rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) (06/07/90)
Anybody out there interested in a Coherent mailing list? I'm having a few problems with things like the installable device drivers that might profit from some discussion. I'm assuming that technical support at Mark Williams will be kind of iffy, particularly at first. Such a list might also be a handy clearinghouse mechanism for ported software; I'm having a stab at "less" and RCS myself at the moment. Interested parties send me return mail while I scramble around looking for a suitable place to set up an alias, if the interest level should warrant. Should somebody be in a position to offer to administer the thing, all the better... -Scott Rose rose@cs.wisc.edu -- Scott Rose rose@cs.wisc.edu
cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) (06/08/90)
rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: >Anybody out there interested in a Coherent mailing list? I'm having a few >problems with things like the installable device drivers that might profit >from some discussion. I'm assuming that technical support at Mark Williams >will be kind of iffy, particularly at first. Such a list might also be a >handy clearinghouse mechanism for ported software; I'm having a stab at >"less" and RCS myself at the moment. Interested parties send me return mail >while I scramble around looking for a suitable place to set up an alias, if >the interest level should warrant. Should somebody be in a position to offer >to administer the thing, all the better... What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? -- -catt (cattanac@cs.uiuc.edu)
heiser@world.std.com (Bill Heiser) (06/09/90)
In article <1990Jun7.182739.26754@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? > Yup, but it doesnt' take advantage of any of the 386 stuff ... -- Bill Heiser | heiser@sud509.ed.ray.com _____________| heiser@world.std.com | bill.heiser@f322.n240.z1.fidonet.org (Think_Tank BBS 508-655-3848) | 75106.2332@compuserv.com
jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) (06/09/90)
cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: >rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: > >>Anybody out there interested in a Coherent mailing list? I'm having a few >>problems with things like the installable device drivers that might profit >>from some discussion. I'm assuming that technical support at Mark Williams >>will be kind of iffy, particularly at first. Such a list might also be a >>handy clearinghouse mechanism for ported software; I'm having a stab at >>"less" and RCS myself at the moment. Interested parties send me return mail >>while I scramble around looking for a suitable place to set up an alias, if >>the interest level should warrant. Should somebody be in a position to offer >>to administer the thing, all the better... > >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? Yes it will, but don't expect it to utilitize any of the features of the 386. Coherent is a 286 based OS. Anything that will run on a 86, 186, 286, or 386 will run on a 386SX with respect to instruction set compatability. Whether a piece of software is compatable in question depends on your BIOS and the chip set on your motherboard. If your 386SX motherboard has one of the more compatable chip sets on it or is made by one of the major motherboard manufacturers, then you should be in good shape. // JCA /* **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* ** Flames : /dev/null | Small memory model only for ** ARPANET : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil | Unix? Get the (*bleep*) out ** INTERNET: jca@pnet01.cts.com | of here! ** UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* */
larry@nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) (06/09/90)
cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? Sure will.. -- Larry Snyder, Northern Star Communications, Notre Dame, IN uucp: iuvax!ndmath!nstar!larry -or- larry@nstar "providing free high speed usenet feeds to reliable systems"
heiser@world.std.com (Bill Heiser) (06/11/90)
In article <1990Jun7.182739.26754@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: > >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? > > -catt (cattanac@cs.uiuc.edu) It certainly should ... -- Bill Heiser | heiser@sud509.ed.ray.com _____________| heiser@world.std.com | bill.heiser@f322.n240.z1.fidonet.org (Think_Tank BBS 508-655-3848) | 75106.2332@compuserv.com
larry@pylos.cchem.berkeley.edu (Raymond L. June) (06/11/90)
In article <3058@crash.cts.com>, jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes: |> cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: |> >rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: |> > |> >>Anybody out there interested in a Coherent mailing list? I'm having a few |> >>problems with things like the installable device drivers that might profit |> >>from some discussion. I'm assuming that technical support at Mark Williams |> >>will be kind of iffy, particularly at first. Such a list might also be a |> >>handy clearinghouse mechanism for ported software; I'm having a stab at |> >>"less" and RCS myself at the moment. Interested parties send me return mail |> >>while I scramble around looking for a suitable place to set up an alias, if |> >>the interest level should warrant. Should somebody be in a position to offer |> >>to administer the thing, all the better... |> > |> >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? |> |> Yes it will, but