REVIEW THE PUBLICATION FOR THE UNIX™ COMMUNITY Networking Your System? Change a 12 Month Design Cycle to 12 Days. A Time. Development time. Time to market. If you’re building your new computer system around a LAM, you’re in a race against time. Ethernet* gives you a fast start, but the protocol software and system integration efforts can take as much as a year — even longer. But now you can shorten that design cycle. With EXOS™, from Excelan. EXOS technology gives you a complete LAM capability, hardware and software, that sim¬ ply plugs into your computer system’s backplane. Integration takes next to no time. With EXOS, you can be up and running in as little as 12 days — even sooner. EXOS, or EXcelan Open Systems, is a family of Ethernet front-end processor boards, standard high-level protocol software which runs on the front- end processor, and network ap¬ plication software which runs on the host computer. "Excellence in Local Network Technology” 2180 Fortune Drive San Jose, California 95131 (408) 945-9526 TELEX 176610 EXOS technology includes front-end processors for all Multi¬ bus,* VME bus, CInibus* and Q-Bus based computers and software supporting the standard TCP/IP high-level protocol. And if your host system supports any variety of CM1X,* then half a dozen network applications are provided as well. EXOS. It gives your com¬ puter system a complete LAM capability with the ease of plug¬ in integration. That can change your design cycle from 12 months to 12 days. And get your product to market before your competition. THE FIRST. RDS was the first to offer you a Relational Database Management System for Unix™ Today informix is still the only database system that provides you with all the capa¬ bilities you need. From its Custom Screen Package to its full Report Writing Language, informix tools are the most useful you'll ever find. PROVEN. informix has met the challenge of information management requirements in thousands of installations around the world. End users and systems integrators alike use informix to build systems they can depend on. FAST, EFFICIENT. informix is based on the fastest b-tree access method available, c-isam.™ Sleek, powerful, and efficient, c-isam is the de facto standard ISAM for C programmers and has been incorporated into many operating systems and langu¬ ages. Among these are the Zeus™ Operating System from Zilog and the popular Micro Focus COBOL products. RELATIONAL DATABASE SYSTEMS, INC. 2471 E. Bayshore Road, Suite 600 Palo Alto, California 94303 Tel: 415/424-1300 Telex: 467687 COMPREHENSIVE, POWERFUL. informix is selected again and again because it has the power and full range of capabilities demanded by information management professionals. Easy-to-use menus and extensive help commands swiftly guide you through data entry, reporting, and query by forms procedures. These capabilities, combined with informix's full-featured languages and advanced data access techniques, make informix the optimal base for all applications. R & D COMMITMENT. RDS is committed to provid¬ ing you with the highest quality information management tools available. Whether developing new products or enhancing existing ones, our ongoing Research & Development effort incor¬ porates the latest advances in software technology. AVAILABLE. informix is available today on a wide range of single and multi-user systems running both Unix and MS-DOS. The list includes Altos, BBN, DEC PDP 11 and VAX, Fortune, Forward Technology, IBM PC and XT, Masscomp, Momentum, Onyx, Perkin-Elmer, Pixel, Plexus, Radio Shack, Wicat, Zentec, Zilog and many more. Demonstration versions are available for most machines. Call us for more information. informix ... to make your business day even more productive. informix and c-isam are trademarks of Relational Database Systems, Inc. Zeus is a trademark of Zilog, Inc. Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. Circle No. 2 on Inquiry Card UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. UNIFY is a trademark of Unify Corporation. IBM® is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Cot Copyright © 1984, Unify Corporation, Portland, Oregon 97219. Umfy FUST! In one independent competition after another, UNIFY has proved itself the fastest UNIX data base management system. No wonder it’s been selected by more computer manufacturers than all other UNIX data bases combined. UNIFY speeds you through deveb opment and expedites program execution with some of the most powerful utilities of all, including: Fully menu-driven design. A powerful screen handling pack¬ age that helps you format screens quickly, with no cexiing required. Raw I/O, that lets you bypass the UNIX file system for up to 40% faster performance in large data bases. Built-in optimizers that select the fastest of four data access methods. Industry standard IBM SQL query language, plus our powerful report writer, for easy access by end-users. N inety subroutines for advanced program development... the most complete package of its kind. UNIFY’s integrated design links program modules like screens, query language and report writer to help you quickly create complete, friendly, easily expandable applications. Horsepower for the long run. Unlike other data bases, UNIFY won’t slew down under the weight of additional data or multiple users. It’s built with the power to support new features later. Judge for yourself. Send for our 300-page tutorial and 500-page refer¬ ence manual—yours for only $95— that show you hew to build virtually any application. Contact UNIFY, Dept. UR-6, 9570S.W. Barbur Blvd., Pe)rtland, OR 97219, 503/245-6585. unipy 8 THE PREFERRED UNIX DBMS. Circle No. 3 on Inquiry Card UNIX REVIEW THE PUBLICATION FOR THE UNIX COMMUNITY DEPARTMENTS: 6 Viewpoint 8 Devil's Advocate 12 Industry Insider 44 C Advisor 49 /usr/llb 57 Rules of the Game 63 Human Factor 70 Off the Shelf 96 Recent Releases 105 Calendar 107 Advertisers' Index 18 IBM's $900 ticket to UNIX. FEATURES: 18 UNIX ON THE IBM PC UNIX REVIEW works over PC/IX to see what makes it tick. 21 IBM'S LENGTHY UNIX COURTSHIP The manager of IBM's Information System's Group explains why IBM took so long to release a UNIX offering. 34 The software race is on! 4 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Volume 2, Number 3 June 1984 BIG BLUE UNIX 26 IBM MOVES IN FOR ITS SHARE An assessment of what the IBM entry means for other vendors in the UNIX micro market. 34 LET THE SOFTWARE RACE COMMENCEI A preliminary report on the companies likely to produce PC/IX software. 38 HEINZ LYCKLAMA INTERVIEW The architect behind the IBM port calls the software race as he sees it. 40 TED DOLOTTA INTERVIEW Interactive Systems' head of technology describes what PC/IX is -and what it isn't. 18 New muscle for the IBM PC. 40 Ted Dolotta points out PC/IX directions. UNIX REVIEW (ISSN: 0742-3136) is published monthly by REVIEW Publications Co. It is a publication dedicated exclusively to the needs of the UNIX community. Subscriptions are $28.00 per year (12 issues). Canada and Mexico add $7/year. Overseas add $20/year for surface mail. Address correspondence regarding editorial, press releases, product announcements to 901 South 3rd Street. Renton, WA 98055. Letters to UNIX REVIEW or its editors become the property of the magazine and are assumed intended for publication and may so be used. They should include the writer’s full name, address and home telephone. Letters may be edited for the purpose of clarity or space. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of UNIX REVIEW. Entire contents copyright (0 1984. All rights reserved and nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission from UNIX REVIEW. Editorial phone 206-271-9605. UNIX is the trademark of Bell Laboratories, Inc. UNIX REVIEW is not affiliated with Bell Laboratories, Inc. Application to mail at second class postage rate is pending at Renton, Washington. June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 5 EDITOR: Mark Compton MANAGING EDITOR: Pamela J. McKee ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Ken Roberts Scott Robin EDITORIAL ADVISORS Dr. Stephen R. Bourne, Software Engineering Manager, Silicon Graphics, Inc. Jim Joyce, President, International Technical Seminars REVIEW BOARD Dr. Greg Chesson, Technical Staff, Silicon Graphics Ted Dolotta, Senior Vice President of Technology, Interactive Systems Corp. Gene Dronek, Director of Software, Aim Technologies David Fiedler, President, InfoPro Systems Bill Joy, Vice President of Research and Development, Sun Microsystems John Mashey, Software Engineering Manager, Convergent Technologies Deborah Scherrer, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Jeff Schriebman, President, Unisoft Corporation Walter Zintz, Executive Director, Uni-Ops CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Ned Peirce, Systems Analyst, Bell Laboratories PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Sherry Griffin PRODUCTION STAFF: James Allen Dan Arthur Cynthia Grant Florence O'Brien Denise Wertzler CIRCULATION/DEALER SALES: Barbara Hamblin Tracey McKee BUSINESS MANAGER: Ron King ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES: Jules E. Thompson, Inc. 1290 Howard Avenue Suite 