hart@cp1.UUCP (06/14/86)
(1) Has anyone done this? Yes, I am running Xenix SysV R2.1 on a 6300 with 20M harddisk. (2) Is it insane? Not bad for a pc implementation. I can now write and debug my code at home at my leisure. (3) Are there better ways to spend my small amount of money? If you want the ability to bounce back and forth be- tween difference environments (UCSD pascal, Xenix, cp/m-86, and dos) it can't be beat! (4) Will I die of old age before medium-sized programs run? This is the one major problem, but I don't quite un- derstand your question. The small and medium models produce faster code, but you have a hell of a time taking advantage of all of that memory you have. I hope I will some day learn how to get around this limitation. (5) It is claimed that a hard drive can be shared by Xenix and MS-DOS, with the same files available to software in either system. Can this be true? Yes. But you can do what I have done. I have a 10M drive set up for dos and a separate 20M drive for Xenix. You can compile code under Xenix to run under Dos. (6) If so, can I run MS-DOS or software from Xenix (e.g., can I run Turbo Pascal programs in background)? No. You have to shutdown the one and reboot to get to the other. You can transfer files and read disk across the two OS's. (7) What else do I need to know? (I live in a world of Suns, Vaxen, and high-level languages; I've never really worked with small machines. I know Xenix != UNIX4.2, but that is about all.) I know this is not an ideal system, but repeat that I am a single user without much cash. Nothing. The documentation is pretty good. Anyone with even alittle experience will be able to handle everything A-OK. It really looks like real SYSV except for some Berkely in the way communications and curses are set up. Additional The system would be idea for low cost development workstations or training lab machines. It is robust and seems to be reasonably swift. I do not think it would be worth too much as a multi-user system unless the users have considerable amounts of time to spend waiting for jobs to run. By the way, my machine is on the uucpnet as cp1!wa3mez. -- =========================================================================== Signed by: Rod Hart (WA3MEZ) Minicomputer Technical Support District Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. Co. A Bell Atlantic Company Silver Spring, Md. UUCP: bellcore!cp1!hart - aplcen!cp1!hart - umcp-cs!cp1!hart - gamma!cp1!hart INTERNET: umcp-cs!aplcen!cp1!hart@SEISMO.CSS.GOV ===========================================================================