From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm Title: MARC Status Article-I.D.: ucb.1277 Posted: Fri Jun 4 04:26:14 1982 Received: Sat Jun 5 02:19:36 1982 >From lauren@Ucla-Security Fri Jun 4 04:26:03 1982 "My Friends. We are all interested in the future, because that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives." --- 'Kriswell' from PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE So you wanna know about MARC, eh? Well, I guess I'm the one to tell yah. As many of you know, I will *never* be convinced that it is really finished -- I'll keep improving it and adding features until doomsday if nothing stops me. However... in reality, we are extremely close to being able to start LIMITED "invitation-only" distribution. This may mean that if you ask nicely and are an experienced user who doesn't need alot of handholding (and understands what "preliminary" really means) you will probably get an invitation. Users who already are familiar with Unix will have an easier time getting started until I have time to write more tutorials for the documentation. The basic system, in a usable form, seems to be pretty stable right now (in fact, I am using it at this instant). All major known bugs have been fixed in the system proper... there are still some problems floating around of a minor nature that are really more along the lines of "features not setup exactly the way I'd like" rather than bugs. The CP/M emulator exists and runs. It still has some minor problems that I hope will be cleared up soon. Release is primarily waiting on the required emulator fixes, some fairly minor library support work needed for the C compiler, and some substantial documentation updating that will be required before even the preliminary version can be released. I am sure that once people start hacking on the system a number of new bugs will appear -- that's in the nature of such a complex system, I guess. In any case, it should be possible to start selling the thing sometime toward the end of the summer, assuming that nothing really horrendous happens (like my hard disk collapsing again, which it seems to do on a semi-regular basis). Keep hanging in there. --Lauren-- P.S. For those of you wondering why MARC has taken so long to appear -- please remember that the project has been entirely unfunded since day one. Since I consider it unethical to take money until I have a product to deliver, the project has had ZERO cash flow. Doesn't make things easy unless you're independently wealthy (which I most certainly am NOT). --LW--