Re: SCO Technical Articles to say "tata".

From: Bill Vermillion (bv_at_wjv.comREMOVE)
Date: 06/02/03 

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 17:27:35 GMT

In article <bbfrj4$n1a$1@news.tdl.com>,
justin <justin_robbs@NO_SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:

>"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.comREMOVE> wrote in message
>news:HFq4L0.1qzp@wjv.com...
>> In article <bb85kh$qn2$1@news.tdl.com>,
>> justin <justin_robbs@NO_SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Mac Os X is BSD, not Linux.
>>
>> >I hadn't realized that OS X was BSD. I guess that is what happen
>> >when you get your information from the mainstream press who
>> >doesn't know the difference, instead of actually reading it. Mac
>> >OS X isn't suitable for what we need anyway. We don't need a
>> >slick GUI with a high price tag, just a command line interface.

>> Price tags aren't that high.

>> I have a client with a G4 and an Xrack in our colo location.
>> Anytime I help him out it's always with a CLI. He's found that
>> some of the Apple GUI tools have limits so he's doing things at a
>> CLI level. I just checked and there are 340 domains running on one
>> of them.

>> What do you need a machine to do. That's the question - not
>> whether it has a GUI or not.

>That's the thing, we just don't need our computers to do that
>much. We have a Point of sale system for our 300 stores that was
>originally written on DOS in the early 90's. We ported it to
>SCO in 1999. It works just fine for now. We don't really have a
>need to upgrade in the near future other than to support some
>new hardware. We use a digi classic board to communicate to our
>various devices, upc scanner, check reader, etc. This board is
>an isa board. They recently quit making the isa version of the
>board, but the pci doesn't work in 5.0.5, just 506+.

Considering the ISA bus runs at 8MHz and PCI bus runs at 33MHz or
66MHz and have a much wider data path you really don't want any ISA
cards in a machine that needs to perform well. It's good that ISA
is gone.

> (We spent about a month working with sco tech support trying to
>get it to work in 505 before they gave up.) That is currently
>the only reason we are thinking about upgrading, to maintain
>hardware support. We haven't begun looking at linux because we
>have a small development team and have been spending more time
>on application issues ie. new features, fixes, and integrating
>new hardware.

Too bad more people don't consider the costs like you enumerate
before deciding to switch platforms.

>OS X would be great but we don't have the cash to by 900 (3 per
>store) new Macs and we don't want to be in a mixed environment.
>In an ideal situation, all of our machines would be running the
>same OS and identical hardware. It is enough trouble managing
>505 and 506. We (meaning I) have to test all new hardware in
>both versions and make sure to keep track of which works where.

Bill Campbell seems to be having success with those - and as I
recall also in a POS environment. Someday you will have to run in
a mixed enviroment as things change.

>Plus all our hardware is Intel/IBM PC compatible hardware.
>Wouldn't we have to start from scratch to go to all Mac
>hardware?

Mac hardware? Many of the PCI devices on iNTEL run on Macs. They
just need the appropriate drivers. Same PCi cards can run in other
places such as SUN Sparc systems - if there are drives. The PCI
was the second platform independant bus in recent times - with the
MCA being the first - though in the end the other MCA manufacturers
dropped it. That bus could be 128bits wide - it was speced that -
but I don't know if anything was made that wide. The PCI is now in
64bit mode - which I think was the max user available MCI. Moving
64 or 128 bits across the bus at one time is good sense. Another
reason you need to get rid of any ISA cards.

>That wouldn't be worth the cost or the effort, especially
>compared with going to Linux. I was mostly being sarcastic with
>that post anyway.

iNTEL base platforms are the cheapest. There are other OSes
running on iNTEL which are not SCO or Linux. Depending on your aps
you do have choices.

Bill 

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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