flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (08/26/89)
Who uses IBM/4.3 (AOS) out there? What do you run it on? This is an informal survey. Tell me about your installation. (E-mail, please.) Here at Penn State Computer Science we have seven 6150s and fifty-one 6152s, give or take a few. All running IBM/4.3, running X11R3, but not AFS or Andrew. What do you have? -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu, *!psuvax1!flee
brunner@bullhead.uucp (09/06/89)
In article <FLEE.89Aug25165610@shire.cs.psu.edu> flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes: >Who uses IBM/4.3 (AOS) out there? What do you run it on? This is an >informal survey. Tell me about your installation. (E-mail, please.) > Since your asking for replies to be emailed, would you summarize the responses? I'm interested and I think that other people might be as well. Eric Brunner, IBM AWD Palo Alto inet: brunner@monet.berkeley.edu or brunner%ibmsupt@uunet.uu.net uucp: uunet!ibmsupt!brunner (415) 855-4486
flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (09/08/89)
Yes, I will be posting a summary of responses soon; probably this weekend. Instant summary: fifteen responses, most of them just a handful of RTs, and a large amount of griping. -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu, psuvax1!flee
jparnas@larouch.uucp (Jacob Parnas) (09/08/89)
>In article <FLEE.89Aug25165610@shire.cs.psu.edu> flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes: >Who uses IBM/4.3 (AOS) out there? What do you run it on? This is an >informal survey. Tell me about your installation. (E-mail, please.) At IBM Research in Yorktown Heights NY, the math department maintains about 45 RTs using 4.3 BSD UNIX (AOS). We have been very happy with this operating system. Some features that we really appreciate are full 4.3 BSD, source code available for practically all utilities and the kernel, good X11R3, the andrew toolkit, NFS, good asynch support, complete online manuals and documentation, and easily available fixes distributed on usenet. The 800 USC technical support number is useful for quick help with system problems. Most public domain software built for BSD UNIX systems builds and runs on AOS with little or no modification. What I like most about AOS is that it is 4.3 BSD to the core and not System V with some BSD goodies patched on as an afterthought. Charlie Slater, Eric Brunner, and Jeff Weinstein at IBM Palo Alto have been very helpful in helping to fix the few problems that we have had. We use these RTs for almost all of our computing including operating systems research, networking tool development, networking kernel research, SLIP, usenet, mail, gateways, printing, editing, text formatting, internet access, VM terminal emulation, graphing... I think that AOS has improved greatly in 1989. Most of the problems that I've had with it in the past have been fixed (high speed serial line support (thanks to Charlie Slater), X11R3 (not perfect, but overall quite good with the Megapel, and the C compiler among other parts of the OS have been greatly improved). I highly recommend trying 4.3 AOS, if it is available to you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Jacob M. Parnas | DISCLAIMER: The above message is from | | IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Ctr. | me and is not from my employer. IBM | | Arpanet: jparnas@ibm.com | might completely disagree with me. | | Bitnet: jparnas@yktvmx.bitnet \---------------------------------------| | Home: ..!uunet!bywater!acheron!larouch!jparnas | Phone: (914) 945-1635 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) (09/09/89)
Jacob Parnas, from IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center writes: | Charlie Slater, Eric Brunner, and Jeff Weinstein at IBM Palo Alto have | been very helpful in helping to fix the few problems that we have had. Based on my experience, what you say makes me suspect that Yorktown Heights gets, ummm, slightly better service than we do. Maybe that's not surprising. :-) I think very highly of the people from IBM Palo Alto that I've met. The problem is that we have to deal with USC/ACSC as the middleman. | ... the C compiler among other parts of the OS have been greatly | improved). Errr. The unwashed masses are holding their breath waiting for the gcc port. Let me be as blunt as I can: I won't use "hc" for anything that actually needs to work. This is not a flame, just a frightened observation. We'll see about the new release (2.1s) as soon as it is installed. My first test program will look like this: #ifdef __STDC__ /* Oh good, a 100% ANSI conforming compiler! */ #define FOO(x) #x static char foo[] = FOO(bar); /* should expand to ``static char foo[] = "bar";'' */ #endif All previous releases of hc get this wrong; they fail to compile it. | I highly recommend trying 4.3 AOS, if it is available to you. Agreed. Get real unix while you still can. disclaimer: I'm just a grad student and my opinion doesn't count for anything. -- Scott Schwartz <schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu> "APAR's? We don' neeed no steeenking APARS!"
buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) (09/11/89)
In article <SCHWARTZ.89Sep8161603@shire.cs.psu.edu>, schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) writes: > > Jacob Parnas, from IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center writes: > | Charlie Slater, Eric Brunner, and Jeff Weinstein at IBM Palo Alto have > | been very helpful in helping to fix the few problems that we have had. > > Based on my experience, what you say makes me suspect that Yorktown > Heights gets, ummm, slightly better service than we do. Maybe that's > not surprising. :-) > -- > Scott Schwartz <schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu> > "APAR's? We don' neeed no steeenking APARS!" I don't know specifically about Yorktown Heights and possibly some backdoor help they might get, but the story I got from several people inside IBM trying to support the RT under AIX was that real, paying customers get first priority. As a matter of fact, I know of one contractor on the RT in Austin who found it faster to submit APAR's to have the bugs he found fixed than to actually find the (obvious) bugs in the source available to him and have them fixed directly. -- A. Lester Buck ...!texbell!moray!siswat!buck
schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) (09/13/89)
In article <448@siswat.UUCP> buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) writes: | I don't know specifically about Yorktown Heights and possibly some | backdoor help they might get, but the story I got from several people | inside IBM trying to support the RT under AIX was that real, paying !!! | customers get first priority. Do you mean AIX or AOS??? I have no doubt that AIX customers get great support. It's the BSD (aka AOS) folks that we are talking about. | As a matter of fact, I know of one contractor | on the RT in Austin who found it faster to submit APAR's to have the | bugs he found fixed than to actually find the (obvious) bugs in the | source available to him and have them fixed directly. Oh come now... faster to submit an APAR than to recompile? No way. Are sources for AIX even available, by the way? -- Scott Schwartz <schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu> "APAR's? We don' neeed no steeenking APARS!"
lmb@ghoti.uucp (Larry Breed) (09/16/89)
In article <SCHWARTZ.89Sep8161603@shire.cs.psu.edu> schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) writes: > >We'll see about the new release (2.1s) as soon as it is installed. My >first test program will look like this: > >#ifdef __STDC__ /* Oh good, a 100% ANSI conforming compiler! */ >#define FOO(x) #x >static char foo[] = FOO(bar); > /* should expand to ``static char foo[] = "bar";'' */ >#endif > >All previous releases of hc get this wrong; they fail to compile it. > Actually all releases of hc have had an ANSI preprocessor that handles stringizing. You can disable cpp, and enable the ANSI preprocessor, with the command-line option -Hnocpp. See the hc(1) man page for this, -Hcpp, and other useful options. Cpp is the default preprocessor on AOS because we weren't willing, in 1967, to try to force a nonstandard preprocessor on customers. (For one thing, Berkeley source wouldn't preprocess.) Yet, the language supported is ANSI C, so __STDC__ really has to be on. I should have taken this inconsistency more seriously; Scott's note is evidence of the confusion my choice caused. Disclaimer: Don't blame my employer, blame: Larry Breed (415) 855-4460 uucp: uunet!ibmsupt!lmb inet: ibmsupt!lmb@uunet.uu.net