esa@kvvax4.UUCP (01/02/70)
** WARNING ** Quite recently we bought an INTERACTIVE Z80 C cross compiler for our 4.1bsd. I was in good faith when I recommended this product to a project management. We've had quite a few problems with IS systems, especially while we were trying to get started with an IS/3. Fortunately we decided to throw away the IS/3 system and are quite happy now with the 4.1bsd running on the very machine. Okey, I got the Z80 C tape delivered by BTM in Belgium (they represent INTERACTIVES in Europe) a couple of weeks late and after a few telexes and one phone call. The enclosed letter said: "the tape contains to tar format files with blockfactor 20" I guess they ment 10 files. Anyway, that's about how many I found. So I was able to extract the files, no trouble at all. The trouble started when I was looking for a README file, makefile or something. I found none of the kind. Except that there was a sub directory 'docs', which contained files such as install.txt.p. The problem was that those files were not readable, file(1) said 'data'. After trying ccat(1), uncompact(1) and od(1) without any results, I tried to read the tape on an IS (IS/1 Workbench for VMS) machine which we happen to have, too. I couldn't get anything sensible done there either. But we've got a uucp link between our machines, so I transfered the *.p files by uucp from the bsd machine to IS/1 machine (by using -b option for raw or binary, which is a bit special for VMS). And look: IS's unpack[cmd] worked. So I got the files in readable format after all. Maybe one should have guessed this, because of the suffix .p instead of .C, which is used on the BSD for packed (or compact(1)ed) files. The install.txt.p file proudly stated the following > This guide tells you how to install the INTERACTIVE Z80 C Compiler > on a VAX, a PDP-11, or an IDEA machine running IS/1, IS/3, Bell UNIX, or > Berkeley UNIX. Just ignore the special instructions for machines or > operating systems that aren't yours. What the hell should I have done if I hadn't happen to have an IS machine. I had ordered a compiler, which was to be installed on a machine running Berkeley 4.1 Unix. Later on there were the statements: >(f) The directory "docs" contains a subdirectory "man". Under "man" > are all the manual pages for the various programs in the Z80 pack- > age, one file per program. which is WRONG. There was no such subdirectory. Neither were there any manual pages. In retrospect with the afore history, I would like to mention that not so many weeks ago I installed another xcompiler, this was a Whitesmith's 68000 C, also on the 4.1bsd, and that job took about 10 minutes using a makefile. Whereas now I found no makefiles, no nothing. The whole thing wasn't ofcourse a big thing but I thought it to be interesting enough to be told. (At least next time I know, whom not to buy from). Esa K Viitala (decvax!mcvax!kvport!kvvax4!esa) Corporate R & D Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk, CTG4 P.O.Box 25 N-3601 Kongsberg Norway P.S Incidentally, the prices: IS's Z80 C cross compiler $7500 the Whitesmith's 68000 C cross compiler around $1700.