asgad@acad2.anc.alaska.edu (08/31/90)
From: asgad@alaska (george dowding) Subject: Coherent I am thinking of purchasing the coherent operating system. It claims to be an independently created UNIX clone. Its supposed to be just like unix (minus the cost). Furthermore it will work under minimal conditions (IBM AT w/640k) Has anyone tried this system? If so, is it all that it is cracked up to be?
mrm@sceard.Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy) (08/31/90)
In article <1990Aug30.130037.14@acad2.anc.alaska.edu> asgad@acad2.anc.alaska.edu writes: >From: asgad@alaska (george dowding) >Subject: Coherent > >I am thinking of purchasing the coherent operating system. It claims to be an >independently created UNIX clone. Its supposed to be just like unix (minus >the cost). Furthermore it will work under minimal conditions (IBM AT w/640k) > >Has anyone tried this system? If so, is it all that it is cracked up to be? Coherent is more than it is cracked up to be :-) 1) The manual is really quite good. Worth the price by itself. The lexicon section is quite good. 2) Coherent is very close to V7 Unix(tm) on a PDP-11(tm). Better in that it will generally be running on a machine with more memory than a PDP-11 was likely to have(248Kb). 640K is fine on an AT. 1MB is better. Also, the AT (maybe tm, who knows for sure?) is probably going to be faster as a CPU (certainly faster than an 11/23 :-). 3) Coherent has lots of space available with a 40MB disk partitioned as 10MB for root, 30MB for a user filesystem. A 20MB disk would be ok. Really big disks, they haven't thought about so much, it seems. I'll run out of space on the 40MB when Cnews works. 4) The C compiler is good. 5) The object libraries are good, with the caveat that there are always routines in some other Unix that are used in a program that aren't in whatever Unix you happen to be using. You know, Coherent doesn't have wait3 or sigsetblock or sysgetfarknargle... Porting is about the same trouble as BSD(tm) to SysV(tm). 6) It has online man pages. Enough said. 7) The mail reader is marginal. 8) UUCP is ok, but not real spiffy. Works, but minor warts are annoying. 9) The distribiution is probably the best I've seen. Careful attention to permissions, that sort of thing. Considering that it is supposed to run on lots of manufacturers little tan boxes, that's amazing. It's certainly easier to install than V7 :-) Only 4 diskettes to feed into the machine. 10) No f77. 11) No DWB (nroff,troff,...) 12) No WWB (style,dict,...) 13) Good FPU simulation if you don't have an '87 equivalent 14) Currently limited to 32MB disk partitions. 15) A really good device driver installation kit. 16) Small model only. Same as a PDP-11. No 16MB programs here. But microEmacs is supplied, and works. Fast. 17) Elvis (vi clone) works. Fast. 18) Disk I/O is about 4 times faster than 1.3 Minix(tm, maybe?) On the same platform. 19) What do I know about the myriad of VGA, EGA, PGA, CGA, EVGA, HMG, ... if it doesn't work, send it back and get your money back. They have some sort of a guarantee. I think it's well worth $100 or so. A satisfied tinkerer, thinking of using Coherent in a product, not affiliated in any way with MWC, and all of the above is opinion. Disclaimed enough? BTW, all this (tm) stuff is a pain in the tail. Who gives a tinker's dam. -- Mike Murphy Sceard Systems, Inc. 544 South Pacific St. San Marcos, CA 92069 mrm@Sceard.COM {hp-sdd,nosc,ucsd,uunet}!sceard!mrm +1 619 471 0655
royce@scor_az.resp-sci.arizona.edu (Royce Robbins) (09/03/90)
Haven't gotten to look it over that closely, but yes, the manual is GREAT! Beats the Docs that come with SunOS all over the place. Biggest minus I see is that you are limited to a Bourne shell (no C shell) and there does not appear to be ANY support for networked support, not telnet, ftp, or any other TCP/UDP/IP applications. Appears to be strictly a serial-line network via KERMIT (included) or UUCP. Bummer. --Royce Robbins Div REsp Sciences UofArizona
lshao@nation.ics.uci.edu (Ling Shao) (09/07/90)
