SCO Support

[John C. Archambeau]

amull at Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) writes:
>
>I am pretty well known as a dead-set anti-UNIX guy who prefers
>DOS, but I do have experience with SCO, (they support my UNIX
>SystemV/386 r3.2 since it's their fault...). 
 
Glad to meet you, I'm established as an anti-DOS person myself and wouldn't
mind taking the SPARCstation 1 on my desk at work home for an indefinate
period of time.

I wouldn't blame SCO for System V.  AT&T is responsible for that mess
originally.  After using System V on an AT&T 3B series for awhile, one
realizes this very quickly and once somebody is exposed to BSD Unix 4.3 or
SunOS 4.0.3 one realizes how much AT&T screwed up.  Call AT&T for the latest
version of System V and they will give you some gawd awful number that
reflects a new Swiss bank account number.  Why companies license System V Unix
is a mystery to me, I personally would love to see a more BSD oriented Xenix
or Unix for a generic 386 box, but the only thing out there is SunOS 4.0.2 for
a Sun 386i and that has a $20,000 price tag for the 25 MHz model.

>My problem with SCO is the distribution media doesn't read well
>on my systems (Compaq Deskpro 386S, Nothgate Elegance 386/20).
>I have rock solid floppy drives in both, and have extensively
>tested these since my problems with SCO's distribution disks.
>SCO keeps suggesting that I have rather shabby hardware, etc.
>When I try to install stuff, I have about a 30% chance of getting
>the 'Error: Disk not in Drive' problem. 
>
>Lest anybody think I can't read manuals, or have strange inabilities
>to close my drive doors, then maybe SCO has a place for you in
>tech support. On the other hand, they have offered to swap the
>media (as much for their quality control as my satisfaction) but
>I would say that their support is on a par with most DOS support
>I've needed; (Quarterdeck, for example, SoftKlone, or Microsoft.)

It could be that the disks got x-rayed or were exposed to a magnetic field
during shipping.  Of course, there's always Murphy's law that gave you that
bad set of disks that tested ok when SCO shrinkwrapped them, but just didn't
have that long of a lifetime.  It happens, nothing is this world is perfect,
MS-DOS is a prime example of that.  :)  I've had disks that would format ok
and then just die a few days later, admittedly they are few and far between,
but it happens.  Don't blame SCO for it since they didn't manufacture the
media, they only put their product on it.  If the media is bad, send it back
and they'll send you another set of disks.
 
                                                // John C. Archambeau

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