MRC%PANDA@sumex-aim.arpa (Mark Crispin) (02/01/86)
You can't really blame DEC for the lack of TU81 support in
System V and 4.2/3BSD. You do, however, have a point about
Ultrix. DEC has done this [delaying the introduction of products
for systems they are trying to kill off] many many times before.
In PDP-10 days, this happened over a period of 7 years, and
spanned the delay or cancellation of new CPU's, the delay in new
peripherals, the delay of compilers to support up-to-date
language specifications, and finally the cancellation of the
entire product line (in spite of howls of protest).
Fortunately, those sites with Unix have a choice; they can
vote with their feet to other vendors. It's important whenever
dealing with DEC that you make it clear that reliability is one
of the most important characteristics in a vendor.
In the meantime, I don't see what is so hard about writing a
device driver for the TU81. Tape drives are tape drives. A good
hacker should be able to knock off a nerdly tape drive device
driver in a day or so, and a good (fully compatible) one in a
week at most.
-------jg@mit-eddie.UUCP (Jim Gettys) (02/02/86)
In article <2128@brl-tgr.ARPA> MRC%PANDA@sumex-aim.arpa (Mark Crispin) writes: > > You can't really blame DEC for the lack of TU81 support in >System V and 4.2/3BSD. You do, however, have a point about >Ultrix. DEC has done this [delaying the introduction of products >for systems they are trying to kill off] many many times before. I believe the problem is more one of timing of releases vs. when the hardware became available; there is certainly a TU81 driver in Ultrix 1.2, about to go to SDC.... You might also observe that availability of the new VaxStation II/GPX is being quoted for Ultrix substantially before VMS. If DEC were attempting to kill off Ultrix, this would be unlikely behavior..... Again, this is much an artifact of release schedules. Jim Gettys Digital Equipment Corporation MIT / Project Athena jg@athena.mit.edu