martin@xrtll.UUCP (Martin Renters) (03/30/88)
Has anyone had any experience with the Bell Technologies
UNIX for the 80386?
In particular, does it work reasonably well, or is
Microport or XENIX better? Is it lacking anything that
the other two supply?
Martin Renters ...!utzoo!yunexus!xrtll!{root | martin}bowles@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Jeff Bowles) (03/31/88)
"Has anyone had any experience with the Bell Tech 80386 Unix?" I have some, but not a lot - in the past couple of months, I've started working on a 80386 machine running Bell Tech's hacks to SVR3. As I understand it, Intel did the port, and Bell Tech provided drivers. 1) It's fast enough for me as a single user, and I've nothing good or bad to say about it as a multiple-user machine. 2) They provide most of the SVR3 distribution, as you'd expect, and reconfiguring the kernel is pretty easy. You don't get DWB (nroff/troff) because it's not part of SVR3. It's a pretty vanilla port of SVR3 (which is good in that you don't get weirdness added in by the porter, and bad because it's bug-for-bug the same as the other SVR3's.) 3) Bell Tech has an RFS available for Ethernet, running (gad!) an AT&T internal protocol, NPACK. I was more than a little displeased to find out that they were using it, but... it seems to work okay. (If memory serves, the main problem is that when it's broken, NO ONE can figure out why - but when it works, it's fine.) I have things to say about their technical support of their product, but would prefer to put that in private correspondence. The product seems pretty good, and there have been few suprises. Jeff Bowles New York City
romkey@kaos.UUCP (John Romkey) (03/31/88)
In article <201@xrtll.UUCP> martin@xrtll.UUCP (Martin Renters) writes: >Has anyone had any experience with the Bell Technologies >UNIX for the 80386? This isn't really what you're looking for, but my real experience with it is that I tried to buy a copy a week ago and called four consecutive days and never got to talk to a salesman and never got called back. They were very apologetic when I called up and said "I'd like to BUY something from you. I'd like to GIVE YOU MONEY for your product, but you don't seem to be willing to let me do so" and said they'd have a salesman call me right back. Well... Actually, I have used it a little. I ported GNU emacs to a Bell Tech 386 at MIT running their UNIX. The port went very smoothly, just picked the System V release 3 and Intel 386 header files, and built it. It's REAL System V with no csh or more or those sorts of Berkeleseque things. I don't know whether they're available separately as an option or not. -- - john romkey UUCP: ...harvard!spdcc!kaos!romkey ARPA: romkey@xx.lcs.mit.edu romkey@kaos.uucp Telephone: (617) 776-3121
sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) (03/31/88)
In article <201@xrtll.UUCP> martin@xrtll.UUCP (Martin Renters) writes: > >Has anyone had any experience with the Bell Technologies >UNIX for the 80386? > >In particular, does it work reasonably well, or is >Microport or XENIX better? Is it lacking anything that >the other two supply? Bell Technologies uses the same porting base as Microport. Essentially it is precisely the same product as Microport. Except that BTI does very little (if anything) with the standard device drivers; whereas uPort seems to have used a totally different set of drivers for all of the standard devices. BTI does provide very good device drivers for the hardward they supply such as the ICC (smart serial) card or Cartridge Tape drive. We have both. I currently am running BTI because I had some unidentified problems that caused me to loose my hard disk while I was playing around testing my own serial driver. I simply couldn't make the "standard" async driver work properly, I wrote my own. I sort of prefer uPort especially the virtual consoles. Conclusion, BTI is an excellent product for the price; especially if you are also getting their ICC card or other hardware. BTI is in the business of selling hardware. Unix is the loss-leader to get you in the door. uPort has more support for their software and standard AT type hardware but expect to pay a lot more. uPort is in the business of selling Unix. Finally, we've switched to Xenix. I'm not (currently) to unhappy with either the BTI or uPort 386 product, but Rabbit software only provides SNA RJE software for the Xenix 386 product and I must switch. Too early to tell how Xenix 386 will compare. -- {ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
fred@cdin-1.uucp (Fred Rump) (04/08/88)
Bell uses microport unix. We've used the hardware but always with SCO xenix 386 Don't particularly like their multiport. Arnet is better. Otherwise it's just another clone (Tatung)
jack@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel) (04/14/88)
In article <7254@cdin-1.uucp> fred@cdin-1.uucp (Fred Rump) writes: > >Bell uses microport unix. This is not strictly true, the package that Bell sells is the pure unadulterated port of SysV.3 originally done by Interactive. From there both Interactive and Microport went on to add their own particular "enhancements" (or bugs as the case may be :-}). For instance, you will not find any multiscreens in the Bell package nor the [nt]roff text processors. >Don't particularly like their multiport. Arnet is better. We use the Bell ICC (intelligent multiport) here under Xenix 2.2.1 and other than being a little power hungry (which we fixed with a beefier supply) we have had no problems. We run terminals and even binary transfers between null-modemed systems at 38.4K without any characters being dropped (eat your heart out Microport :-}). The ICC uses the superior Zilog Serial Communications Controller chips instead of the usual 8250 or even National's 16450 UART. I have heard good things about Arnet as well but would have to have concrete examples of what makes it "better". -- Jack F. Vogel Turnkey Computer Consultants, Costa Mesa, CA UUCP: ...{nosc|uunet}!turnkey!jack Internet: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM