mark@intek01.uucp (Mark McWiggins) (08/05/90)
Turns out that the first Mt. Xinu person I spoke with was misinformed. The 386 Mach to be released this fall is source, not binary. (Meaning you have to have a $100,000 AT&T source license.) He said they may come out with a binary version later, but are concerned about being able to do it at the (rather low) price he thinks the market would demand. The Esix people don't have a release date scheduled for their V.4. A marketeer lady from SCO called and tried to sell me an Open Desktop, saying it contained some V.4 features. She didn't know about the rewritten scheduler and said she would check on it and get back to me. I can't imagine that they'd already have incorporated anything too significant from V.4 without making more noise about it, though. Looks like the Intel version is it, then (O optimisism unbounded). (If you missed my previous post, a reseller in LA said he'd be selling it for $995 2-user or $1295 complete with X, NFS, etc.) -- Mark McWiggins Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek) +1 206 455 9935 DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong ... 1400 112th Ave SE #202 Bellevue WA 98004 uunet!intek01!mark Ask me about C++!
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (08/08/90)
mark@intek01.uucp (Mark McWiggins) writes: > Turns out that the first Mt. Xinu person I spoke with was misinformed. > The 386 Mach to be released this fall is source, not binary... > ...He said they may come > out with a binary version later, but are concerned about being able to > do it at the (rather low) price he thinks the market would demand. Naturally, I'm curious what price they think the market would demand... but I'm even more curious what price you folks (presumably somehow representative of the market) would like/expect/demand. There's a whole raft of questions one might ask; let me toss out a few to see if they will stir up discussion... How much do you think a 386 Mach or other system with a BSD-like inter- face ought to cost? What's the max price that would make sense? Would you pay more for a BSDish system than for Sys V? About how much, as a percentage? Would you pay more (or less?:-) for Mach, _per_se_? Why? (e.g., "cause I like it" or portability or particular features...) How would something like this stack up against a V.4 system? (Taken together, the above questions also hint at questions about what you think of current pricing.) How much difference should there be for 1-2 user vs unlimited? (That sort of asks what you'd use it for and how valuable a many-user setup might be?) What are the things that would have to be there?...ought to be there?... would be nice? (I'm thinking about the stuff you folks beat up on "us vendorcritters" about now and then, like manuals, man pages, DWB, ksh, X, and on and on...) Oh, yeah...I suppose I should toss in a disclaimer: I'm just a stupid techie who's sort of intrigued by the idea of Mach on a 386. This isn't a market survey and I don't know how to write such things anyhow. ISC isn't planning a Mach-related product that I know of; i.e., if they are, I'll be as surprised as the rest of you. I'd like to know what other folks here see/want in the future. OK, is that enough waffling? OK, folks..what does it all mean? -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Are you making this up as you go along?
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (08/09/90)
In article <1990Aug7.222716.7957@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > How much do you think a 386 Mach or other system with a BSD-like inter- > face ought to cost? What's the max price that would make sense? This is two questions: How much do you think a 386 Mach ought to cost? If it's reliable and compatible with System V/386, probably on the order of $1000 (50% more than ESIX, anyway) on up. Otherwise, about the same. The max price would be 10% or so more than V.4, so $2200 or so. How much do you think a 386 system with a BSD-like interface ought to cost? About half a 386 system with a System V interface, unless it's *in addition* to the System V stuff or has an equivalently good system admin package. Standard BSD system administration hasn't improved any since V7 days. > Would you pay more for a BSDish system than for Sys V? About how much, > as a percentage? -50% > Would you pay more (or less?:-) for Mach, _per_se_? 50% more. > Why? (e.g., "cause I like it" or portability or particular features...) It's an overall better design, and allows real asynchronous I/O instead of polled I/O like in BSD and System V. > How would something like this stack up against a V.4 system? It'd still be better, even if it didn't include X or TCP. Mach is just a better design. > How much difference should there be for 1-2 user vs unlimited? (That > sort of asks what you'd use it for and how valuable a many-user setup > might be?) I wouldn't consider a real 1-2 user license (i.e., one you couldn't trivially ignore) worth getting. > What are the things that would have to be there?... A real multi-threaded UNIX on top of Mach... none of this "UNIX as an application program" stuff. Decent system admin tools. For work, TCP is essential. For home, I wouldn't care. > ought to be there?... Loadable personality modules, so if you don't care about full System V or BSD bugs... I mean features... you don't have to burn RAM on them. > would be nice? Man pages, ksh, X, TCP. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` <peter@ficc.ferranti.com>
perand@admin.kth.se (Per Andersson) (08/13/90)
In article <1990Aug7.222716.7957@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: >Naturally, I'm curious what price they think the market would demand... > > How much do you think a 386 Mach or other system with a BSD-like inter- > face ought to cost? What's the max price that would make sense? If it is enough BSD-like, about 2000$ > > Would you pay more for a BSDish system than for Sys V? About how much, Yes, always. I don't care about commercial applications, but networking, ease of porting code and job control (and tcsh) is strong arguments with me. > > How would something like this stack up against a V.4 system? Well see when there is a V.4 system one can take a peek at. Probably BSD4.4 will hit the streets before, so maybe our 386/ix gets a trip down to the wastebasket. > > How much difference should there be for 1-2 user vs unlimited? (That I feel that a reasonably configured 1-2 user package may have a right to exist. 30-40% more for unlimited maybe. > >OK, folks..what does it all mean? 42 ! I'm a complete BSD junkie, my site has a source license, I run GNUEmacs and don't run WordPerfect. In case there will be a affordable V.4 or a reasonable ISC upgrade we'll probably get it. On the other hand - before V.4 hits the streets maybe GNU is ready. And the support is definitely cheaper on GNU. Per -- --- Per Andersson Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden perand@admin.kth.se, @nada.kth.se