303 Burlingame, CA 94010 Lucille Dennis 415-348-8222 303-595-9299 - Colorado 312-726-6047 - Illinois 617-720-1888 - Massachusetts 713-731-2605 - Texas Jules E. Thompson, Inc. 2560 Via Tejon Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274 Mary Winchell 213-378-8361 212-772-0933 - New York TELECOMMUNICATION TYPESETTING: Data & Staff Service Company PRINTING: Thomas Ogle VIEWPOINT UNIX moves into the fast lane The race is on. The stakes are up. In the featured event, we find two of the world’s most fabled heavyweights, IBM and AT&T, bat¬ tling for UNIX market supremacy. To the side scramble scores of smaller firms looking for market hedges against an impending UNIX shakeout. Those still around when the dust finally settles stand to profit handsomely. UNIX interest is already high and continues to soar. Studies (see page 26) show expo¬ nential market growth reaching into the foreseeable future. Not everybody, of course, applauds such developments. A substantial body of users with research/academic leanings regard the commercialization of UNIX with bemusement at best. The changes, nevertheless have come and UNIX REVIEW , too, must grow to keep pace. Some differences should already be apparent. We have a new look, a new production schedule and lots of new faces. We think youTl like the improvements. We also think you’ll like the changes we don’t make. Much of what UNIX REVIEW has been will remain unaltered. Under David Fiedler’s steady guidance, the magazine has developed a reputa¬ tion for technical excellence. We mean to continue that tradition with a technical review board containing some of the finest minds in the UNIX community and a top-flight cadre of monthly columnists. You can count on UNIX REVIEW to be timely, analytic and hard-hitting. Among the luminaries now helping to shape directions for UNIX REVIEW are Dr. Stephen Bourne, author of the standard programming shell bearing his name; Bill Joy, author of the C shell, vi and termcap; Ted Dolotta, former director of Programmer Workbench activities at Bell Laboratories; Dr. Greg Chesson, creator of uucp protocol; John Mashey, one of the leading contributors to the Programmer’s Workbench; Jeff Schriebman, president of UniSoft Corporation; Deborah Scherrer, noted Lawrence Berkeley Labs computer scientist; Jim Joyce, president of International Technical Seminars; Walter Zintz, executive director of Uni-Ops; David Fiedler, editor and publisher of UNIQUE; and Gene Dronek, author of the Aim Benchmark Suite. Each forthcoming UNIX REVIEW issue will put a selected topic into sharp focus, with commentary and insight from a variety of industry sources. Regular columns will help keep you informed of hardware announcements, soft¬ ware releases, forthcoming books, industry developments, marketing trends, technical tips and program¬ ming topics. But, enough of the prologue. Read on and judge for yourself. Oh, and by the way - do enjoy the race. -Mark Compton Circle No. 4 on Inquiry Card—► 6 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 loin UNIX team. The team AGS has grown to become one of the foremost UNIX teams in the country. Our combined team of 1,000 software professionals includes 400 UNIX specialists in the field, many recognized as UNIX All-Stars and Masters. Individual performers are recognized and rewarded with challenging work and personal advancement. The |ob AGS provides UNIX systems development, consulting, training, and proprietary product devel¬ opment services to the major UNIX users in this country. Our team works with a broad spectrum of processors including DEC VAX, IBM 308X, the newly announced AT&T 3B processor line, and numerous microcomputers. Our work includes the development of languages, operating systems, relational data bases, expert systems, local area networks, communications systems, graphics, and specialized applications development. Companies look to AGS for both individual expertise in UNIX and our ability to build entire systems. The individual We seek software professionals to join our team as programmers, systems administrators, analysts, and UNIX internals/communications specialists. You will work with many of the brightest people in the field who will challenge your ability and expect superior performance. If you qualify, we will offer you an above average compensation and benefits package including a variety of insurance coverages and cash incentives that recognize the value of your contribution to our growth. Best of all we offer long term career opportunities which permit you to work with a superior team of UNIX professionals working at the forefront of our technology. If you are stuck on first base and not advancing, now is the time to consider AGS. Call or send your resume to one of the many offices listed below: Mountainside, New Jersey Denver, Colorado Bridgeport, Connecticut Orlando, Florida Oak Brook (Chicago), Illinois Wakefield, Massachusetts Jericho, L.I., New York New York, New York (201)654-4321 (303) 297-0234 (203)366-9341 (305) 660-2900 (312) 887-7440 (617)245-3013 (516)822-1630 (212) 962-4646 AGS Computers, Inc. 1139 Spruce Drive Mountainside, New Jersey 07092 An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F •UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories DEVILS ADVOCATE AT&T and IBM stake out their turf By Stan Kelly-Bootle It will probably not be needed by an audience of proven discern¬ ment (may I leave the proof as an exercise for readers?), but I dutifully append: UNIX is a Trademark of...some say Western Electric , some say Bell Laboratories , others cite AT&T\ while still other indict AT&T Bell LaboratorieSy which seems the safest combination... Such talispersons appear as rabbit's footnotes in most trade journals, and for good reason. My legal advisors, the broad-minded partnership known as O’Reilly, Schwartz, Mboto, Wang, Saloli, Zapata & Smith, warn of the direst consequences to anyone failing to impute AT&T with the name UNIX and all it entails. Offenders, they say, can have their CTRL-Cs dis¬ abled and may even be confined to 86-DOS, Version 1.0, for up to five years. The fear, of course, is that UNIX might degenerate into a ge¬ neric synonym for OS (Operating System), just as kleenex is now just any old tissue and hoover is any old red-baiting head of the FBI. How¬ ever flattering such collectives may seem, marketing managers suffer much angst over visions of a con¬ fused public purchasing the wrong product. Older readers may recall that in the 1950s, even IBM computers were sometimes called Univacs, al¬ though recent studies suggest that IBM has suffered less than Sperry from this misnomeration. I suspect that those who anx¬ iously guard the UNIX Trademark have nightmares in which a prospec¬ tive buyer approaches a friendly Computer Boutique salesperson: “Does this Apple™ come with UNIX?” “But, of course, sir/madam! This board gives you CP/M unix. Or you can have Apple DOS unix. You want unices, we got unices. Look, here’s a PC-DOS unix; see them directory paths? hear them shells? Very unical indeed!” “Does it have icons?” “ICONS? Step right this way. You know, it really is a pleasure to sell to someone who keeps slap-bang up-to-date and demands state-of-the- art. Here we have Macunix, just arrived today. Look at that screen absolutely seething with icons. And observe, they are not your Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse™ icons! These are the Berkeley icons, each one a challenge to your fund of art history trivia. Lots of fun. Here’s an obvious one; this little portrait of Saint Jerome en cardinal — you’ve already guessed: El Grepo. I don’t know them all yet. Let’s try this French looking dignitary. Whoops! That must be Pr6fet Poubelle, the man who invented the trash can. I think I have a backup disk somewhere...” You will readily understand why I take this Trademark imperative seriously in spite of the fact that whole classes of everyday words have been requisitioned and pro¬ tected by hardware and software suppliers. I doubt there is one free fruit left in any orchard since the Apple™ spawned a cornycopia of oranges, gooseberries and no end of lemons. The Dictionary of National Biography has been thoroughly scoured for the catchy names of the great in order to add gloss to unwor¬ thy and irrelevant endeavors. I fear that Kant and Wittgenstein alone (and for different reasons) will escape the fate of Plato, Solon and Victor Emmanuel II. The glut of Trademarks has been further increased by the insidious use of the wildcard “ * ”, whereby * stands for any string of any length. Intel™, for example, 8 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 5 on Inquiry Card OH THE DEC SYSTEM OF YOUR CHOICE. Now, when you choose from our large selection of VAX, and Q-bus 68000 systems, we’ll integrate the power, flexibility, and portability of UNIX.. .so all you have to do is open the box, plug in and run! That’s how Cambridge Digital gives you "The Edge” in system in¬ tegration. To make your job easier and more productive First, choose from a selection of FOUR UNIX operat¬ ing systems-each a fully supported implementation of AT&T’s UNIX: ■ UNIX System III and V for VAX and PDPs with all the commercial enhancements and support features you’d expect. ■ Real-time UNIX for PDPs with the best elements of versions 6 and 7 plus a text-editor, database manager, and communications package. ■ UC Berkeley 4.2 BSD for VAX with all the Berkeley utilities and systems features including optional Ethernet networking. ■ UNIX System III for Q-bus-based Univax 68000 gives you VAX performance in a low-priced system. Next, add the UNIX tools you’ll need from our broad line of proven layered products. Database Managers. Word processors. Spreadsheets. Languages. Cross compilers. Emulators. Menu shells. Networking pack¬ ages. You name it. Cambridge Digital has your solution. The result: you get the power of UNIX, the perfor¬ mance of a DEC-based system, and the confidence of dealing with a PROFESSIONAL organization, totally dedicated to satisfying your needs. That’s The Edge you get only from Cambridge Digital. The system integrator’s system integrator since 1979. T© find out more or to receive our latest fact-filled catalog, call us at 800-343-5504 or write to us at Dept. 7508, PO. Box 568, 65 Bent Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. ‘UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. n wanf The Edge: I Name_ Title- J I Organization/Company- | Address- City_ State/Province_ | Zip/Postal Code_ Country- j Phone No.!