In <1990Aug30.130037.14@acad2.anc.alaska.edu> asgad@acad2.anc.alaska.edu writes: >From: asgad@alaska (george dowding) >Subject: Coherent >I am thinking of purchasing the coherent operating system. It claims to be an >independently created UNIX clone. Its supposed to be just like unix (minus >the cost). Furthermore it will work under minimal conditions (IBM AT w/640k) >Has anyone tried this system? If so, is it all that it is cracked up to be? I have been trying out the Coherent OS for almost a month so I guess maybe I could give you some ideas about this OS. Mark Williams Company is correct when it claims that it is a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system. It does provide the most rudimentary "Unix" functions and it comes with some pretty nice utilities. In my observation, Coherent appears to be in the class of Unix Version 7 OS. Mark Williams has been real careful in avoiding to use theord Unix in its documentation. In fact, I think I could not find more than 10 sentences that contain the word "Unix". There is no explicit documentation to state its level of compatibility with the "real" Unix. So far, everything ses to work. However, I haven't really dug into the C compiler and try to write out some programs so I don't know how source compatible Coherent is. By looking at the library header files, it looks compatible (to version 7). If you are planning to get this system, don't expect anything fancy out from it. After all, it is a $99 OS which is even cheaper than MS-DOS. The OS comes with the basic Bourne Shell (no Csh or Tcsh unfortunately). It does come with emacs, yacc, lex ... There is the basic Unix email system but no fancy stuff like mh_mail. About the performance, I wouldn't say it is exceptionally fast (I am running it on a 10MHz AT Compatible) but the speed is certainly reasonable. The time when the system really slows down is when there are more than 2 tasks accessing the harddisk at the same time. If your foreground task is also accessing the hard disk, you might have to wait for a while (~5 - 10 secs, depends on what you are doing). However, the effect on a foreground task running completely in memory is minimal. I think this is more of a problem for the ISA architecture rather than the OS as ISA is not really designed for multi-user multi-tasking operation. So, what do I really think? (i.e. Am I going to return it before the 60 days trial period is over?) Well, it is kind of hard to say right now. First, I brought this system just for hobby at home. This system is not good enough to serve as a real production system (if you want the real stuff, get a Suns). For hobby, I think it is perfect. However, I am also considering Minix right now. Minix does have some advantages over Coherent. First, Minix has been around for longer and I presume it has a much larger installed base (the comp.os.minix newsgroup has 26000 readers). Unlike Coherent, it does support networking on ethernet (TCP/IP is not officially supported) and it works on the Micro Channel based PS/2 after being patched. It is constantly being maintained and upgraded by thousands of people across the nation. Also, Minix runs on machines ranging from PCs to 386 to Atari ST. In the coming years, it will also run on Mac and Amiga. The developer is also making it to be more Posix compliant. However, Minix does have at least one major limitation. Many utilities (which I personally think are very important) are not provided in the official release of Minix. Minix v.1.3 doesn't come with emacs, mail, lex, yacc, and uucp. You might be able to get these stuff from independent developers (since there are so many people working on Minix) but I don't know how easy or reliable that is going to be. Minix V.1.5 should be coming out by now or pretty soon and I certainly hope they will at least provide emacs and uucp in the official release. The missing of some of these utilities is a major problem for me. Even though I am using Coherent for hobby, I do need at least an emacs editor so that I can write programs (I can never use mode oriented editors like vi). I don't mind having to write my own Csh but at least give me a good editor to use. Chung Ng Information and Computer Science Department University of California, Irvine -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | Ling Shao (Shao) | INTERNET address: lshao@ics.uci.edu | UUCP address: lshao@ucivax.UUCP