don't expect it to utilitize any of the features of the 386. |> Coherent is a 286 based OS. |> |> Anything that will run on a 86, 186, 286, or 386 will run on a 386SX with |> respect to instruction set compatability. Whether a piece of software is |> compatable in question depends on your BIOS and the chip set on your |> motherboard. If your 386SX motherboard has one of the more compatable chip |> sets on it or is made by one of the major motherboard manufacturers, then you |> should be in good shape. |> This is quite true. I have a PC Brand 386/20 that uses the C&T chips set and AMI386 BIOS. Coherent refuses to even boot on the beast. MWC says that they have problems with older AMI BIOS's - mine is dated 4/30/89 and PC Brand says that it's the newest BIOS they distribute. MWC has a 60 day return policy that I'm going to exercise. I need the PC too much to return it... |> // JCA |> |> /* |> **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* |> ** Flames : /dev/null | Small memory model only for |> ** ARPANET : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil | Unix? Get the (*bleep*) out |> ** INTERNET: jca@pnet01.cts.com | of here! |> ** UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca |> **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* |> */ Larry June +--------+-------------------------------------------------------------+ U.Snail: | Larry June, 201 Gilman Hall, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, | | University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720 | ATT: | 415 642-5927 (worknet) 415 848-3705 (homenet) | Internet:| larry@pylos.cchem.berkeley.edu or zeorlj@violet.berkeley.edu| +--------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
fjb@dhw68k.cts.com (Frank Bielsik) (06/12/90)
In article <1990Jun7.182739.26754@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: >rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: > >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? It works fine on my 386SX... ...Frank Bielsik (fjb@dhw68k.cts.com)
jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) (06/12/90)
larry@pylos.cchem.berkeley.edu (Raymond L. June) writes: >In article <3058@crash.cts.com>, jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) >writes: >|> cattanac@clitus.cs.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) writes: >|> >rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: >|> > >|> >>Anybody out there interested in a Coherent mailing list? I'm having a few >|> >>problems with things like the installable device drivers that might profit >|> >>from some discussion. I'm assuming that technical support at Mark >Williams >|> >>will be kind of iffy, particularly at first. Such a list might also be a >|> >>handy clearinghouse mechanism for ported software; I'm having a stab at >|> >>"less" and RCS myself at the moment. Interested parties send me >return mail >|> >>while I scramble around looking for a suitable place to set up an >alias, if >|> >>the interest level should warrant. Should somebody be in a >position to offer >|> >>to administer the thing, all the better... >|> > >|> >What I wanna know is will it work on a 386SX? >|> >|> Yes it will, but don't expect it to utilitize any of the features of >the 386. >|> Coherent is a 286 based OS. >|> >|> Anything that will run on a 86, 186, 286, or 386 will run on a 386SX with >|> respect to instruction set compatability. Whether a piece of software is >|> compatable in question depends on your BIOS and the chip set on your >|> motherboard. If your 386SX motherboard has one of the more compatable chip >|> sets on it or is made by one of the major motherboard manufacturers, >then you >|> should be in good shape. >|> > >This is quite true. I have a PC Brand 386/20 that uses the C&T chips set and >AMI386 BIOS. Coherent refuses to even boot on the beast. MWC says that >they have problems with older AMI BIOS's - mine is dated 4/30/89 and PC Brand >says that it's the newest BIOS they distribute. MWC has a 60 day return >policy that I'm going to exercise. I need the PC too much to return it... Not compatable with an AMI BIOS? Geez, that is serious. AMI is one of the more compatable BIOS chip sets out there. Again, I wonder about MWC. Minix is almost at the 32-bit stage. You might want to investigate that. // JCA /* **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* ** Flames : /dev/null | Small memory model only for ** ARPANET : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil | Unix? Get the (*bleep*) out ** INTERNET: jca@pnet01.cts.com | of here! ** UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* */
flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) (06/13/90)
From what I can tell, Coherent is worth the $100: a lot of you guys are really comparing apples to oranges. Compare the cost of the whole system if you are going to compare things: if you go with DOS, you are going to have to buy: 1) DOS ($70 for 3.3?), 2) A compiler (another $100 at least, at today's prices, not two year old ones.) 3) Get uupc to replace uucp, 4) other utilities: DOS doesn't give you stuff like cron. Coherent isn't for everybody though. (I can't use it, because it does not run on machines that have ESDI or SCSI disks, only on ones that have MFM or RLL disks- at least this is what their docs say.) -- Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc. 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165 uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com
