Rusty (Fe2O3)Haddock <Haddock%ti-csl.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> (11/16/84)
I had promised this response a while back to the person collecting
all the S-1 comments. As stated below this is only a general response
and there was insufficent time to go one-by-one and reply to all of the
messages that were collected. If you'd care to send mail to Gray
Huggins you'll have to send it to me and I'll forward via our local
DECNet.
-Rusty-
---------------
Here is a basic reply that I would like to send for now. A more detailed
reply might be merrited in the future.
S1 lives! I have visited Multi Solutions twice and have been most impressed
with the staff and their product. On the second trip, I spent two weeks with
MSI to port S1 to the Sage II 68000 system. Their claim is that S1 can be
ported to another system in one week. They weren't far wrong, it took four
days. After porting directly to the Sage devices, we decided it would be
better to port using Sage's Ram Bios. This took another four days. All total,
two ports in eight days.
As all I have done is use S1 as a programmer to modify low level interrupt
routines necessary for the portin, I cannot comment on S1 in general. However,
I would like some of the S1 critics to know that it is NOT vaporware. It has
been seen and demonstrated, and is not a grad students dream and a marketing
guy's hype!
I would hope this reply will encourage others to take a real look at S1 and
not throw stones based on hearsay.
Regards,
Gray Huggins
This in no way reflects the opion of my employer, Texas Instruments, they
simply have provided me with the resources to send this mail.
-------hans@log-hb.UUCP (Hans Albertsson) (11/18/84)
[]
One definition of vaporware is that it's not possible to get in touch with
it's distributors. This is the case with Multi Solutions, and S1.
We have tried to contact them several times, but they JUST DON'T BOTHER to
answer. Hence they ARE vapor. And if they want to seem solid, how about
simply responding to potential customers requests.
This is a standard complaint about american companies, they rarely seem to
think european requests worth thinking about. Same often goes for the larger
universities.
This concerns official contacts, mind you, private or other unofficial
communication works OK with the US.
--
Hans Albertsson, USENET/uucp: {decvax,philabs}!mcvax!enea!log-hb!hans
Real World: TeleLOGIC AB, Box 1001, S-14901 Nynashamn,SWEDENgwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (12/06/84)
The "S1" marketing makes AT&T's look good by comparison.
Ron Natalie <ron@BRL-TGR> (12/07/84)
My favorite thing about S1 is how they degrade UNIX. I have a quote from John Littlemind the president of Multisolutions that was printed in Electronics magazines issue on UNIX. He is detailing what is wrong with UNIX. Most of the inadequacies he cites have been fixed even in the less progressive AT&T releases. The quote we have is the one saying that using UNIX in a multiprocessor environment is impossible due to inherenct deciencies in it's design. The quote is glued to the front of our Purdue style dual VAX running 4.2 BSD using both CPU's. The machine sits accros the room from the Gould PN/6080 also running UNIX on two CPU's. I think someone should tell Convergent and Denelcor and all those other people that they can't do multiprocessor UNIX (they didn't know it was impossible when they did it). Doing multiple CPU UNIX has been known since 1975 (back before John could probably spell UNIX) where the Naval Postgraduate School published a paper on the subject. Unfortunately back then there wasn't any good machine to use for multiprocessor work. The modifications to the 4.2 Kernel to support the second CPU is minimal, the hardest part being what you have to do the VAX to get the second CPU running rather than what you have to do the the UNIX CPU to support multiple CPUs. -Ron S1: It slices, it dices, it makes jullienne fries, but you've got to hit that sucker just right.
dan@rna.UUCP (12/18/84)
x The newest S1 ad is many times more offensive than the original ad for S1. At least the old S1 was completely humorous in its listings of "everything you've always wanted and dreamed" features of vaporware. The latest S1 ad is a totally irreverent, pompous piece of crap. In the ad, it is pictorially suggested that the use of UNIX is theologically equivalent to breaking the Ten Commandments, and that "Thou shalt not take the name S1 in vain." Sorry...