twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) (07/12/90)
Hello. I have just read an ad in Byte magazine about a Unix implementation
for IBM PC/ATs called Coherent. The claim in the ad is that
"Coherent is a virtual clone of UNIX.... Coherent embodies the original
tenet of UNIX: small is beautiful....smaller, faster... better... Requiring
only 10 megabytes of disk space... Coherent can reside with DOS ...
Coherent is a powerful multi-user, multi-tasking development system.
With a complete UNIX-compatible kernel... Coherent also comes with Lex
and Yacc, a complete C compiler and a full set of nearly 200 UNIX commands
including text processing, program development, administrative and
maintenance commands... And with UUCP... It came from Mark Wiliams Company,
people who've developed C compilers for DEC, INtel, Wang and thousands of
professional programmers... complete technical support via telephone. And
from the original system developers... With a 60-day money-back no-hassles
guarantee" All for $99.95 ?? When Xenix 286 is about $1500 ??
Has anyone actually purchased this product? Is it as complete a package
as the ad make it sound? Does it have networking tools like ftp/telnet/ping
... which wasn't mentioned in the ad? And sendmail... etc?
Comments? Is this just another gimmick, a scale down version that really
can't do much? Or is this the real thing, and Unix can actually be had
by us common folks, for home use even.
Thomas.
--
/*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Thomas Y. K. Wong INTERNET: thomas_wong@civil.ubc.ca */
/* Civil Eng., U.B.C BITNET: thomas_wong%civil.ubc.ca@ubcmtsg */
/* Van, B.C., Canada UUCP: ...!van-bc!civil.ubc.ca!thomas_wong */
/*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/daveb@comspec.uucp (dave berman) (07/16/90)
(Thomas Wong) writes: > Hello. I have just read an ad in Byte magazine about a Unix implementation > for IBM PC/ATs called Coherent. The claim in the ad is that > "Coherent is a virtual clone of UNIX.... Coherent embodies the original > /* Thomas Y. K. Wong INTERNET: thomas_wong@civil.ubc.ca */ > /* Civil Eng., U.B.C BITNET: thomas_wong%civil.ubc.ca@ubcmtsg */ > /* Van, B.C., Canada UUCP: ...!van-bc!civil.ubc.ca!thomas_wong */ The ad is kinda correct on all counts, but since there are a few things short, you should not expect to be able to fire up a perfect site when you get your package. Here are some quotes from other people... From comp.sys.ibm.pc Mon Jul 16 01:17:47 1990 >/ 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 From comp.sys.ibm.pc Mon Jul 16 01:18:31 1990 From: markad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Mark Donnell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Organization: University of Washington, Seattle 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 From comp.sys.ibm.pc Mon Jul 16 01:18:54 1990 From: dar@nucleus.mi.org (Dario Alcocer) Organization: The Nucleus, Clarkston, MI U.S.A. markad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Mark Donnell) writes: >Well, since everyone else has been passing on Coherent stories, 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. From comp.sys.ibm.pc Mon Jul 16 01:19:20 1990 From: hania@utrcu1.UUCP (Simon Hania) Organization: Utwente, Enschede 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 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 From comp.sys.ibm.pc Mon Jul 16 01:23:21 1990 From: miket@mars.cs.umbc.edu (Mike Taube) Organization: University of Maryland Baltimore County Well, I've just gotten fed up with Coherent.. Here are just a few reasons why: 1) uncompress will only work 12bits and below. 99% of the stuff on the uunet gateways is compressed with 16bits 2) the editor will not allow you to edit moderately sized files.. it truncates them.. and worse, the version of microemacs is pathetic. no c-mode is built in, that is. 3) the ``scat'' program that comes with coherent is supposed to be like the Unix ``more'' program. HA! the Return key scrolls the screen, while the Space bar gives you lines at a time. Totally opposite ``more''. 4) A program as small as ``less'', which is like Unix's ``more'', but more (pardon the pun), is too LARGE for Coherent. 5) No csh. For me, no csh implies no real job control, aliases, or history Now tell me, if I can't even compile a file browser program, then how am I suppposed to build any kind of applications with this? Granted, I understand that "you get what you pay for", but how can they say that this is comparable to SCO ??? Mike Taube MikeT@cs.umbc.edu MIKET@UMBC2.BITNET MikeT@umbc5.umbc.edu ....uunet!umbc3!miket Note from me, Dave Berman: I *WAS* able to get 'less' to compile and run. It required a few littlchanges in the makefile... Further note: I kinda like the program. If you are real bad or new with Unix, then this experience at installation and use will probably give you a poor foundataion for the real thing (wait for next version). If you are real good with Unix (*nix) then the differences between Coherent and what you are using now will get under your nails. I think it seems to work. I am slowly getting used to its ways. It includes the compiler, and editor, and stuff you need to be creative. I tried (once) to port over a copy of uncompress (16bit) to the Coherent, but I had too much trouble, and ran out of time. Disclaimer Department: I don't work for Mark Williams, related firms, or its advertising company. The company I work for shares my opinions, sometimes 2, or even 3 years after I suggest the idea...but never before that. We use SCO in house for everything, but are always on the lookout for something good that doesn't cost too much. It's so *hard* to evaluate an entire operating system... And last, but not least, when it comes to *nix, I am 80% user, 10% programmer, and 10% binders and fillers. -- Dave Berman 436 Perth Av #U-907 daveb@comspec.UUCP Computer at work Toronto Ontario uunet!mnetor!becker!comspec!daveb Canada M6P 3Y7 416-785-3668 Fax at work
larrym@pi19.pnfi.forestry.ca (Larry Marshall) (07/19/90)
daveb@comspec.uucp (dave berman) writes: >or even 3 years after I suggest the idea...but never before that. We use SCO >in house for everything, but are always on the lookout for something good that >doesn't cost too much. It's so *hard* to evaluate an entire operating Excuse my naive question but I'm new to Unix and thus I'm still in the process of learning all the jargon and products. When you (and others) say "we use SCO, are you referring to SCO Unix or SCO Xenix? -- Larry