krm (02/15/83)
CWRU is getting a grant from dec to put up a micro learning lab containing 75 of these buggers with a 730 for coordination. I attended a demonstration and talks given by dec vice presidents (Case Alumni) and our respective departments. I asked the interesting questions and got these replies: Will you be supporting unix on the 350's? Yes. By winter of '83 we plan to support version 7. No bsd. Will the trapdoor to mcr or some such be available to hackers who want it? No. Please reserve judgement on the menu system until you use it for a while. You should be able to move your most often references commandss to a top node menu such that the menu is not so inconvenient as you might think. Where is the technical information and support? (why haven't people on the net found it?) We released the machines at this time since most of our users will be using them as canned program runners. Technical info will be available shortly. Will there be a useful editor? PROSE + (or advanced prose or some such) will be available this summer. Two additional notes, What was said earlier about pro's being a part of a larger corporate net is exactly correct. In this context, these will make a nice system (though not what most of us are looking for.) 2) dec is forcing the menu system and doc/help (human interface) conventions down the throats of third party software developers. They want the software to have an identical user interface no matter where it comes from therefor... It will not be easy for a third party to bring up and market an alternate "shell" for the pro's since dec will fight them all the way. SUMMARY: If you want to write for the pro, buy the toolkit and write on your vax unix then port. When unix comes out for the 350, use it to develope then port to the standard system. Rich Magill decvax!cwruecmp!krm
krm (02/15/83)
ps. dec has already announced "officially" that unix will be available for the 350.