_!_ I 7508 l_I Cambridge ■■H Digital The Edge in System Integration 800 - 343-5504 In Massachusetts call 617-491-2700 DEVIL'S ADVOCATE claims not only the letter “ i ”, but MCS*, iCS* and many others — indeed an infinite number of appella¬ tions. ComputerLand has attempted to keep a hen on *Land in spite of prior claims from Disney and picky parts of the United Kingdom. My inclination to join the crowd was triggered by the trademarking of 1-2-3 by Lotus Development Cor¬ poration. Ah, ah, I thought, if Lotus can manage to commandeer a few in¬ ductive axioms, before you can say “Joko Peano,” they’ll have cornered the entire set of positive integers! There was no time to lose. I called my legal consortium. Damn, they were all out except for Smith. “Listen and listen good, Smith,” I shouted. “I want a rush Trade¬ mark on the digits of greek pi.” “Too late,” snapped Smith, “Moussaka Graphics was here this morning; they’ve registered just about every pie chart you ever saw...” “Not pie charts,” I roared. “I’m talking three point one four one five nine... more!” “Will you accept twenty-two over seven?” Smith implored. “It’s quite close and you’ll save on the application fees.” I was in no mood to com¬ promise. “Alles, Smith. I want the whole shebang. Every last single digit, whatever the cost. What’s at stake? I’ll tell you what's at stake! The whole of Mathematics is being blackmailed by a $600 spread sheet!” The rest is history. To underpin our rights, we booked Sir Laurence Olivier to recite greek pi to 100,000 places. His riveting performance is available on 30 historic LPs — the world’s first digital recording. AT&T, meanwhile, having fully secured its Trademark, was girding the loins, stiffening the corporate sinews and summoning the blood for its first exploratory skirmishes in the Holy War to liberate innocent Commerce, held captive for Seven Hundred and Seventy Seven Years by the cruel Infidel Business Machines. Daring scouts had probed patiently to detect a weakness in IBM’s market coverage — any slight fissure in the apparently impreg¬ nable citadel that IBM-watchers might call a “niche,” some speck in the market not reached by an IBM device. There were precedents, such as CDC’s sortie into the number¬ crunching supercomputer niche and DEC’s attack on the scientific mini¬ market. But now — it seemed that wherever one looked, the market was saturated BIG BLUE. We may never know how AT&T arrived at its recent decision to launch the 3B series of computers. But suffice it to say, the battle¬ ground has been established: AT&T has uncovered a niche in the $8000 to $340,000 price range! Let battle commence! ComputerLand has attempted to keep a lien on *Land in spite of prior claims from Disney and picky parts of the United Kingdom. Will AT&T and IBM wage holy war? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stan Kelly-Bootle is a grizzled mainframer who worked on the pioneer EDSAC I at Cambridge University in the early 1950s. As founder/President of the LISA Moaners' Club, he urges more machismo and less user-molly¬ coddling in software. In spite of some reservations, he feels that UNIX is a bandwagon heading in the right direction. His expose of computer scientific epistemology in the lexicographic environment, “The Devil's DP Dictionary ” (McGraw- Hill, 1981), is to appear soon in a Japanese language edition (Shizen Sha, Tokyo). ■ 10 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 6 on Inquiry Card —► CO o co 0 JO U) c CO = ^ 0 ^ Cl 0 00 CD §> w ~ CD o o ro c Q £ ■£ ro £ m CD ^ .E a) Jo -£ c CO c|§ “■OS O O 0 -*—• ■+—' 1_ D D £ < < 0 C -Q E 0 CO 0 < 0 0 C o O 0 -*—• t £ 0 .E E LU c 0 0 h- CL O E o 0 JC H CL 0 c r. > 0 _ Ql ^ >*0 O “O 0 c c o 0 0 c 0 u E O) 0 CL 0 O c o o O £ LL LU CO co > 0 C >< z 1 LU O m C £ cc cc c Q Li. INDUSTRY JNSIDER AT&T: The multi-billion dollar startup by Mark G. Sobell The UNIX market suddenly got a lot larger March 27, when levia¬ than AT&T announced its entry into the general purpose computer field. Unveiled at that time were three lines of computers based on UNIX system V, an Ethernet-compatible local area network and an IBM PC interface (for low-end machines). The announcement didn't really surprise anyone - AT&T has been building computers and operating systems for a long time. But AT&T’s first venture into retail enterprise does raise some very interesting questions: What is AT&T’s capability in the UNIX marketplace? What effect will AT&T’s com¬ puters have on competing hardware products? What will AT&T’s announce¬ ment mean to UNIX software manufacturers? Before pondering these issues, though, let’s take a closer look at the products themselves. THE MACHINES The smallest (3.6” x 22” x 17”) of the new machines is the 3B2. AT&T calls it a “desk-top super¬ micro” and claims it will support 18 users. The 3B2 is built around the WE32000 microprocessor (the old BELLMAC-32A chip from Bell Labs) and comes with 1/2 to 2 MB of memory, either a 10 or 30 MB 12 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 disk and a 5-inch floppy disk drive. The basic machine sells for just under $10,000 and includes what AT&T calls “UNIX System V Core Package” software. According to Bob Sellinger, Application Engineer¬ ing Manager for VARs (Value Added Resellers) at AT&T, the soft¬ ware that comes with the package will bring the system up and shut it down. It also includes a basic editor (ed). The basic package, though, is truly basic. If you want the mail utility, you must buy network soft¬ ware for $100. If you want to com¬ pile a C program, you can purchase a C compiler costing $340. The termcap package comes as part of a terminal filters option. The vi editor is packaged separately from the spooler which in turn is separate from the FORTRAN compiler which in turn is separate from nroff. The nroff program is now part of the Documenter’s Workbench, a pro¬ duct that will not be available until “later this year.” AT&T has unbundled UNIX. Too bad. One of the most important features of UNIX is that a full complement of standard tools is always at the user’s fingertips. Of course, under the AT&T scheme, users can still buy all the tools. Often, though, because of price, ignorance or wishful thinking, many of the tools won’t be purchased. Much of the power of UNIX will thus be lost. UNIX software manufacturers often design their products to make use of the tools typically bundled with UNIX. Many programs, for instance, may founder without tar to unload tapes and disks, make to install programs and any number of other UNIX utilities so common as to be considered an integral part of the operating environment. Another questionable aspect of the 3B2 is its lack of a backup device other than the 5-inch floppy disk drive. It takes about 14 floppies to back up the 10 MB drive. Backups M 3 30 MB drive, meanwhile, easily consume 55 floppies - y,i«pj:orrfcasonable demand to make of &ny user. Generally, if it is not easy to back up a system, the system will not be backed up. Remember also that with the 3B2, we’re talking Circle No. 7 on Inquiry Card—► FULLY INTEGRATED GRAPHICS IN TEXT OR SPREADSHEETS TEXT ON GRAPHS & PLOTS MAINFRAME DATABASE ACCESS The Handle Family of Integrated Office Automation Products works with the day-to- day flow of information used by executives, professionals and decision-makers. Handle pro¬ vides the right tools to effective¬ ly create, store, send, receive, analyze, calculate and plot the timely data necessary for effec¬ tive business management. Handle manages multiple users. Information is processed reflecting the way different indi¬ viduals work Handle's con¬ current functions ensure total integration of all Handle products. A complete system of pass¬ words and profiles maintain the security of sensitive data. Completely function key driven, Handle provides special screen labels that cor¬ respond to eight easy-to-reach