psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) (06/29/89)
In article <14774@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) writes: > . . . . IBM appears to be having the same feelings because > AIX (or future OSF derivative) is AVAILABLE NOW on everything > above (and including?) a PS/2. Um, sort of. Yes, you can buy a version of AIX for any IBM hardware platform, except for (oddly enough) the AS/400. (Maybe they decided the UNIX(R) operating system doesn't run on minis?-) But if you look at Systems Network Architecture, if you look at Systems Application Architecture, if you look at Office Vision . . . golly, they don't seem to have UNIX-based systems anywhere in the fancy little slides. If you want to buy a UNIX-based box from IBM, they'll sell you one. If your organization wants to get all of its computers working together, IBM really wants to sell you a mainframe (that's what Office Vision is all about), and they really want to have you use proprietary operating systems, or PC-DOS or OS/2 on the desktop. > Anthony Scian afscian@violet.uwaterloo.ca afscian@violet.waterloo.edu Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories att!pegasus!psrc, psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind. UNIX(R) is a registered trademark of AT&T.
kolding@june.cs.washington.edu (Eric Koldinger) (07/01/89)
In article <600@pegasus.ATT.COM> psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes: >In article <14774@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) writes: >Um, sort of. Yes, you can buy a version of AIX for any IBM hardware >platform, except for (oddly enough) the AS/400. (Maybe they decided >the UNIX(R) operating system doesn't run on minis?-) Well, making Unix run on the AS/400 might be a bit of a chore. The AS/400, like the S/38 before it, is an object-oriented machine, with ideas such as objects, users, security, the file system, data base management, and memory management all built into "micro-code". To make a Unix type system work, you would probably have to completely replace this level of "micro-code" (it's actually more like low level OS stuff, but the machine won't run well without it) with something that would generate a machine that Unix would like (no hardware file system, no hardware checking of pointers, no built-in security objects, and so on......) Basically, it would probably be more effort than it would be worth. The market that they're aiming it at really doesn't care what OS it runs, just what applications it runs. -- _ /| Eric Koldinger \`o_O' University of Washington ( ) "Gag Ack Barf" Department of Computer Science U kolding@cs.washington.edu