aam@pucc-h (Dwight McKay) (10/15/84)
(* bug-buster *) Here's an editted summary of the few replys I've gotten to my query about UNIX for Apple's Lisa. It is being posted to several groups because: 1) I was asked to post it to that group (net.micro) 2) I feel (I can see the flames already) it belongs in the group (68K, apple, apple32). My original question was two fold: 1) What's available? 2) How well does it support the Lisa hardware (bit-map, mouse, etc.) Along the way I've gotten some useful info on the hardware requirements as well. First, there seem to be two choices, a release of XENIX from The Santa Cruz Operation and a release of System V from UniPress (it's really the UniSoft 68k port they (UniPress) says). I got a reply from SCO which makes their product sound pretty nice, some highlights were: From: ihnp4!amd!sco!dwight Subject: UniPress System V for Lisa, reviews? ... Granted, XENIX is System III and not System V. However, we have a very full package for it (including a LAN, in the full standard package). From the comments that we're recieving from customers, they are very pleased with not only the quality of the software, and it's spectrum, but also with the level of support that we offer. Ignoring my obvious bias for our XENIX, I personally believe that it's the best UNIX implementation availible for the lisa, especially when one considers all that we have to offer for it. As I mentioned earlier, I do all of my development directly on the Lisa. I think that the Lisa is an outstanding workstation environment. And I've found that the multi-screen capability of our XENIX makes it into an incredibly powerful tool. We support the Lisa 2. I believe that we currently ship with just the profile disks (both 5 and 10 mb). However, support will be availible in the near future for running some of the other hard disk systems that are around. Personally, if I were buying one, I'd stay away from the Apple Profile disks. They are *slow*. One can get a reasonable amount of work done; but there are times when it gets a little frustrating. You should really play around with one for yourself and see how you like the feel of it. For a low-cost disk system, with a reasonable amount of response time and storage, the disks like the Sunol and the Corvus come to mind. These run about $2-3K, and are much better than the Profile. Check with our marketing departments about the specifics of availibility. The address is below. Xenix on the Lisa is pretty hot, with a lot of software thrown in. Check out the multi-screen capability, as it makes backgrounding obsolete. ----- Dwight also included the address of SCO where he says folks should write for further information, etc. It is: SCO 500 Chestnut St. Santa Cruz, Calif 95061 (408)425-7222 UniPress also replied. They were a bit more terse and had this to say: From: Mike Gallaher <ucbvax!allegra!sunrise!unipress!mg> Subject: Re: UniPress System V for Lisa, reviews? "UniPress UNIX" is really the UniSoft 68K port of System V. It contains the full SysV distribution minus stuff like online manuals and accounting software (they are there, but do not fit on the disk). We don't have Lisp, but we do have lots of other stuff like Emacs. It is not stripped down, a la Radio Shack. Performance is about what you would expect from a 1 Meg 68K at 5 MHz (it's not a Sun!) but it is OK for one or two users. The bit map is accessible through the phys sys call, and the mouse is accessible through /dev/mouse. This is not a bad choice at university discounts. -------- Commentary (my own opinion on the above): I was surpirised how few responces I got (six, two of them from SCO, two asking me to post results.). I guess few folks are using Lisa's to run UNIX and have a net connection. The XENIX release from SCO sounds well supported but I've got a bais against XENIX, although I wish someone else out there could give me another glowing report. I'm almost tempted to get it. I'm not happy with the System V report, although I'd like to try it out and compare it with XENIX in terms of performance. Me? Well, I'm still getting the money together for the Lisa to run all this nice stuff so I'm going to keep on researching this. I hope this helps inform those of you who were interested enough to read this lengthy reply. Thanks. -Dwight McKay -- -- Dwight McKay, PUCC user services -- {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!Pucc-H:aam -- "Are we having fun now?"