PAAAAA7%CALSTATE.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU (01/13/87)
Are there any brave, nay, foolish, souls running Prime's version of Unix? I would like to discuss the humor of this with any party interested. Rich <PAAAAA7@CALSTATE>
dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (01/14/87)
Yes, I just spent 6 months of my life porting MAGIC, Berkeley's VLSI design
tool, from a VAX running 4.2BSD to a 9955 running PRIMIX. It builds character!
Actually, it was a fascinating exercise in portability, and as for PRIMIX,
Prime's System V port running on top of PRIMOS, well, it's like Johnson's dog
walking on its hind legs: it's amazing that it works at all! Still, all the
problems I came across in PRIMIX seemed fairly tractable; nothing that an
infusion of documentation and people and money couldn't cure (OK, a different
machine architecture would be nice, too... :-)).
PRIME's C compiler, a package developed separately from PRIMIX, doesn't
generate the fastest code right now, but it seems pretty bullet-proof;
we ran into remarkably few bugs in the compiler and libraries. Their
PRIMOS debugger (which can be used for PRIMIX programs, with some restrictions)
is superb; it puts attempts like "dbx" to shame.
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{linus,wanginst,bbnccv,harvard,ima,ihnp4}!spdcc!dyerharry@uw-atm.UUCP (Harry Edmon) (01/16/87)
In article <2296@brl-adm.ARPA>, PAAAAA7%CALSTATE.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU writes: > Are there any brave, nay, foolish, souls running Prime's version > of Unix? I would like to discuss the humor of this with any > party interested. > Rich > <PAAAAA7@CALSTATE> Yea, verily. We have been running Primix since February 1986 and are currently running rev 1.3.1. Hopefully, rev 2.0 will be better. I find it very difficult to port software from other Unix machines to Primix (although I have got news 2.11 and elm running). The C compiler is slow in Primix, but significantly faster (over twice as fast) in the native OS (Primos). There are numerous bugs in the system and the Primix monitor does bomb out from time to time (hopefully, this will be fixed at rev 2.0 when the monitor becomes part of the Primos kernel rather than a seperate process). I just wish that I could hook up my Prime to Ethernet and run TCP/IP!!!!!! -- Harry Edmon UUCP: uw-beaver!geops!uw-atm!harry (206) 543-0547 BITNET: 24440@UWACDC Department of Atmospheric Sciences University of Washington
doug@arcsun.UUCP (Doug Konkin) (01/20/87)
Two things about Primix v2.0, assuming that I can trust what I have been told; - Primix v2.0 will be *lots* faster *if* you have a machine with a the 'IX' microcode. The figures that I have heard and seen are ~10 times faster for some of the common operations. The C compiler is being fixed to look like every other C compiler on the earth (ie. the 8th bit business is being fixed.) - TCP/IP on Ethernet is coming soon to a dealer near you -- I have the announcement and software description sheet on my desk. I think that the time frame is Summertime (song intro here for someone). We have Primix as well, but it resides on a venerable 750 (no IX microcode) and hasn't gotten much of a workout. I do think that the new version will be a real improvement for those that can take advantage of it. Doug Konkin Alberta Research Council Calgary, Alberta (403) 297-2662 doug@noah.arc.cdn doug@arcsun.uucp