bpalmer@bbn.com (Brian Palmer) (06/17/90)
In the May 90 issue of Byte, was an ad for an OS called Coherent from the Mark Williams Company. It claims to be "a virtual clone of UNIX" with "a complete UNIX-compatible kernel". You get a C compiler,text processing, program development,admin and maintenance,Lex and Yacc, and UUCP. It says its multi-tasking/multi-user ... does it has virtual memory? Runs on a 286 or 386 AT w/ 10 meg of disk space. For 99.95. This sounds too good to be true. Has anyone bought a copy? Would someone care to comment. Could this be a reasonable home UNIX system? Thanks, Brian J. Palmer BBN Systems and Technologies
tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager) (07/12/90)
In article <4241@peora.ccur.com>, tran@peora.ccur.com (Nhan Tran) writes: > If I don't program, if I am probably the only user, if I don't run any > major program, the only thing I use it for is to send/receive mail (a mailing > list server), would this system [Coherent from Mark Williams] be ok? > > Nhan Tran It should work just fine. The only problems I can see are two: 1) You'll have to dedicate a system to it, and 2) It won't be useful for other applications unless you're willing to compile them yourself. There are pacakges for MS-DOS (RamNet comes to mind) that deliver UUCP, mail and news capability to DOS. If those things are all you're after, Coherent might be overkill. If you have even a single reason to want to run UNIX specifically, either Coherent or Xenix-286 should serve you well. Good luck with whatever you choose. (ty) -- +--Tom Yager, Technical Editor, BYTE----Reviewer, UNIX World---------------+ | NET: decvax!maxx!tyager -or- uunet!bytepb!maxx!tyager | | I speak only for myself "UNIX: It's not a job, | +-------------------------------------it's a Jihad!" -co-worker------------+
jim@piggy.ucsb.edu (Oreo Cat) (07/16/90)
Before I start off, what ever happened to the coherent mailing list idea? Or possibly a newsgroup? I just got Coherent a few weeks ago, and due to the low price and large number of problems with it, I would imagine there could be quite a bit of discussion on this system... So if there is such a mailing list, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know. If there isn't then I'm willing to start one as soon as I get hooked up to uunet. Send me mail if interested. If there are enough people interested in the mailing list, then I'll propose a newsgroup for it. As you can see by my signature below, I'm going to be running a BBS under Coherent soon. I was hoping I'd be able to just get up and going immediately, but it's not that easy... In article <4241@peora.ccur.com> tran@peora.ccur.com (Nhan Tran) writes: >In article <12@tdw205.ed.ray.com>, heiser@sud509.ed.ray.com (Bill Heiser - Unix Sys Admin) writes: >| In article <57528@bbn.BBN.COM> bpalmer@BBN.COM (Brian Palmer) writes: >| >In the May 90 issue of Byte, was an ad for an OS called Coherent from the >| >Mark Williams Company. It claims to be "a virtual clone of UNIX" with >| > >| >This sounds too good to be true. Has anyone bought a copy? Would >| >someone care to comment. Could this be a reasonable home UNIX system? >| > >| >| There are things it doesn't do (large model compiler, swapping, etc), >| but the answer is probably "yes" to your question about it being a reasonable >| home unix system ... depending on what you want to use it for. >| According to the manual, it does have swapping. I haven't tried it yet as I have 4 megs of memory, and with it only supporting the small memory model, I'm a LONG way from using up all my memory. > If I don't program, if I am probably the only user, if I don't run any >major program, the only thing I use it for is to send/receive mail (a mailing >list server), would this system be ok? Probably. It has uucp. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems pretty complete. If you are used to the Berkeley mail program, the mail program in Coherent will really have you pulling out your hair! But it is definetly workable for this purpose. The biggest problem is it not supporting the large memory model. Most of the other problems I've encountered could be fixed easily by just compiling the public domain source for whatever Coherent is missing. But most of the stuff out there just doesn't fit in the small memory model. I've heard that it's possible to get gcc running under Coherent. If this is true, would I be able to compile larger codes this way??? The major problems I've found: only SMALL memory model no csh compress only works with 12 bit compression, 16 is standard no berkeley mail the manual is incomplete, and has a lot of errors MicroEMACS can't edit large files lots of little incompatibilities with real unix no caching ... (I have a list at home of more, but these are the ones I've thought of offhand). The good thing about it is that it doesn't have vi. This turns out to be a real blessing, as MicroEMACS is a LOT easier to use than vi. Overall it seems like a very good system. The installation was fairly painless. It recognizes all of my extended memory except the stuff between 640k-1024k. It runs pretty fast on my 12Mhz 286. It formatted the second partition on my disk, leaving the first for MS-DOS, but booting from the Coherent partition as default (or if you press 0 during the boot, you get MS-DOS). It could be such a good system if they had only spent some more time working out it's problems. Jim Lick | Inet: jim@piggy.ucsb.edu 6657 El Colegio #24 | UUCP: uunet!piggy.ucsb.edu!jim Isla Vista, CA 93117 | Work: University of California Santa Barbara (805) 968-0189 (voice) | Mechanical Engineering, 2311 Engineering II (805) 968-2734 (msg) | (805) 961-4113 (839-4113 after 8-4-90) (805) 968-1239 (data) | Because when you learn, ** BBS Coming Soon ** | You'll know what makes the world turn. WARNING: Distribution on publicly funded networks may not be appropriate.