lsn@duke.UUCP (08/03/83)
I just ran across a copy of an article printed in Unix review
june/july 83 called Unix on the IBM personal computer....
It is a very interesting article comparing all of the unices
available for the PC. They chose not to recommend any one of them
as better than the others, since they all had strong and weak
points. I suggest that anyone who is interested in getting
some sort of unix for the pc should grab a look at the article.
Here is a summary table at the end of the article.
Company Product Price Unix MS-DOS Multi- Hard disk Applic
support user support Features
------- ------- ----- ---- ------- ------ --------- --------
Mark Williams Coherent $500 V7 None +$300 XT Ethernet
1430 W Wrightwood corvus support
Chicago IL 60616 Davong
312 472-6656 Tecmar
Whitesmiths Idris $1100 V6 File xfr yes XT Screen
97 Lowell Rd edit
Concord MA 01742 DBMS
617-369-8499 8087 sup
Sritek micro- $2695 sys 3 file acc $300 Any Multi
3637 S Green Rd card 512K [nt]roff plan
Cleve OH 44122
216 526-9433
Quantum Softw Sys QNX $650 V7 file xfr 16 usr Davong Comm
7219 Shea Ct Genie Word Pr
San Jose CA 95139 Tecmar 8087 sup
408 629-0402 XT
Lantech Sys Inc uNETix $298 V7 emulation fall 83 none 8087 sup
9861 Chartwell Dr
Dallas TX 75243
214 340-3904
VenturCom Venix $400 sys 3 file xfr Yes Davong Sunburst
139 Main St XT RM/Cobol
Cambridge MA 02142 8087 sup
617 661-1230
As a sum-up they said....
Coherent is the oldest and has ethernet support. It also includes
lex and yacc.
Idris runs on lots of machines (vax >> 8080) and is very portable.
System call compatible with Version 6, and is much smaller.
nroff/troff are $200 extra each.
Micro-card is a 68000 with 512K of memory. Expensive, but fast.
QNX (alias Qunix) supports full 1M of memory. V7 compatible.
$650 for cc, screen editor, word processor, RAM disk support.
Designed for the PC, support for windowing promised.
uNETix has full MS-DOS emulation. Up to 10 windows can be defined
each running a separate process. (In the body of the article, they
say it is only $99, but the above table says $299 (?)). Claims
to run MS-DOS programs faster than MS-DOS due to the Unix buffering
system (reducing disk access). No hard disks, though (aargh!) and
only single user. Real winner when hard disks/multiuser happens.
VENIX is based on original Bell Labs Code. Optimized for size, speed,
and reliability. Version on the pdp11 kernel is only 45K, about half
of normal. It has DBMS system, graphics post-processor, and FinalWord.
MS-DOS emulation underway. Not currently available except to *qualified*
users -- software development types. IBM is teaching UNIX on the pc's
to its employees using Venix.
Phew, I hope this helps some of you out there who are looking for
*nix on the pc.
There are too many trademarks to mention, no offense intended.
Portions copied without permission, and blah blah.
Lets hear some reviews from those of you who go out shopping.
Lars Nyland
...{duke|mcnc}!lsn