posdamer@wudma.UUCP (02/28/86)
I recently returned from an "RT Briefing" at IBM Palo Alto. A number of interesting(?) items were forthcoming. 4.2 bsd from ACIS - Only available to colleges/universities. You must "qualify". This appears to mean that you have 4.2 operational and a support operation already in place. - The initial machine for which 4.2 bsd can be ordered must be a RT model 25 plus a streaming tape drive plus a network interface. 4.2 will run on smaller machines but officially this must be the first machine on which it is brought up. -4.2 bsd does not support the AT coprocessor. To run the coprocessor, the machine needs the Virtual Resource Manager (VRM) which is not used or compatible with 4.2. -There appears to be "no reason" that you could not have an ethernet connection and a token ring on the same machine. -Associated with 4.2 is the "ACIS Experimental Display" a bit-mapped display with fairly nice characteristics. As it is not "a product" you must deal through your ACIS rep to acquire one. What this means is not totally clear. -There is no PASCAL in the 4.2 distribution. AIX- IBM's adaptation of System V -Appears to be the "supported" product. -A lot of work has been done on supporting the installation procedures to make them menu driven and relieve users of the need for a guru. -Supports the AT coprocessor. RT and AT can share files, memory, etc. but there is no formal structure for synchronization or message-passing between the AT and RT. There was more detailed stuff, but this seemed (to me) to be the highlights.