howard@hpcvra.CV.HP.COM (Howard Honig) (07/06/90)
>/ hpcvra:comp.sys.ibm.pc / tomg@deceds.dec.com ( The Final Frontier) / 5:58 pm Jun 22, 1990 / > >The tech support people at MW indicated that they >were having problems with machines that have an AMI bios and >also with certain types of Western Digital controllers. > > >-Tom Gallo I don't doubt that this is true, BUT; Installing Coherent on my 20MHZ 386 Clone with AMI bios is built by no one most people have heard of. I had a number of problems not releated to the BIOS. After solving these annoying but minor problems, Coherent works adequately for my needs. In fact I'm pretty impressed for $99. For the record, and in case this can help someone out the problems were: 1. Upon installion the system reads the floppy disks to uncompact and load the appropriate files into the correct directory. I had been shipped a bad disk and so the boot procedure would crash. This is appropriate I believe. After calling MW support they sent me the replacement an impatient 2 weeks later. The system loaded successfully after that, 2. After booting there was no cursor displayed. This turned out to be the video interface card problem more the Coherents. I use the ATI EGA 256K Wonder card which has an enhanced mode hardware and software switch selectable option. The option puts the characters into 8x14 font instead of the standard 8x8 font. After reseting the video adapter's switch to non enhanced mode the cursor appeared. Why this helps I can only guess but now everything is working correctly as far as I can tell. I would buy Coherent again since it makes a nice home unix system. IMHO one gets a lot for his/her money. The thing it needs is a. A csh or at least a ksh. I really miss alias and a history stack, b. A large memory model (I am willing to accept no disk paging for a while at least), c. A good vi editor. The EMACS (it's called "me") supplied is okay but when your used to using one editor at work going home to use another is a pain, d. A BBS system to share some of those things the basenote recommends, e. and MWC needs a faster way of delivering disks to customers. Two weeks is a long time when you've waited 1.5 months to get the original order sent. Howard Honig Hewlett-Packard Co. Corvallis Division
markad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Mark Donnell) (07/06/90)
Well, since everyone else has been passing on Coherent stories, I think I will too. I received Coherent about 2 weeks ago (I got it in about 12 days too). When I tried to boot it up, I got to the '?' prompt, typed 'begin', and that was the end of that - reset button time. It dumped a set of register contents, said something like 'System Panic', and died. MWC had no real ideas, and Noone on the net of Coherent mailing list had mentioned anything like that, so I eventually sent it back (I probably would have had to anyway - I needed to compile some rather large programs in it). Oh well. I tried all of the 'black magic' that I could find - NumLock, Power up instead of reboot, and something else I can't recall right now. It could have been a bad disk, as someone on the net mentioned recently, or it could have been machine incompatability. In case you're interested, I'm on a Nascent (motherboard) 386-25, discrete chip set, AMI (?)Aug 17, 1988 Bios, WD disk controller, 40 meg connor disk, teac 1.2M floppy, genoa vga. Hope my experiences are as informative to you as they were to me. Mark
dar@nucleus.mi.org (Dario Alcocer) (07/10/90)
markad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Mark Donnell) writes: >Well, since everyone else has been passing on Coherent stories, >I think I will too. I received Coherent about 2 weeks ago (I got >it in about 12 days too). When I tried to boot it up, I got to the >'?' prompt, typed 'begin', and that was the end of that - reset >button time. It dumped a set of register contents, said something >like 'System Panic', and died. MWC had no real ideas, and Noone > [stuff deleted] >In case you're interested, I'm on a Nascent (motherboard) 386-25, >discrete chip set, AMI (?)Aug 17, 1988 Bios, WD disk controller, >40 meg connor disk, teac 1.2M floppy, genoa vga. I had the same problem with my 386 clone (AMI BIOS), but it was an intermitten problem for me. It seemed to happen most after having run MS-DOS, then did a soft-reboot; maybe the GDT is using the garbage left in memory by the last DOS run... -- Dario Alcocer | Internet: dar@nucleus.mi.org Associate Software Engineer | voice: 619-673-2161, x5119 Emerald Systems | Standard disclaimers apply.
hania@utrcu1.UUCP (Simon Hania) (07/10/90)
In article <1990Jul9.183442.22228@nucleus.mi.org> dar@nucleus.mi.org (Dario Alcocer) writes: > >I had the same problem with my 386 clone (AMI BIOS), but it was an >intermitten problem for me. It seemed to happen most after having >run MS-DOS, then did a soft-reboot; maybe the GDT is using the garbage >left in memory by the last DOS run... > I am running Coherent on a Morse 386SX motherboard, AMI BIOS, WD clone hard disk controller and Seagate ST225 and ST251-1 drives. Rebooting Coherent with CTRL-ALT-DEL hangs the machine, rebooting MS-DOS this way and starting Coherent leads to kernel panic at start-up. Under MS-DOS I'm using QEMM, which puts the 386 in V8086 mode. This probably is the cause. I have to do a hard-reboot to switch between Coherent and MS-DOS and vv. -- ------------+----------------------- Simon Hania | Hania@UTwente.NL | HANIA@HENUT5.BITNET | hania@utrcu1.UUCP