dewey@dell.dell.com (Dewey Coffman) (11/16/90)
> Some of the other people selling V.4 are selling the the 1.0 verison. > Dell's verison is 2.0, this has all sorts of enhancements and bug > fixes that are not in the 1.0 verison. > Dewey Coffman > Dell Computer Corp. ->We will ship the 2.0 version very soon and I imagine most SVR4 ->vendors will do the same That's great, that's a WIN-WIN situation for the end-user. -> ->Does Dell get its SVR4 from AT&T or from another source like Intel or ISC? -> From AT&T. We were part of the AT&T beta program and have been showing V.4 for over a year. We showed it at Unix 89 where V.4 was announced and again this year when we announced we were now selling it. The V.4 we showed at UNIX International booth in 89' was not up to our standards. For the last year, we been getting new tapes from AT&T, fixing bugs and adding our own features. ->Does Dell's SVR4 support a wide range of hardware or mostly Dell hardware? This is the most asked question, here is the stock reply. Q: Is Dell SVR4 available for non-Dell hardware? A: Absolutely! We haven't formally tested our product on anything but Dell hardware so far, so we're not in a position to effectively support the product on other hardware. Strong customer support is extremely important to us, so we have been reluctant to make the product available except with Dell hardware. However, we are willing to sell SVR4 to people who are willing to take it "as is" for non-Dell hardware, and who will be understanding if it does not support their specific hardware. Our normal return policy would apply in these cases with a restocking fee. Support might be minimal or non-existent, depending on the nature of the problems. -> ->Does the complete manual set come with it or a subset? I know the manuals ->can be very expensive. If you get the complete set from Prentice Hall, the ->price is around $550 - closer to $600 after taxes. We include a getting started guide that covers the differences from Stock AT&T V.4 (like X11R4, DOS-merge, SLIP), features that are new in V.4 (newvt, sysadm), a migration tutorial from V.3.2, and some generic tutorials on UUCP/Printers/Terminals and Modem. The Online manual pages are on the tape but are installed separately. One of the question mailed into the info@dell.com address has been how many floppies etc. Dell Unix V.4 is two boot floppies(3.5"/1.44Meg or 5.25"/1.2MEG) and one 150 Meg cartridge tape. -> ->Including compiled public domain programs is a nice idea - did you run into ->any problems, especially with emacs? -> That's what we thought. It's not yet clear how much of what we did will be accepted by FSF. I didn't do emacs; maybe james@bigtex can comment on this (I know he spent a lot of time on undump, and think he got it to work). dcm@dell also spent a lot of time on ELF for gdb. We figured, if we spent effort getting something to work, we should make it available. For many programs, this required little change; e.g., I was able to compile Ghostscript 2.0 with only minor changes to the makefile (so the correct libraries would be included). -> ->Richard Ducoty duc@mport.COM ->Microport Inc. uunet!mport!duc Dewey Coffman Dell Computer Corp Austin, Texas -- Dewey Coffman Dell Computer Corp. 9505 Arboretum Blvd. DOMAIN: dewey@dell.com Austin, TX 78759-7299 UUCP: dell!dewey, sooner!dewey
ste@cbnewsm.att.com (Shaun T. Erickson) (11/16/90)
In article <1990Nov15.163432.17123@dell.dell.com>, dewey@dell.dell.com (Dewey Coffman) writes: > > Q: Is Dell SVR4 available for non-Dell hardware? > > A: Absolutely! > > We haven't formally tested our product on anything but Dell hardware so > far, so we're not in a position to effectively support the product on other > hardware. Strong customer support is extremely important to us, so we have > been reluctant to make the product available except with Dell hardware. > However, we are willing to sell SVR4 to people who are willing to take it > "as is" for non-Dell hardware, and who will be understanding if it does not > support their specific hardware. Our normal return policy would apply in > these cases with a restocking fee. Support might be minimal or > non-existent, depending on the nature of the problems. > > Dewey Coffman > Dell Computer Corp. > 9505 Arboretum Blvd. DOMAIN: dewey@dell.com > Austin, TX 78759-7299 UUCP: dell!dewey, sooner!dewey I called Dell last week and told them that I had a Swan 386/25 that I was considering running Dell's Unix on. I asked if they would support it on this machine, or would they say "Sorry, it's not a Dell machine, so tough luck!". The gentleman went off line to speak with his supervisor and when he came back he said that they would indeed support it - quote "If we sell it, we will support it.". This would indicate to me that Dell would provide more than "minimal or non-existent" support. Which is correct? -- ****************************************************************************** * Shaun T. Erickson Internet: ste@alux2.att.com * * Cap Gemini America (Resident Visitor at AT&T) UUCP: ...!att!alux2!ste * ******************************************************************************
seg@ingres.com (scott e garfinkle) (11/17/90)
In article <1990Nov15.163432.17123@dell.dell.com> dewey@dell.dell.com (Dewey Coffman) writes: >->Does Dell's SVR4 support a wide range of hardware or mostly Dell hardware? For those who are interested: One of the key items I was interested in was the X servers they provide. As near as I can tell from the answer, you can only get high-res from the Dell graphics boards. -scott e. garfinkle Standard Disclaimer.
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (11/18/90)
> >I called Dell last week and told them that I had a Swan 386/25 that I was >considering running Dell's Unix on. I asked if they would support it on this >machine, or would they say "Sorry, it's not a Dell machine, so tough luck!". >The gentleman went off line to speak with his supervisor and when he came back >he said that they would indeed support it - quote "If we sell it, we will >support it.". This would indicate to me that Dell would provide more than >"minimal or non-existent" support. What about drivers? Does Dell have a nice big compatability list covering most of the peripheral boards on the market? -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (11/19/90)
In article <1990Nov17.225432.17394@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: | What about drivers? Does Dell have a nice big compatability list covering | most of the peripheral boards on the market? I don't see anything like that, but I'm told that "most of the V.3 drivers will work" although they may need to be recompiled. If you want lots of support get Xenix. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
larry@nstar (Larry Snyder) (11/19/90)
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) writes: > I don't see anything like that, but I'm told that "most of the V.3 >drivers will work" although they may need to be recompiled. If you want >lots of support get Xenix. How about smartboard drivers - will 3.2 drivers run under 4.0? -- Larry Snyder, Northern Star Communications, Notre Dame, IN USA {larry@nstar, {uunet|backbone}!nstar!larry, larry%nstar@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu} backbone usenet newsfeeds available Public Access Unix Site (219) 289-0282 (5 high speed lines)
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (11/22/90)
>| What about drivers? Does Dell have a nice big compatability list covering >| most of the peripheral boards on the market? > > I don't see anything like that, but I'm told that "most of the V.3 >drivers will work" although they may need to be recompiled. If you want >lots of support get Xenix. No way will I go with Xenix. I need real Unix. And I very much want to go with V.4 when it's stable. SCO has, so far, promised NOT to go with V.4 -- buzzing about in their own separate reality. -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (11/23/90)
In article <1990Nov21.232102.26005@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: | No way will I go with Xenix. I need real Unix. And I very much want | to go with V.4 when it's stable. Sounds like religion to me. If I need to use an XYZ board I'll run what I need to support it. If XYZ is unusual that if often Xenix. This stuff about not being real UNIX is initiated in part by other vendors. Even Xenix comes from AT&T code, and it passes all the serious parts of SVID. It's been around a long time and it also is very stable, if not racy. | SCO has, so far, promised NOT to go with V.4 -- buzzing about in their own | separate reality. I believe they said they were not going with v.4.0, but were going to wait for v.4.1. That's not the same thing in the long run. I was also told they were going to add V.4 capabilities to SCO UNIX, and I think that is far out from a company which is trying to get away from Xenix development because it's non-standard. I've said *that* before. The one thing which I find most amazing about V.4 is that it doesn't "fall dead." Even in hardware which fails frequently it seems to have a fairly solid filesystem. The documentation, utilities, etc, all show some signs of being new. In some cases the people who wrote the code and documentation may have met once at a masquerade party. But it does lose files or go down nearly as often as early releases from at least three UNIX V.3.2 vendors. I tried two beta versions and one alpha version, and they all felt solid, even if administration was an adventure. I think the decision to wait for a stable V.4 was a bad one, but SCO has a big chunk of the market and makes a lot of money, and for Joe User in an office trying to *run* software instead of *develop* software, something like Xenix make sense. It's small, fast, reliable, and supports lots of peripherals and software. I like the Dell V.4, the release tape looks like a dump of a hacker's system, with all the GNU stuff, pbm, etc, as well as the basic AT&T stuff. It's not without teething pains, but I still like it. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) (11/27/90)
In article <2361@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: > In article <1990Nov21.232102.26005@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: > | SCO has, so far, promised NOT to go with V.4 -- buzzing about in their own > | separate reality. > > I believe they said they were not going with v.4.0, but were going to > wait for v.4.1. That's not the same thing in the long run. I was also > told they were going to add V.4 capabilities to SCO UNIX, and I think > that is far out from a company which is trying to get away from Xenix > development because it's non-standard. I've said *that* before. >[....] > I think the decision to wait for a stable V.4 was a bad one, but SCO > has a big chunk of the market and makes a lot of money, and for Joe User > in an office trying to *run* software instead of *develop* software, > something like Xenix make sense. It's small, fast, reliable, and supports > lots of peripherals and software. I suspect they just want to sell a stockpile of 3.2! :-) Also, v.4.1, while they may indeed be awaiting it, may not be what you think it is. Although the "Roadmap" from UI is careful not to mention "dot" releases beyond 4.0, I have seen other references which seem to indicate that the "dot" releases will be the major functionality upgrades, such as "Enhanced Security", "Multiprocessing Plus", and "Network Computing Plus". On the other hand, if SCO intend to continue to port "their" features (i.e. XENIX and SysVrIII backward compatability), and do some serious QA, it will take some time before they have SysVr4.0 up to snuff. (Mind you, I too believe that SysVr4.0 is probably the best ever first release of an OS from AT&T.) Also, I'd like to say that I believe adding r4.0 features to an older release is a SERIOUS mistake. I certainly won't recommend or buy such an OS. SCO tried this with XENIX 2.3.2. IBM are trying with AIX. Apple are trying with A/UX 2.0. I feel such attempts are utterly wasteful of resources. If a vendor has a set of features they wish to add to an OS, they should have them well enough defined, and understand them well enough, that they can add them to any base release. Either do that, or forget about the "features" you want from the "base" OS, and walk your own road (as IBM may actually be doing!). I believe customers still want the "base" OS, in addition to any features a particular vendor may have sold them on. It seems people who originally started out to make UNIX available and useful for the masses get stuck in ruts and have trouble keeping up with new releases of UNIX! -- Greg A. Woods woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP ECI and UniForum Canada +1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (11/28/90)
In article <1990Nov26.162757.15948@eci386.uucp> woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes: | (Mind you, I too believe that SysVr4.0 is probably the best ever first | release of an OS from AT&T.) I'll agree with that, and I was surprised. I didn't expect that kind of reliability at this stage. Even the alpha releases didn't crash, with all the things which didn't work. The question is: is this the best 1st release of any multitasking (general purpose) o/s ever by anyone? I have seen new major releases of VMS and IBM systems, GCOS (when it was still sold by GE), etc, and I don't recall any of them being so solid in terms of the kernel not going down. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me