keys. One key stroke is all that is required for execu¬ ting Handle commands. INTERACTIVE SPELLING PROOFER SPECIAL SCREEN LABELS MULTI-USER MANAGEMENT WHAT-YOU-SEE-IS-WHAT-YOU-GET SCREEN DISPLAY ONE KEY STROKE COMMANDS today's most powerful tools available for business plan¬ ning, financial analysis and decision making. • Handle Business Graphics is fully integrated with all Handle products offering graphics within text or spread¬ sheets, and/or text on graphs and plots. Any graphic or multiple graphics can be dis¬ played with any document. • Handle works with existing information through Handle Access. Existing files can be "imported" from other systems and mainframe databases. In a similar manner, Handle can "export" to standard system files and onto any net. The Handle Family of Products is a comprehensive set of office tools specially designed to "handle" the power of UNIX. IMPORT/EXPORT DIF FILES & SYSTEM FILES VIRTUAL ELECTRONIC SPREADSHEET ARCHIVE MANAGEMENT OF OFF-LINE DOCUMENTS HANDLE THE POWER OF UNIX. Handle's unique "what-you- see-is-what-you-get" feature allows for complete on-screen assembly of documents. • At the center of the Handle Family of Products, Handle Writer is a comprehensive full- function word processor and filing system working in con¬ junction with a sophisticated database and interactively managing data for all Handle products. • Handle Spell, a state-of-the- art interactive spelling checker, offers automatic spelling verifi¬ cation and correction and multiple dictionary services featuring an 80,000 word dictionary. • Information management is quickly and easily accom¬ plished with Handle List's full records processing capabilities. Simple userdefined forms allow for a variety of data to be accessed, updated and/or manipulated. • Handle Calc is at the fore¬ front of electronic spreadsheet development. Its advanced capabilities make it one of HANDLE CORP 140 MACKINAW ROAD / PO BOX 7018 / TAHOE CITY, CA 95730 (916)583 7283 ..IS! HAKl'ii KISINl-SS UhA.'iil.V HANK.!- 1 'A . 1 ‘ AM' ISAM li A< '< “r. ;• Ah; IHAI + MAhK. IM HANULfc HAMiLh WHIlhh ilANDLi* Si'hl! ilANl '!.!• UNIX IS A IhAI'hMAKK OF Hhl.i i.AH< >HA!' )HiFS INDUSTRY INSIDER about an 18-user system. THE SUPERMINIS On the next rung up the ladder is the 3B5/100 and 3B5/200, two “mid-range superminis.” Again built around the WE32000 chip, AT&T says these machines will support 40 and 60 users, respectively. They fea¬ ture up to 8 MB of error correcting memory, up to 160 MB of hard disk, a 9-track tape drive and UNIX Sys¬ tem V (in its entirety). The 3B5/100 sells for a base price of $57,000; the 3B5/200 goes for $73,000. At the top of the ladder is the 3B20 line. Priced at $230,000, the 3B20S is the module upon which the remainder of the 3B20 line is built. Think of it as your basic VAX-eater. The 3B20A ($330,000) is an S model with an attached processing unit that reportedly boosts perform¬ ance to almost twice that of a 3B20S. The 3B20D ($340,000) is a fault-tolerant system featuring duplexed architecture and the UNIX RTR (real time reliable) operating system. The 3B20 line features programmable microstores that give an OEM or VAR an advantage when customizing for applications. According to AT&T, the 3B20D will continue to operate during diagnostics, repairs, maintenance operations, software updates and system administration functions. If true, this would rate as quite a feat. Imagine updating code in the kernel without the system missing a cycle! The 3B20 is not new - AT&T has been debugging it for years. It serves as the foundation for the AT&T telecommunications switch¬ ing network. You use a 3B20D every time you dial an 800 number, so claims of reliability should be well founded. One more point about the 3B20D: the UNIX RTR operating system is based on UNIX System III. Sellinger said it will be upgraded to System V by year's end. Source code for RTR is not available yet, but training and documentation are. Neither the 3B5 nor the 3B20 is a virtual machine, but both can have main memory expanded to a very reasonable size (the 3B5 to 8 MB and the 3B20 series to 12-16 MB). The lack of virtual memory on the high-end machines means they will run faster but handle fewer pro¬ grams at a time. Users will also find the size of the programs limited by the amount of memory. If you’re willing to spring for extra main memory, though, the lack of virtual memory should not prove a problem for most applications. To improve speed, the 3B5 and 3B20 series can also include an optional 8K bytes of cache memory. The full line of AT&T offerings covers a wide range of user needs, with the most notable hole occurring at the low end. Industry sources expect AT&T to announce a per¬ sonal computer capable of filling that void shortly. Speculation is that Circle No. 8 on Inquiry Card —► When AT&T says it builds its machines “from the molecules up, ” it isn 7 kidding. This 1 MB RAM array , of AT&T design, is manufactured for the 3B2. It holds 1,048,576 bytes of information. 14 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Priced at $230,000, the 3B20S is the module upon which the remainder of the 3B20 line is built. Think of it as your basic VAX-eater. IHIRODUaNG YOUR WINDOW TO IHE FUTURE. The highly sophisticated 5620 asyn¬ chronous terminal is indicative of what you’ll be working with in the future, as well as what you can expect from Teletype Corporation. It’s a low-cost, dot-mapped, UNEX*-based terminal that offers a good value in switched or point-to-point private line environments. What’s most impressive about the 5620 is its unique capability to divide the display into multiple “windows” of varying sizes. Our electronic red “Mouse” lets you asily create and control the win¬ dows. And because the host views each window as a separate terminal, several functions can be in process on the 5620 at once. For exam¬ ple, a programmer can work on one program while one or more are com¬ piling and the terminal is receiving and displaying electronic mail. You can also download the 5620, and run programs independent of the host. While the 5620 is a programmer’s dream, it’s also a valuable business tool. It can be used to compare and contrast multiple business situations or cases simul¬ taneously; to develop one case while one or more are being executed; or to examine two sets of files from more than one data base side by side. You’ll enjoy extremely high resolution no matter how much you put on the screen. The dot- mapped display boasts 100 dots per inch resolution on a 15 inch diagonal monitor. You can address a dot anywhere on the screen, which gives you full graphics capabilities. Line drawings and tracings can be made with the “Mouse’.’ Although the 5620 is complex, it’s not difficult to operate. You can use the “Mouse” to control terminal functions through a series of user-friendly menus. There’s also a full complement of ergonomic features like a low-profile keyboard that’s light enough to rest in your lap, a high resolution screen with brightness control, and a special faceplate to reduce glare. Of course, you can count on our established nationwide service organization for prompt service. If you want to know what the future holds, take a look at our 5620. Its windows make it easy to - A For more information, write Teletype Corporation, Or call 1800 323-1229, Extension 615. •UNIX is a trademark of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. “Teletype” is a registered trademark and service mark of Teletype Corporation. TELETYPE:VALUE SETS US APART. Official Sponsor of tha 1984 OfympK Gam u AT&T Teletype Corporation INDUSTRY INSIDER the machine will be IBM PC compat¬ ible. That certainly makes sense in light of AT&T’s announcement of a PC interface. THE NETWORKS The PC interface works only with the 3B2. It connects one or more IBM or IBM-compatible Per¬ sonal Computers running MS-DOS to a 3B2 using either an Omninet, Ethernet or RS-232 serial interface. It allows PC users to share the resources of the 3B2, execute commands on the 3B2 and load and unload files from the 3B2. The 3B Net is a sophisticated, high-end, Ethernet-compatible local area network. It supports remote diagnostics, the capability of connecting to other machines on an Ethernet network and a master node for system administration. THE SOFTWARE UNIX System V Release 2 runs the full line of new products. It’s AT&T’s baby. Now that the AT&T folks have maneuvered the UNIX market where they want it, they’re jumping head first into deep water. The scramble is on to get application machines is that the 3B2 and 3B5 are reportedly object code compat¬ ible. The 3B20 line is upwardly source code compatible with the smaller machines. CUSTOMER SUPPORT A haunting question that inevitably arises is: how well will AT&T be able to support its cus¬ tomers? It is setting up 150 service centers and a number of 24-hour hotlines. But supporting customers in the use of a complex computing system is a far cry from teaching them how to use a telephone. Main¬ taining a computer is also very different from keeping a telephone working. Look at the support offered by the mainstays of the high-end mar¬ ket, DEC and IBM, and you will see that both have built