Whatever happened to S-1?

[fwb at siemens.UUCP]

> I remember a few years ago reading about this "great" new operating
> system called S-1 that was supposed to blow away UNIX and everything
> else.  I saw ads for it and read about it on the net.  It was
> supposed to be available for a given number of machines with
> more ports planned.  Whatever became of it?  I haven't heard
> a word about it in years.  Was it really a hoax as some claimed?

They (Multi Solutions, Inc.) are still around.  They are just down Rt. 1
from us.  One of the groups here even had an evaluation copy for a while.  I
guess you could say that the ads were were typical of the software industry:
they were announcing their development plans, not an existing product.  MSI
was just a little more ambitious in their plans than other companies.

They do have a working OS which runs on a bunch of different boxes (mostly
68K, but also the IBM AT).  They have compilers for SL (their system
implementation language), and C.  I don't know what other compilers they
have.  The C library has most, if not all, of the functions in the BSD 4.2
library.  The editor is a clone of the IBM mainframe XEDIT.  They might have
one of the public domain emacs editors by now.  About 1 year ago, I saw a
demo of their networking capability.  They were a little premature in
scheduling that demo.

I don't know how they are doing right now.  There was an announcement in one
of the freebie magazines I get which said that they had some contract with a
Japanese firm.  It seems to me that they are thrashing around waiting to find
a market niche (or waiting for a market niche to find them :-).

The chief architect of S-1 is an acquaintance of mine.  I have great respect
for his technical ability.  I will reserve judgement on his marketing acumen.

Fred
-----------------------------------------------------
Frederic W. Brehm       (ihnp4!princeton!siemens!fwb)
Siemens Research and Technology Laboratories