ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (04/09/86)
The question which has been on everybody's mind lately: "How serious are
these folks at Wendin with their ads for a $100 version of UNIX for XTs and
ATs?". The answer, it seems: damned serious! I have had a first look at
PCUNIX on my own little (Taiwanese) AT, and friends have the Wendin Toolkit,
and I am impressed. Granted, it is a first shot and they still have lots of
work to do, and granted many DOS programs won't run under it just yet, but
I'm impressed.
PCUNIX is the ONLY version of UNIX for 80x8x equipment so far which even
makes sense conceptually i.e. for which the basic design decisions have been
made correctly. They haven't wasted time with such things as AWK, YACC, VI,
EX etc. I mean, you can pick up any copy of any of the PC mags and find 35
ads for editors, most selling for $50 or less, ANY of which will radically
outperform VI/EX. Generally, the DOS software world is radically better than
that of UNIX; it makes NO sense to write a version of UNIX for 808x machines
which requires users to split their hard disk in half and abandon the DOS
software world while running UNIX. Wendin's system doesn't do that. It loads
from DOS, functions as a multi-tasking superset of DOS, and generally provides
most if not all of the aspects of UNIX which normal users ever have need for:
real pipes, real shells, real multitasking, real signaling.....
Wendin's documentation is far better than I expected from a new company; at
least as good as anything I've ever seen from Micro-Soft or AT&T. Their
toolkit makes sense even as a $100 cheapy course in operation system design.
DOS programs of reasonable size with reasonable behavior (no direct writing to
hardware) run well enough. WordPerfect doesn't run under PCUNIX just yet (
confusion as to whereabouts of files), Micro-Soft's C compiler runs, although
their linker doesn't (not enough stack space), edlin runs, but my two screen
editors don't (not enough memory).... Most of the problems, other than prog-
rams trying to write to memory, appear to be simple adjustments, things easily
fixed. The whole thing is basically fast. It allows 3 users on an AT, it
allows networking via simple translation of IO requests from comm ports into
local IO requests.... The whole package is neat. And, yes, they are hard
at work on a 286 protected-mode version; look for it around September or
October.
I would recommend that anyone interested in UNIX on ATs or XTs take a VERY
hard look at this one.ljz@well.UUCP (Lloyd Zusman) (05/08/86)
In article <532@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > > > > The question which has been on everybody's mind lately: "How serious are >these folks at Wendin with their ads for a $100 version of UNIX for XTs and >ATs?". The answer, it seems: damned serious! I have had a first look at >PCUNIX on my own little (Taiwanese) AT, and friends have the Wendin Toolkit, >and I am impressed. Granted, it is a first shot and they still have lots of >work to do, and granted many DOS programs won't run under it just yet, but >I'm impressed. [etc.] I find that although PCUNIX is a good idea and I concur with just about everything that's just been said, I have to say that I find it's difficult to use it in "real life" on my MSDOS system. Too many existing MSDOS programs just won't run. Editors and system linkers are pretty important pieces of software, and it's hard for me to find anything useful to do with my system without these. It _will_ run with Wendin's XTC editor though. But Wendin gives you source code, and they are working on the system. I say check it out, but don't be surprised if you find it difficult to do anything useful under this initial version of PCUNIX. Lloyd Zusman Master Byte Software (408) 395-5693