their reputa¬ tions on service. Is AT&T going to be able to offer a comparable level of service fresh out of the starting gate? VAR AND OEM SUPPORT When asked whether the bus specs for the machines were avail¬ able to manufacturers wanting to Now that the AT&T folks have maneuvered the UNIX market where they want it, they're jumping head first into deep water. software developed for the new machines. AT&T just signed a “cooperative agreement” with Digital Research to develop a UNIX System V applications library. Most of the machines out of AT&T pro¬ duction this year will also be heading to VARs and OEMs (original equip¬ ment manufacturers). Look for several juicy developments to spring from that. A nice feature of the new line of 16 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 build peripherals and other add-ons for the new machines, Selinger said that the architecture was “open.” He said that in addition to releasing the bus specs, AT&T also intends to support manufacturers and provide debugging tools. (Does someone want to come up with a cartridge tape for the 3B2?) CONCLUSIONS Most people are taking a wait- and-see attitude because of the many questions that cannot be answered yet. AT&T has yet to prove itself in both the retail and OEM/VAR marketplaces. If it can provide the necessary support to add-on and peripheral manufacturers, AT&T can better its position by presenting a variety of disk and tape drives, printers, graphics devices and other peripherals to its users. AT&T also needs to show it can provide the sort of customer support it’s promised. AT&T’s low-end machines have the potential of simultaneously helping and hindering UNIX-based hardware manufacturers. Aid will be provided by solidifying UNIX as a standard and expanding the market. Damage will be done by taking away market share. For some hardware manufacturers, this may simply mean a smaller piece taken from a bigger pie. For others, though, sur¬ vival might hinge on finding a profitable niche too small to interest AT&T. Because UNIX provides excel¬ lent software development tools in an environment that is both malle¬ able and common from machine to machine, UNIX software manufac¬ turers should have a heyday. The main concern expressed by these vendors, though, is that UNIX become the standard multiuser operating system. There is no doubt but that the AT&T announcement has pushed UNIX that much closer to being the standard. But the question of who will profit most handsomely remains. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark G. Sobell is the author of “A Practical Guide to the UNIX System ” (Benjamin/Cummings , 1984.) His 10 years in the computer industry include programming and technical writing experience. Mr. Sobell has been involved in UNIX for four years and is currently a consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. g WHY DEC AND INTEL CHOSE THE MARK WILLIAMS C-COMPILER. DEC and INTEL wanted the best C technology avail¬ able, with excellent code density, supporting the full C language and their specific operating environments— all at a competitive price. They found it all at Mark Williams. WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE THE MARK WILLIAMS C-COMPILER. Our C-compiler supports the dominant 16-bit micro¬ computers— 68000, PDP-11. Z8000,8086—with a proven reliable, high-technology product. We are shipping versions of C for a large number of environments includ¬ ing CP/M and PC DOS. Both cross and native compilers are available. Call us for the distributor nearest you. OEM's should contact us directly about their specific requirements. Mark Williams Company, 1430 West Wrightwood, Chicago, Illinois 60614, 312/472-6659. Mark Williams Company Circle No. 9 on Inquiry Card UNIX ON THE IBM PC Now, beneath that mild-mannered PC-XT exterior beats the heart of a real UNIX operating system by Theodore C. Goldstein and Jessica A. Bernhardt It is springtime on the Texas prairie. Tension builds as storm clouds gather over the home of IBM's Information Systems Group. Without warning , lightning sparks and thunder claps. Could this be a herald of the melding of Big Blue and AT&T's UNIX? IBM's own version of UNIX on the PC has finally arrived. Dashing inside to avoid the clattering rain, we meet Robert M. Blake , manager of IBM's Irving , Texas , facility. Our task: preview the Personal Computer Interactive Executive (PC/IX). A survey of our findings follows. Complete bench¬ mark reviews and performance assessments of PC/IX and other PC UNIX products will appear in a forthcoming issue. Our initial tests found PC/IX to be robust, fast and bugfree. In a couple of hours, we ported over 2000 lines of system level C code to PC/IX. Like a well-tuned sports car, PC/IX’s response time was quick and sure. PC/IX is a very polished product. IBM’s latest product is a solid single-user implementation of Interactive Systems Corporation’s I S/3 for the PC/XT. IS/3 UNIX is a slightly enhanced version of AT&T’s System III UNIX. System III UNIX is a fine product, but Interactive Systems has improved it by adding the INed screen editor and the INet network. With the inclusion of INed, IBM has chosen to omit the popular Berkeley screen editor, vi. Also omitted is Berkeley's C-shell command inter¬ preter. C-Shell and vi versions capable of working on PC/IX do exist, but Interactive Systems chose to leave them out since there is no official support for them under AT&T System III UNIX. Since vi is included in System V UNIX, IBM is likely to include it when it upgrades PC/IX from System III to System V. The current price of System III PC/IX is $900. Included are 19 floppy disks, several manuals and support from IBM through Decem¬ ber 31, 1985. The minimal system configura¬ tion to run PC/IX consists of an XT The PC/IX package: PC-XT hardware and 19 diskettes. 18 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Illustration by Hope Epstein PC/IX FEATURE I apropos I at F checknews clear crypt csh ctags cu dump dir edit ex f77 finger fmt head last Ipr more plot postnews printenv ranlib readnews refer reset rogue tp tra tset umount uudecode uuencode uusend vi vnews wall whatis whereis whoami whom strings tar test The “Ins" and, the “Outs" of PC/IX. Space limitations forced IBM to make some choices. Here's a sampling of some common UNIX utilities that made it and some that didn't Neither list is exhaustive. model Personal Computer and key¬ board, an inexpensive monochrome monitor, 256K bytes of memory and the PC/IX operating system. Together these cost about $6400, making PC/IX one of the least expensive personal UNIX systems available. So what’s to keep you from plac¬ ing your order this minute? PC/IX’s $900 price tag may not be much for a minicomputer version of UNIX, but PC-DOS, the most popular operating system on the IBM PC, is available for only $40. Other PC microcomputer operating systems, including UNIX systems offered by other companies, are available for less than $500. Your $900 will buy you a lot from IBM, though. First, all System III utilities but tar (including yacc, make, SCCS, nroff and troff) are included in the PC/IX price. Additionally, the package includes full support from IBM through 1985. Typically, other UNIX com¬ panies’ support services cost as much as half of the purchase price — for a one-year service agreement. One complaint we have with PC/IX, though, is that the Personal Computer itself has only a comparatively slow 4.2 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. Even with Intel’s 8087 arithmetic co-processor performing floating point opera¬ tions, the IBM PC-XT is not a powerful machine. In the PC/IX memory model, the 8088 microprocessor is limited to 64K bytes of code and 64K bytes of data space. Users whose applica¬ tions were developed on the larger VAX or Motorola 68000 will find this restriction cramping. Moreover, the hard disks are small. Right now only two 10 MB IBM disk drives can run with PC/IX and the normal XT configuration contains only one, half of which is taken by PC/IX. First-time loading of PC/IX requires about 19 floppies. Fortu¬ nately, loading is only done once and requires between a half and a full hour to complete. Both a benefit and a detriment of the PC/IX system is the IBM PC’s lack of memory management 20 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 hardware other than some limited segmentation provided by the Intel 8088. This works as a detriment because memory management would provide a limited amount of bounds checking on memory accesses. C language novices (and some experts) often find the implicit bounds checking that memory management provides a big help in locating pointer errors. But in the long run, the lack of memory man¬ agement should prove beneficial because of the absence of wait states that could slow the system down. Wait states are caused by many memory management systems. There are plenty of other things to like about PC/IX as well. First, the overall package is cheap and commonly available. There are over 100,000 XTs and XT-compatibles in customer hands already. And PC/IX joins a family of systems already offered on the IBM PC, including PC-DOS, CP/M and P-System. Per¬ haps best