bae@lll-tis.arpa (Hwa Jin Bae) (10/09/87)
I have not received any information about the available UNIX systems
for the 386 from the Usenet, but here's what I have found out so far.
First, I will tell you what I know about 386 based Unix V.3 systems.
There are several vendors offering the UNIX system for 386 boxes,
namely Interactive Systems (Santa Monica), SCO (Sant Cruz), Microport,
Microsoft, and LOCUS (Santa Monica).
The 386/ix, Xenix/386, etc. names from vendors SCO and Microport are
basically different versions of the Unix Systems V release 3 worked
out by Interactive Systems under a contract to Intel which was in turn
under a contract to AT&T. The Interactive people did most of real
implementation work on different copies of 386 based UNIX V.3.
In addition, Interactive introduced a product to merge MS-DOS into
the UNIX, named VP/ix. The MS-DOS tasks run as processes within
UNIX on 386 using the virtual 86 mode of 386; you can have multiple
session of MS-DOS. Interactive people contracted Phoenix Technology
to do this VP/ix implemenation. As you know, Phoenix BIOS is very
popular in IBM compatilbles market. The UNIX V.3 put out by
Interactive Systems has been certified by AT&T and seems to be
the latest implementation of a true standard UNIX.
There are two ways to initiate a DOS application from the UNIX
environment using VP/ix. One way to to give a VP/ix shell command to
get the DOS automatically loaded. A DOS application can then be invoked
and loaded via any DOS command since you are running DOS and don't
even have to realize that your DOS is running as a task within UNIX.
Another way is to just give a DOS command while you're in UNIX.
In this case, UNIX will detect that it is a DOS application and
automatically load in the DOS and start running the specified DOS
application. Basically, VP/ix is an extension to the UNIX kernel
which allows a user to run DOS and DOS applications under UNIX System
V.3 allowing multiple users to run multiple UNIX and DOS applications
simultaneaously.
VP/ix provides virtual PC hardware services either via a modified
version of BIOS, or via emulation within the Emulation Control Task.
Most additional devices will require additions to the "vpc" program to
support a new virtual device. In some cases a new device driver is
also needed. Since most PC emulation is in the "vpc" program which
runs as a user process, the changes made to the kernel is minimum.
On an AT compatible 80386 PC with 4 Megabytes of memory, 4 MS-DOS
sessions can run with at least the performance of an 8088 running a
4.77Mhz.
The LOCUS computing is marketing their own version of UNIX and
DOSmerge product as well for the 386 machine. There have been
many research papers written about LOCUS since the architects of
LOCUS distributed operating systems (UCLA) are the founders of
this company. Reading the papers indicate that this product is
more concentrated in its distributed computing and networking concepts
than others. DOSmerge product is supposed to be similar to VP/ix
but it also allows transparency between DOS and UNIX universes.
For instance, they say that it is possible to pipe the output of
a DOS command into a UNIX command and vice versa. I remember
reading research papers on this modified distributed UNIX operating
system when I was studying operating systems in college. Their idea
is to support degree of network transparency allowing a network wide
filesystem, automatic replication of storage, transparent distributed
process execution, and more.
Here are some phone numbers:
Locus computing 213-452-2435
Interactive systems 213-453-8649
Microport 800-822-unix (in CA)
800-722-unix (elsewhere)
SCO 409-425-7222
I was also looking for a plug-in 386 CPU circuit card board compatilbe
with Zenith Z-248, but I discovered that Zenith does not offer the
386 upgrade kit as of now. A headquarters sale rep. told me that
the project leader reponsible for building the kit reported everything
was ready to go, but they are not yet willing to market the product
without having some kind of request from a big time buyer.
The kit itself consists of a passive backplane of 32 bit bus
architecture and a 386 CPU card that can be plugged into one of the
slots on the backplane.
I also heard several contradicting options about whether the Intel
Inboard is compatible with Z-248. Intel Inboard is a product that
can be plugged into an AT machine to make it use the 386 CPU instead
of the 286 CPU, therefore making it possible for us to run 386 Unix
on it. The Intel people said that their lab test result shows that
Z-248 is incompatible with Inboard; one of the technical rep. of
Zenith said just the opposite. I don't know. Who should I trust?
If any of you have any more informantion please let me know.
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Hwa Jin Bae (415) 463-6865 | Control Data Corp.
bae@{lll-tis.arpa,lll-aftac.arpa} (internet) | 4234 Hacienda Dr.
{ames,ihnp4,lll-crg}!lll-tis!plseca!hbae (UUCP) | Pleasanton, CA 94566