UNIX for the PC,AT -- Venix

[Dan Packman Acad Bob Chatfield]

*
Here is some more info on Venix for those who replied to the summary of
> 			\tom haapanen
> 			watmath!watdcsu!haapanen
- How is it performance-wise?

  About as good as can be expected for an XT.  Local word at the University
  of Colorado is that  Venix ~~ PC/IX  >> Xenix  for speed.  It is certainly
  faster than my current access to an overloaded 11/70.  The "cu" program
  is the only one that is noticeably too slow -- but it does work.  I could
  not find anyone locally who could make the PC/IX version called "connect"
  work.  Not surprising, as an Interactive employee admitted several months
  ago that there was a real problem with the RS-232 handling, which, however,
  he said would be fixed.  That was enough to turn me from PC/IX.  

- What size of a hard disk and memory is required?
  
  The XT 10 Mb is perfectly adequate for the concise implementation Venix
  offers.  I forget the minimum size, but it is somewhere ~ 5, without
  undue strain.  I use about 2.5 Mb for PC/DOS.  Of course you don't get
  online manuals, a large dictionary, sccs, etc.  I figured I could port
  in public domain versions of what I really wanted, e.g., rcs *or*
  Kernighan and Pike put/get.

- Does it run on a PC AT?
  
  I believe that PC Week reported that it does, several weeks ago.

- Are you happy with it?
  
  Editor:
  I like vi the best.  It's quite fast enough for me, and has been
  reasonably customized for the IBM Keyboard.  PC/IX has also customized
  INed for the IBM Keyboard, and that's the ONLY way I'ld use that editor.
  INed might be interesting for FORTRAN hackers -- FORTRAN on some other
  machine, of course -- who want to move around boxes of text.  Otherwise,
  vi is the clear winner.  My four-screen Venix allows me to do multiple
  vi's on one file, and get a reasonable approximation of windows with
  limited PC screen resolution.

  Devices:
  Venix does a fairly good job of providing termcaps, nroff tables, plot
  filters, etc, for devices that are likely to be attached to a PC.  The
  Epson printer is well supported for things like graphics.  Does PC/IX
  do this? I think not.  Venix provides a slightly worked-up graphics
  interface that seems pleasant to use.
  
  Constellation of commands and tools:
  Not large, but just about what I wanted.  Several Berkeley implementations,
  but few commands, e.g.,  head,  that may be easily duplicated by aliases
  or short commands.  A nice  more  command. 

  C shell:
  Having watched a colleague struggle with PC/IX, I'm quite thankful
  for the C shell for interactive work.

- How do you interact with MS-DOS

 Currently, only through commands that do writes, reads, and directory
 listings on DOS floppies.  Recent literature from Venix claims my
 version also writes to the DOS partition, but I haven't made that work.
 The Connector is my hope for running PC-DOS applications.

- Who was the vendor, and were you happy with him?

 Unisource sells the Venturcom product.  Yep, they're small, but my
 limited experience with their support is that they're helpful.
 The main complaint is that the company policy seems a bit short-sighted.
 They seem to hold add-ons close to their chest, rather than popularizing
 the product by promoting interuser exchange.  They wouldn't send a review
 copy to Unix Review for some long time.

 Otherwise, they do SELL device drivers for a variety of other peripherals
 like large hard disks and 488 interfaces.  They're selling Firefinch
 FORTRAN about which I know nothing.  They do have a new release, already.
 They have a 3COM Ethernet interface.

				    Robert Chatfield:       seismo!hao!acad
				    National Center for Atmospheric Research
				    Boulder  CO 80307