of all, though, PC/IX comes with IBM support. IBM has already spent extensive time and effort debugging PC/IX, using its renowned quality assurance and beta testing methods. As mentioned earlier, PC/IX is also surprisingly fast. WHAT MAKES PC/IX FAST? To find out what makes PC/IX fast, we asked Brian Lucas of ISC in Maryland. Lucas replied that the way to make UNIX fast on the PC is to minimize the number of disk accesses involved. “We pre-allocate up to eight contiguous 512K byte blocks at a time when we write a file,” he explained. “Before we do a disk read, we examine the I-node to determine whether the block we are about to read is contiguous with later blocks in the file. If it is, we just read all blocks in the memory block buffer pool.” Lucas went on to explain that PC/IX directories are handled simi¬ larly, except that only two blocks are pre-allocated at a time. Regular Sys¬ tem III UNIX reads only one block at a time for both data and direc¬ tories. UNIX also normally reads a program image off the disk into the block buffer pool and then copies it out of the block buffer pool into the memory location where it will be executed. Not only does this cause a wasteful copy, but it also means program data and programs compete for space in the block buffer pool. PC/IX fixes this problem by IBM'S LENGTHY UNIX COURTSHIP IBM started the PC/IX project over two years ago. There are ru¬ mors that the port of the project was completed as much as a year ago. So why is IBM only now releasing PC/IX? “It took a year to turn UNIX into a product acceptable to IBM’s high standards,” said Robert Blake, manager of IBM’s Information Systems Group. “AT&T’s Bell Labs and the academic community developed UNIX in a very different fashion than IBM usually develops its products.” IBM has built a market-driven corporation around a mammoth hierarchy. Products are created and planned through intensive market research and extensive specification to support succeeding generations of hardware systems. IBM, better than any other computer company, sup¬ ports its hardware and software products with elaborate manuals and prompt bug fixes. The excellence of its support, more than anything else, keeps customers flocking to IBM. For better or worse, UNIX ideology is the antithesis of IBM ideology. Rather than being market- driven, UNIX design was largely shaped by the technical motives of individual programmers. These mo¬ tives ranged from pure and applied Computer Science objectives to interests in creating a more comfort¬ able programming and writing envi¬ ronment. Only recently with the divestiture of the Bell System, has AT&T started to develop and mar¬ ket UNIX as a salable product. This, in large part, explains why UNIX suffers with many flaws. UNIX commands are not always consistent. Many are not particu¬ larly “user-friendly.” Perhaps worst of all, documentation is disorganized and sometimes wrong. In spite of these flaws, UNIX’s popularity grows due to its simplicity and ele¬ gance of operation. Once users pass the documentation barrier, they find UNIX to be a powerful and easy-to- use system. IBM, which never wants to be left out of any marketplace, has thus introduced its own UNIX product, PC/IX. “We wanted a UNIX product up to IBM’s high product standards Continued on Page 60 June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 21 “Intelligence.. .is the artificial objects, especia Then, we lowered the cost of using UNIX. We've improved the efficiency of UNIX. And we shifted some of the work¬ load from the No longer. INTERACTIVE now offers UNIX software tools for every computer user: executives, engineers, office workers, and our oldest customers—those sophisti¬ cated programmers who have built UNIX into a major new force in the computer industry. Here’s how we built our enhanced version of UNIX. First, we simplified the user’s interface to UNIX. Most UNIX systems require all their users to learn a large set of powerful but cryptic commands. We don’t. We give our users the option of performing most tasks with the ten basic com¬ mands shown in the illustration. We also make available a larger set of commands for the experi¬ enced user and the full set of commands for the UNIX expert. This quote appeared in a 1978 issue of The Bell System Technical Journal that was devoted to a series of papers constituting the first complete description of the UNIX™ operating system. At that time, UNIX was used primarily by sophisticated programmers. Circle No. 10 on Inquiry Card faculty of making lly tools to make tools ^ —Henri Bergson (1859-1941) central processor to intelligent terminals. You can use our intelligent terminal or the IBM® Personal Computer to per¬ form tasks normally assigned to a UNIX central processor. Next, we adapted our software to new systems. We started with our IS/3 system running on DEC™ PDP™ and VAX™ computers. And we refined our major tools so that they run as an extension to DEC’S VMS™ operating system. compilers and cross-compilers, and a powerful system for preparing memo¬ randa, manuals, and other documents. We even have an option that allows you to send or receive mail through theTWX and Telex networks. Well be announcing new applications soon. We are building a library of software tools that will help you build a system matched to the needs of your organiza¬ tion. We’re also working on new ports that will let you run the system on other computers in your company. Recently, we adapted the entire IS/3 for the IBM Personal Computer. That product is now available from IBM. We have also completed a port of IS/3 to the SC11000, a multi-user system sold by SCI Systems. Now, we’re adding the applications needed in corporations and other large organizations. To receive our free brochure, "How to choose a UNIX supplier,” contact: INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation 1212 Seventh Street Santa Monica, CA 90401 (213) 450-8363. TWX: 910-343-6255 Telex: 18-2030 We are already delivering an electronic mail system and a very sophisticated networking system. Our users can exchange files, share central resources such as laser printers, or send mail anywhere in a network. We are also delivering FORTRAN compilers, C INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS CORPORATION '“UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories. ’“DEC PDP VAX and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation "IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. PC/IX FEATURE doing the disk read of a program directly into the memory location where it will be executed. PC/IX thus utilizes memory more than most UNIX systems to save time spent accessing the disk. Large amounts of memory also help PC/IX run faster by providing more space in the block buffer pool. A PC/IX system runs fastest when it has the full 640K bytes of memory sup¬ ported by the IBM PC. Not only is the disk input/output fast on PC/IX’s — it’s also reliable. One of our favorite ways to test reliability of a system is to start as many processes as possible acces¬ sing the disk — and then pull out the plug. UNIX gurus may shudder at the thought, but it is an excellent way to test a system’s reliability. PC/IX survived the test with flying colors, showing no file system corruption whatsoever. (We do not recommend this action, by the way, during normal use of any system.) Lucas also discussed how float¬ ing point arithmetic work is accomplished on PC/IX. PC/IX supports floating point arithmetic both with and without an Intel 8087 arithmetic processor. “Basically, to perform floating point computations, the compiler emits an interrupt call which traps out to the kernel,” Lucas said. “The PC/IX kernel knows from the config¬ uration switches whether or not the system has an 8087 installed. If the hardware system does have an 8087, the PC/IX kernel modifies the invoking program’s code space by changing the instruction from an interrupt call to 8087 instructions directly. If the XT does not have an 8087, the PC/IX kernel invokes a floating point emulation subroutine which performs the desired operation.” Since the 8087’s work is trans¬ parent to application software, the programmer never has to be concerned with whether or not the system actually has the arithmetic processor in place or not. RECORD LOCKING Another nice feature of PC/IX not common to many other UNIX systems is its record locking scheme. Record locking allows multiple programs to concurrently access records in a file without the risk of each accidentally overwriting the other’s operation. While there are a number of record locking schemes currently under discussion in the UNIX community, the /usr/group UNIX Standardization Committee has yet to issue a decision as to which is best. Interactive Systems chose to adopt for PC/IX the most common record locking scheme designed by John Bass. Bass’s method is elegantly sim¬ ple. The program seeks a file pointer to the record using the lseek system call, and then issues a lock system call to specify the length of the record to be locked. For ease of use, contiguous locked records may be unlocked with a single unlock primitive. Processes may also suspend execution while waiting for a record to be unlocked. This record locking system is identical to the one supported by Onyx and Plexus. Since PC/IX is a single-user sys¬ tem, record locking is largely super¬ fluous. But a database distributed over several PC/IXs (distributed server model database system) would depend upon this sort of functionality to provide support for consistent transactions. LANGUAGES To develop system software on PC/IX requires either the use of C or assembly language. The assembly language available is the usual hor¬ rible UNIX assembler that encour¬ ages programmers to write in a higher level language. The only high level language PC/IX currently supports is Version 7 C. More high level languages will be supported, however, as ISC develops them or as IBM acquires them from third party software vendors (see below). [Editor's Note: INfort, a FORTRAN compiler based on AT&T's FOR¬ TRAN 77, was released by IBM in early May.] The lex and yacc Continued on Page 92 24 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 11 on Inquiry Card # WESTERN ELECTRIC • PEACHTREE SOFTWARE INC. • CRAYRESEARCH • UPJOHN • RCA • DYSANCORP • WESTINCHOUSE • AMERICAN BELL • A SOFTWARE BANK • JOHNSON & IOHNSON • HOFFMAN LdRO( HE • AT&T • TIME LIFE • BALLY MANUFACTURING • APPLE COMPUTER • c 0° >°v 4- 0? ^ o* a,r A. fs • 2 aT < t: o 23 x • 8 < UJ Z 5! 9 »- < < « z §1 2 * z O > —1 CD * 5 “ u • z “* • H t 5* • ? I X z < O 3 «/> 1/1 Z 4 X cr> O 3 T »/> •0 M §1 o * • 0 *; 2 i UJ _ AZTEC C ...the most portable and comprehensive C software development Manx Software Systems with over 6,000 licensed users is one of the leading suppliers of "C" compilers and cross compilers for the world's most popular micro computers. The . . . . MANX AZTEC C compiler is available as a cross system available compiler or native compiler for the following environments: UJ (J z • OC un AZTEC C86 AZTEC C II AZTEC C65 UJ O Z 00 PC DOS CP/M-80 APPLE DOS is MS DOS TRSDOS COMMODORE 64 (12/83) gt 0 • CP/M-86 ProDOS (2/84) < 3 p s “ 0 The AZTEC C product is a complete development system. In addition to a full v7 "C" compiler, basic product includes assemblers, linkage editors, development utilities, and full run time libraries. New products to be released in late 1983 and early 1984 include graphics development tools, data base managers, program editors, screen management systems, and other development tools that work in conjunction with the AZTEC C system. CROSS DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS The AZTEC C cross development systems include all of the utilities and library support routines avail¬ able with the native versions including a cross assembler. The binary image created in the host environ¬ ment is downloaded and tested in the target environment. MANX has been using its own cross compilers on a daily basis since 1980. HOSTS PDP-11 UNIX 68000 UNIX ports 8086/8088 UNIX ports PC DOS MS DOS CP/M-86 8080/8085/Z80 CP/M-80 TARGETS 8086/8088 PC DOS MS DOS CP/M-86 8080/8085/Z80 CP/M-80 TRSDOS (12/83) LDOS (12/83) DOSPLUS (12/83) 6502/65xx APPLE DOS APPLE ProDOS (2/84) COMMODORE 64 Other host and target environments will be released in early 1984. NATIVE COMPILERS The AZTEC C native 8080 compiler was first released in 1981. Since that time it has been acquired by more than 300 colleges and universities, thousands of corporations, small business, and government agencies. The compiler has been ported to the 6502 and 8086. Plans for future ports include the 68000, 16032, and IBM 370. All native versions are source compatible. Source developed in one environment can therefore be transferred to another environment and compiled, linked and executed. For prices and information call: 800-221-0440 (outside Nj) 201-780-4004 (inside Nj) Or write to: MANX SOFTWARE SYSTEMS P.O. BOX 55 • SHREWSBURY, Nj 07701 MANX software systems O S " x P :> • x O r Z •2 2 5 O > X 30 > o • z C? -4 H “ m X > * z ? o n 2 O n Z Z 30 2 o 0 . z 2 H Z x r- 2 5 O o o c s x n O Z < 5 X z n JO O -o JO O * 5 t -NOiHSV • OS • 3 I D • O z > • Z 2 n t O gl IS z • ; O UVBDBIVSBHOnH • ddOD SW 3 JLSAS 3 IH 1 ITONOW • ddOJ lN3WdOT3A3a SOlOl • H )NA 1 TliaadW • NOIND NB31S3M • S )IHdVd') d 3 KTd WO T VO I dOld « 3 MHi • SDIIOBOM STI • QHV)OVd‘lJL3TM3H • ODNOIHON • 3NIT-NO-V3JM3IS • MDN • M3WT3 NIXU3d • ONI SW31SAS 03QIA3131 • NMXNVUd • ONIHSITBOd 3UVM IBM MOVES IIM FOR ITS SHARE What's to become of the little guys? by Ray Jones ULUPUTIA U nce upon a time not so very long ago, nearly 130 Lillipu¬ tian companies busy manufacturing UNIX boxes became very agitated when they discovered a Big Blue giant lumbering about in their happy land. Where there had once been confidence, confusion reigned. Lilliputians previously proud of their strategies for selling little boxes suddenly began to question their wisdom. They didn't know whether to rejoice, knowing the giant would open new territories; act normally, hoping the giant wouldn't notice them; run for cover; or flee the land altogether. They wondered if perhaps they shouldn't simply try to run a bit faster or attempt to beat the giant at his own game. Which way to go? What to do? Only one thing was sure: Lilliput would never be the same. 26 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 I SYSTEMS’ m Li Imp Y fmm ' SBa |£X Mm. 1 pP^ Illustration by Hope Epstein June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 27 PC/IX FEATURE The shadow hanging over Lilliput, of course, is cast by the looming presence of IBM. While some UNIX microcom¬ puter companies might ask, “Why? Why us? H The question many industry observers are asking is: “What took IBM so long?” Simply put, IBM is a market- driven company. Other companies do the pioneering. IBM does the cleaning up — after a market has already been established. Each IBM announcement is backed by months of exhaustive research. The parameters of develop¬ ing markets are closely studied and the effects a new product might have on existing IBM product lines are analyzed. By the time IBM is ready to move, it has determined the size of the market it intends to enter, knows the rate at which the market is likely to grow and has assessed its own penetration potential. Perhaps most important of all, IBM moves only after researching the desires and needs of its target clients. So by sheer virtue of IBM’s entry into the UNIX microcomputer market, other manufacturers can now be certain the market really exists — and that IBM has come in for its share. That share will probably exceed 30 percent within the next two years. Let’s look at the IBM product and try to determine why it will pack such a punch. THAT OLD BLUE MAGIC Is the processor faster? Does it have more memory or more disk space? Does it offer better communi¬ cations? Is its UNIX port that much better? Does PC/IX cost that much less? The answer to all these ques¬ tions is an emphatic, “No!” But IBM does have an adequate product for the market segment it has chosen. And when a product bears the IBM emblem, adequacy suffices. From the perspective of the end user, there is enormous comfort in dealing with a large, well established company that will surely be there when needed for support. IBM cus¬ tomers know that adequate docu¬ mentation will be available and that there will be plenty of applications software for the system. UNIX MARKET GROWTH So just what is the current market and what immediate effects will the IBM entry have? The cur¬ rent installed base of sub-licensed UNIX is approximately 120,000 units, 65,000 of which were shipped in 1983. The 1984 projection holds that yet another 130,000 units will hit the market (Gnostic Concepts, Inc., 1984). To this we need to add the installed base of non-licensed UNIX work-alikes — estimated to be about 125,000 in number. The effects of IBM’s entry should be positive for the UNIX market as a whole. End users, in particular, stand to benefit from a huge increase in the amount of soft¬ ware written or converted to run in the UNIX environment. One need only look back a couple of years at what happened in the MS-DOS mar¬ ket to verify this. When first intro¬ duced, MS-DOS application soft¬ ware was negligible. Now there is no operating system that offers more. Until now, UNIX was found chiefly in environments where sophisticated users were willing to put up with “user hostile” aspects of the operating system. But pene¬ tration outside the software develop¬ ment, scientific, engineering and academic markets was limited. 