steve@wolf.UUCP (Steve Harrison) (05/21/86)
I cannot sit back and listen to the things one computer magazine is saying about a large computer company in the US and it's wonderful new technological breakthrough in O/S's without making a comment. PC-Week has hit new limits (depths that is) in managing to talk the public into believing in a large Blue God! I am sure this article will draw some comments by anyone who read the front page story of PC-Week May 20, 1986. I think it is time that someone say something and I welcome all comments from the net. I intend on summarizing all and sending a letter off to the editors! Throughout this article, written by Garry Ray, he talks of the new operating system which IBM is planning to release, in MARCH 1987!, and how IBM has been presenting it to developers and software houses in technical seminars. "Sources" claim that the new operating system will split the IBM PC product line. Does this sound familiar to any of you! Garry even states at one point, and I quote, "To speed processing of multiple applications, and to conserve system memory, the operating system will be able to allocate and deallocate regions of memory based on a least recently used algorithm. For example, should memory be needed by an application, the operating system could send a program segment to disk, subsequently reloading it to memory when needed again". If this doesn't sound like an operating system that has been in use for years (say 15!) I must have been on another world these last 20 years! Even micros have had capability now for over three years! It is time for PC Users to begin to awaken and see the light at the end of the tunnel. The operating system that I keep hearing that "power" PC users want is already there when will someone (maybe AT&T) start informing them of this? An operating system due to be released in March 1987 is a rather ludicrous pie in the sky to wait for when something is already there. Shame on PC Week for such one sided reporting. I am beginning to wonder what type of journalism is practiced there. To Garry Ray I say, this has been posted from a PC/AT running SCO XENIX System V that routinely supports (say 6 hours a day) 2 dial-in busers and 2 uucp connections. It can be done now! AT&T has even moved on to a better scheme that what IBM is proposing for its "new" DOS. Steven Harrison Systems'n'Software ihnp4!jack!man!wolf!steve
jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) (05/22/86)
The interesting sentence in this article was the part about "whose internal processes resemble those in Microsoft Windows." I don't know as much as I'd like, but that sounds like they are doing a message-based system, or at least using a metaphor to that effect. That doesn't sound too much like un+x. I didn't see in the article that the new DOS was being supplied by Microsoft, or particularly, non-proprietary. They also seem to imply that the DOS has "dynamic linking." Other whiz-bang features described at the end of the article "sound real neat." So is this all MS-DOS I.J? or what.
d25001@mic.UUCP (05/27/86)
>PC-Week has hit new limits (depths that is) in managing to talk the >public into believing in a large Blue God! If I were in a similarly unfair mood, I might suggest that you would replace this with a large Blue Devil! >Throughout this article, written by Garry Ray, he talks of the new operating >system which IBM is planning to release, in MARCH 1987! ... If this doesn't >sound like an operating system that has been in use for years (say 15!) I must >have been on another world these last 20 years! Even micros have had capability >now for over three years! > >It is time for PC Users to begin to awaken and see the light at the end of the >tunnel. The operating system that I keep hearing that "power" PC users >want is already there when will someone (maybe AT&T) start informing them >of this? An operating system due to be released in March 1987 is a rather >ludicrous pie in the sky to wait for when something is already there. Now I understand, PC-Week has been worshiping at the shrine of the wrong corporate deity! Shame on you PC week! :-) Seriously UN*X did not invent _all_ of the attributes of the modern operating system; IBM/Microsoft may have gotten some ideas elsewhere. I shall admit, however, that historically DOS can well be described as CP/M trying to become UNIX. Even so for the average PC user there is one BIG reason not to simply plug un*x into his PC. XENIX (and all the other unices except the Wendin version) will not run DOS executables. For many it may be less painful to wait a nine months to a year for an almost-un*x that offers some degree of compatibility rather than junk all their existing software investment and start over from scratch with 'real' un*x. Of course, if DOS-5.0 won't run existing EXE files; then, you are right, it might as well BE un*x. >Shame on PC Week for such one sided reporting. I am beginning to wonder >what type of journalism is practiced there. PC-Week is primarily a rumor mill. Take anything that you read there with several grains of salt. Carrington Dixon UUCP: { convex, infoswx, texsun!rrm }!mcomp!mic!d25001
jso@edison.UUCP (John Owens) (06/04/86)
> The interesting sentence in this article was the part about > "whose internal processes resemble those in Microsoft Windows." > > So is this all MS-DOS I.J? or what. Yes, indeed, this is MS-DOS 5.0. I don't know if MS is supplying it to others *yet*.... [Note the earlier PC Week article about MS-DOS 4.0 (multitasking, no protected mode), that most american vendors decided to skip, waiting for 5.0. This is it.] John Owens edison!jso%virginia@CSNet-Relay.ARPA [old arpa] edison!jso@virginia.EDU [w/ nameservers] jso@edison.UUCP [w/ uucp domains] {cbosgd allegra ncsu xanth}!uvacs!edison!jso [roll your own]
btb@mtuxo.UUCP (Bruce Burger) (06/07/86)
> PC-Week has hit new limits (depths that is) in managing to talk the > public into believing in a large Blue God! PC Week defines itself as the weekly newspaper of IBM standard microcomputing. My personal guess is that they won't give UNIX a great deal of press until IBM PC users show substantial interest in UNIX. > Even so for the average PC user there is > one BIG reason not to simply plug un*x into his PC. XENIX (and all the > other unices except the Wendin version) will not run DOS executables. Until now. On the AT&T PC 6300 Plus, UNIX has a feature called "Simul-Task" that lets you run not just DOS executables, but DOS itself. UNIX SVR2 runs in protected mode; MS-DOS 3.1 runs in real mode under the control of UNIX. --Bruce Burger AT&T Information Systems Freehold, NJ {...ihnp4!}mtuxo!btb