UNIX on Lisa : Summary of replys (Long)
Dwight McKay
Here's an editted summary of the few replys I've gotten to my query
about UNIX for Apple's Lisa. It is being posted to several groups because: 1)
I was asked to post it to that group (net.micro) 2) I feel (I can see the
flames already) it belongs in the group (68K, apple, apple32).
My original question was two fold: 1) What's available? 2) How well
does it support the Lisa hardware (bit-map, mouse, etc.) Along the way I've
gotten some useful info on the hardware requirements as well.
First, there seem to be two choices, a release of XENIX from The Santa
Cruz Operation and a release of System V from UniPress (it's really the
UniSoft 68k port they (UniPress) says). I got a reply from SCO which makes
their product sound pretty nice, some highlights were:
From: ihnp4!amd!sco!dwight
Subject: UniPress System V for Lisa, reviews?
...
Granted, XENIX is System III and not System V. However,
we have a very full package for it (including a LAN, in
the full standard package). From the comments that we're
recieving from customers, they are very pleased with
not only the quality of the software, and it's spectrum,
but also with the level of support that we offer.
Ignoring my obvious bias for our XENIX, I personally
believe that it's the best UNIX implementation availible
for the lisa, especially when one considers all that we
have to offer for it.
As I mentioned earlier, I do all of my development directly
on the Lisa. I think that the Lisa is an outstanding
workstation environment. And I've found that the multi-screen
capability of our XENIX makes it into an incredibly powerful tool.
We support the Lisa 2. I believe that we currently ship with
just the profile disks (both 5 and 10 mb). However,
support will be availible in the near future for running
some of the other hard disk systems that are around.
Personally, if I were buying one, I'd stay away from the
Apple Profile disks. They are *slow*. One can get a reasonable
amount of work done; but there are times when it gets a little
frustrating. You should really play around with one for
yourself and see how you like the feel of it.
For a low-cost disk system, with a reasonable amount of
response time and storage, the disks like the Sunol and
the Corvus come to mind. These run about $2-3K, and are
much better than the Profile. Check with our marketing
departments about the specifics of availibility. The
address is below. Xenix on the Lisa is pretty hot, with
a lot of software thrown in. Check out the multi-screen
capability, as it makes backgrounding obsolete.
-----
Dwight also included the address of SCO where he says folks should write for
further information, etc. It is:
SCO
500 Chestnut St.
Santa Cruz, Calif
95061
(408)425-7222
UniPress also replied. They were a bit more terse and had this to say:
From: Mike Gallaher <ucbvax!allegra!sunrise!unipress!mg>
Subject: Re: UniPress System V for Lisa, reviews?
"UniPress UNIX" is really the UniSoft 68K port of System V. It
contains the full SysV distribution minus stuff like online manuals and
accounting software (they are there, but do not fit on the disk). We
don't have Lisp, but we do have lots of other stuff like Emacs. It is
not stripped down, a la Radio Shack. Performance is about what you
would expect from a 1 Meg 68K at 5 MHz (it's not a Sun!) but it is OK
for one or two users. The bit map is accessible through the phys sys
call, and the mouse is accessible through /dev/mouse. This is not a
bad choice at university discounts.
--------
Commentary (my own opinion on the above):
I was surpirised how few responces I got (six, two of them from SCO,
two asking me to post results.). I guess few folks are using Lisa's to run
UNIX and have a net connection.
The XENIX release from SCO sounds well supported but I've got a bais
against XENIX, although I wish someone else out there could give me another
glowing report. I'm almost tempted to get it. I'm not happy with the System
V report, although I'd like to try it out and compare it with XENIX in terms
of performance.
Me? Well, I'm still getting the money together for the Lisa to run
all this nice stuff so I'm going to keep on researching this. I hope this
helps inform those of you who were interested enough to read this lengthy
reply. Thanks. -Dwight McKay
--
-- Dwight McKay, PUCC user services
-- {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!Pucc-H:aam
-- "Are we having fun now?"
r...@leopard.uucp
Having had the chance to work on XENIX on the Lisa as well as several
different boxs, and also having worked on various Unisoft ports I
thought this would be of interest.
XENIX IS NOT A SYSTEM 3 UNIX!!!!!!!!!!
It is far closer to a version of BSD than BTL, and BSD does not claim
to be SYSIII or later. The Unisoft ports are indeed SYSIII and SYSV
also they are far more bug free than XENIX and far more stable,
at least they did not crash the systems when I tried to use the floppy
as XENIX has done to me on several occasions.
A friend of mine has obtained a copy of XENIX for the IBM-PC after my
warning him not to, after trying to get it to stay up for more than
a few minutes he is reformatting his hard drive and sticking to PCDOS.
At least Microsoft wrote something that works.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FLAME OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In answering your question Xenix does or did not support the mouse or
any of the features Apple built in (/dev/mouse anyone?). The use of the
disk was terrible, after going in and throwing out have the things XENIX
supplied (including tar) that did not work I had about 5 meg to work with
up from 2-3 meg. I was never able to see or work on an Unisoft port
much to my regret so I do not know what they have done.
The opinions presented are my own and not the of the company.
...!harpo!groucho!{leopard|lion}!ron
Guy Harris
>
> It is far closer to a version of BSD than BTL, and BSD does not claim
> to be SYSIII or later.
It may be a version of V7, which *was* issued by BTL. It is not the case
that all UNIX versions that aren't BTL, or USG, or USDL, or System
<roman_numeral> are BSD versions.
> A friend of mine has obtained a copy of XENIX for the IBM-PC after my
> warning him not to, after trying to get it to stay up for more than
> a few minutes he is reformatting his hard drive and sticking to PCDOS.
> At least Microsoft wrote something that works.
Err, umm... XENIX *is* a Microsoft product...
Guy Harris
{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy