times after double and triple checking 
configuration etc.

We never did find out what was going wrong with the poor thing.  The system
was sent back to IBC once before we got involved with it which resulted in a 
number of engineering changes (cuts and jumpers) being done to it.  Spent
a week or two talking to IBC trying to figure out what was happening.  They
didn't have a very effective software support organization (particularly
since *they* were the only people able to support Microport on it).  The
machine was sent back to IBC for more testing, but the shipper lost it.
(and the client had decided not to waste money insuring it...).

It sure was an interesting machine.  Had lots of potential.  My understanding 
was that Xenix was quite popular on it and worked well (though I have no 
first-hand knowledge of that) on quite a few of them.  There were very few 
Microport installations, so it's hard to tell what luck others had.

We suspect that we either had disk controller or driver-related problems.

My information is very stale, presumably these machines work a lot 
better now if they're still in production.  I strongly suggest that you 
obtain references to other people using a similar machine and configuration.

With respect to porting news software and the like - if the machine is
indeed similar to what I described, you may have difficulty in support, because
IBC is likely to lag Microsoft/SCO as far as releases and patches are 
concerned (because this machine is a true port).  So, you may be stuck
with bugs in compilers and other things that the AT clone people already
have fixes for.
-- 
Chris Lewis, R.H. Lathwell & Associates: Elegant Communications Inc.
UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo}!lsuc!gate!eci386!clewis
Phone: (416)-595-5425