Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!bellcore!texbell!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 80386 vs. 68030
Message-ID: <6360@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 9 Dec 88 02:23:37 GMT
References: <3283@mipos3.intel.com>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 39

in article <3283@mipos3.intel.com>, rajeevc@mipos2.intel.com (Rajeev Chandrasekhar) says:
> In article <18266@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> kirkaas@cs.ucla.edu (paul kirkaas) writes:
>>I'm really thinking about the NeXT vs. an 80386 based Unix machine.
> NeXT runs MACH which is more 4.xlike, with the 386 you can run
> the sysV/386 which is one of "Products of the year" (courtesy Unix World)
> I am not sure how compatible Mach is with Sys V, so you probably want to
> find that out ..

Sys V sux. I'm typing this from a 3b2 running Sys V.3 (the
latest/greatest), and while it may have some nice underpinnings
(streams and everything), it's currently missing some of the
best-loved pieces of BSD4.x -- e.g. I can't type "what" or "finger" or
"talk" or "uptime" or .... not to mention that it totally lacks job
control signals, so that if I run something like, say, "shl" to get
the same functionality, my editors don't know they've been
suspended/resumed and thus can't redraw the screen automagically for
me. Not to mention that half of Sys V doesn't understand the
pseudo-ttys that "shl" uses, e.g. good old "write", primitive as it
is, barfs and aborts when I try to run it under "shl".

"Product of the Year" for Bell Technologies Sys V/386 simply signifies
that people are desperate to have Unix, any Unix, on their 386-based
microcomputers, and BSD4.x isn't easily commercially available (need a
lot of resources to port it to new architectures, because so much of
it assumes VAX, and it needs a lot of memory and disk space because,
well, must admit it's a bit of a hog).

Re: 68030 vs. 80386 -- what I'd love to see on the '386 would be a
Multics-like system. The hardware looks so Multics-like... seems a
shame to stuff Unix onto it, Unix which was designed for linear
address spaces, PDP-11s and Vaxen.... Unix in a single segment isn't
exactly taking advantage of the '386's best parts. Unix and the 68030,
on the other hand, were practically made for each other....

--
Eric Lee Green    ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
          Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509              
"We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for
the moment, we have no treatment for disturbing persons." -- Dr. Island