[HECnet] JBEIL IS UP! (was Re: ULTRIX DECNET LMF?)

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:48 PM, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:

> You misunderstood me - the experience is just a tad worse than say VMS, I
> almost get the feeling that this was like their unwanted step child..


​Not really there were multiple struggles going on at DEC at the time.  Yes
there was the UNIX vs VMS war; but with DEC the UNIX side was trying to
figure out what they wanted to sell and who to sell it too.

On one had, Ultrix was an attempt at taking straight BSD and putting it up
on DEC's HW and supporting it.   Looks, smells, tastes like BSD etc...
But then there was a pull to get new customers who wanted an even sexier
UNIX (compete with Masscomp, Sun, Apollo, Sequent et al).  And Ultrix ended
not being either - I fear.   Generally speaking anything that was developed
for BSD would "just compile" on Ultrix but again that was not wholly true
IIRC.   Ultrix was ultimately left to be want it was and a new UNIX was
taken one (OSF/1) that was set to be the sexy solution.

It's an interesting factoid, the first OS that run an Alpha was Ultrix.​
 Ultrix was the system that was used to shake it out and test it. VMS and
later OSF/1 did not boot to much later in the development.  But it was
never released.

So, be careful -- if you compare Ultrix to its contemporaries -- it was and
is an excellent system.  Yes it had some things that seems different than
others, but this was the beginning of the Unix wars and each vendor was
trying to add features to make you want to buy their system and of course
lock you into there.  The truth is by the time, DEC has begun to lose the
War to Sun, it's features generally did not "stick" the way Sun's did.

That said, by the time Alpha starts to show up, the Unix investment was
also moving/moved to OSF/1 saw Ultrix was left unadorn.  As I said Ultrix
4.3<<< 4.4   In many ways, Ultrix 4.4 could easily have been Ultrix 5.0.
But DEC was afraid the ISVs would abdone it.   So it was ensured to be
binary compatible from a user standpoint and a lot of testing of the new
features was done.  It was the last major upgrade to the stream.

As for your DECnet question, I'm 99% sure that we updated DECnet for 4.4
since by that time Locus was doing both jobs for DEC.  So I would look for
the DECnet in that kit.  I might still have the a 4.4 MIPs boot tape in my
archives since that was what was on desk at the time, but I don't think I
still have anything for Vaxen.

Clem
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