1983 65,000 Units shipped 1984 An estimated 130,000 Units shipped UNIX hardware manufacturers can now feed from a bigger pie. Market forecasts show a 200 percent growth in sales this year. 28 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Simply put , IBM is a market-driven company. Other companies do the pioneering, IBM does the cleaning up... / ✓ Life just isn't fair. An elite handful of hardware manufacturers (seven in all) command a whopping 67 percent of the UNIX market , leaving only slim pickings for the vast majority of vendors. To overcome this, much of the UNIX software currently being introduced hides the operating system from end users with menu front ends and other “user friendly” devices. The rate at which this software is being developed is staggering. A study conducted last November could identify only 179 software packages available under UNIX (UNIX Application Software Directory , Onager Publishing). A subsequent study conducted five months later by the same group found 400 packages. With the entry of IBM, many more packages will now be gener¬ ated or converted to UNIX. By this time next year, there should be 800 to 1000 — or more — software packages to choose from. UNIX will very soon be legitimized in the office. SOFTWARE PACKAGING This has major implications for UNIX hardware vendors. Software packaging is likely to become a key to new systems sales. In a recent survey of 73 hardware companies, the following tendencies towards software bundling were discovered: Operating System only, 47.3%; Productivity Tools (word processing, database management and spread¬ sheets), 40.5%; Business Applica¬ tions (general accounting or financial packages), 10.8%; and Vertical Software, 1.4% When these same companies were asked to describe the markets they service, they gave the following responses: OEM/VAR, 73.3%; Business/Office, 13.7%; Scientific/ Engineering, 9.9%; and CAD/CAM, 3.1%. It is interesting to note that June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 29 Introducing TPs Climb on the 32 * Nu Machine* bit NuBus now* Hbres displays Cache 68010 CPU Tl NuB us gm The Nu Machine™ Computer. The first system in the Texas Instruments Nu Generation Com¬ puter family. The only system now available built on a modem 32-bit bus. The processor-independent NuBus™ architecture helps meet your advanced-technology design requirements today. And tomorrow. First high-performance 32-bit bus The NuBus technology, designed at M.I.T., is optimized for 32-bit data and address transfers. Its 37.5-Mbyte/sec bandwidth com¬ bines with an elegant arbitration scheme to ensure fast and fair data flow. Innovative, flexible architecture The NuBus design was developed to support sophisticated system architectures and eliminates the System S' V\V/68 _ fee built-in obsolescence of processor- dependent systems. It lets you concentrate on developing applications, not architecture. Your significant investments are protected as new technologies develop. The Nu Machine’s open archi¬ tecture solves your make vs. buy dilemma. Multiple-processor con¬ figuration support combines with the NuBus high bandwidth, high- resolution graphic displays, cache memory, and high-speed disks to make the Nu Machine system attractive to sophisticated end-users, systems integrators, and OEMs in the engineering and scientific marketplace. Anticipating industry trends, the power and expandability of TI’s Nu Machine allow it to accept 32-bit processors of the fijture. Open system supporting industry standards TI’s Nu Machine system is currently available with a Combining innovative NuBus architecture with advanced graphics, powerful peripherals, and UNIX-based software, TI’s Nu Machine provides the outstanding performance and flexibility required by scientific and engineering systems designers. 27-7379 © 1984 Tl 10-MHz 68010 processor support¬ ing a UNIX™-based operating system with enhancements for windowing and high-resolution displays. Those who want to design their own system processors and con¬ trollers can now license the NuBus design from Texas Instruments. Also, a NuBus-to-Multibus™ converter allows the use of exist¬ ing interface cards and peripherals from third parties. The system you can build on from now on Because its high performance and flexibility are designed for the long run, TI’s Nu Machine can be updated when other systems are outdated. And, Nu Machine computers are backed by TI’s service and customer-support network and by TI’s commitment to quality and reliability. To climb on the NuBus bandwagon, call toll-free: 1-800-527-3500. Or write Texas Instruments Incorporated, P.O. Box 402430, Dept. DNA203UR Dallas, Texas 75240. Nu Machine and NuBus are trademarks of Texas Instruments Incorporated Multibus is a trademark of Intel Corporation System V/68 is a trademark of Motorola, Inc. UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Texas ^ Instruments Creating useful products and services for you. PC/IX FEATURE at least 3.5 percent of the companies that considered the business market their prime focus did not even offer business software with their systems. To see if there is a correlation between the level of software supplied and the number of systems shipped, let’s look at the top 12 hardware vendors. These companies accounted for 80 percent of all systems shipped last year. Of the 12, three indicated the OEM/VAR market as their target, seven (58%) pointed to the Business/Office market while one company each indicated an orienta¬ tion towards Scientific/Engineering and CAD/CAM clients. The systems shipped by these 12 companies fell into the following categories: OEM/VAR, 12%; Busi¬ ness/Office, 84%; Scientific/ Engineering, 2.1%; and CAD/CAM, 1.9% By simple math, then, we can deduce that the seven vendors selling systems that include bundles of Business/Office applications software accounted for 67 percent of all UNIX systems shipped last year (that’s 84 percent of the 80 percent market share enjoyed by the top 12 companies). One of these seven companies, it should be noted, was IBM — and that was before the release of PC/IX. Another mathe¬ matical exercise shows that 95 percent of the companies selling panies are going either to end users or dealers. THE SUCCESS EQUATION This doesn’t mean that end user systems laden with business applications software offer the only road to success in the UNIX market. As OEMs and VARs complete their development cycles and begin moving products to end users at an accelerated rate, their segment of the hardware manufacture market will increase. But for the time being, business applications software plus productivity tools tends to equal healthy sales. Does this then mean that, with increased software bundling, small UNIX hardware vendors might compete with IBM? Maybe, but remember that end users buy from Big Blue to achieve a “comfort level.’’ The more comfortable the buyer is, the more likely he or she is 1) Is the software available from the same source as the hardware? 2) Is local service available? 3) Is there enough clearly written documentation to allow ease in use of the system? 4) Will somebody respond when help is needed? 5) Will the company still be around next year when help or service is needed? 6) Is the price competitive? If the customer feels uncomfortable about the answers to any of these questions, a sale is unlikely. This is particularly true now that IBM has entered the field. Lest there be any doubt, IBM has the right answers to these questions. With the IBM option now open, other hardware vendors must take closer heed of their customers’ needs — or risk serious consequences. Those that make attractive software offerings and provide adequate support might find that sharing a growing UNIX pie with IBM is not such a bad prospect. So by sheer virtue of IBM's entry into the UNIX microcomputer market, other manufacturers can now be certain the market really exists... The effects of IBM's entry should be positive for the UNIX market as a whole. about the author UNIX hardware service only 33 percent of the market. Yet another interesting conclu¬ sion is that all but 12 percent of the machines being sold by the top com- to buy. For a moment, put yourself in the place of the end user choosing a system. Some of the questions likely to arise include: Bay Jones is President of Onager Publishing and author of the UNIX Applications Software Directory (Onager Publishing, 1983). He also works as a marketing consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. m 32 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Are you hiding from new software opportunities? >• Working in the same software environment year after year makes it very easy to bury yourself in the security of familiar surroundings. Unfortunately, it also makes it easy to miss the exciting challenges that will enhance your professional life. If you are ready to be exposed to some new appli¬ cations of UNIX™ and C, see what Litton Data Systems has to offer. We are looking for talented Programmers to pro¬ vide new software approaches for various network configurations of our family of microcomputer-based intelligent terminals. Applications include air defense systems, military intelligence, artillery control and an advanced military field personnel system. Requirements include 5 years of software exper¬ ience and full familiarity with UNIX™ and C language. Well developed documentation and writing skills are also desired. Isn’t it time you faced up to a challenging software opportunity? We will provide you with an excellent salary and benefits package which includes company- paid medical, dental and life insurance, continuing education and a recreational program. Interested individuals are encouraged to forward their resume and salary requirements to: Jim Robertson Staffing & Placement Department 281 8000 Woodley Ave. Van Nuys, CA 91409 HB Litton Data Systems Equal Opportunity Employer U.S. Citizenship Required Principals Only Circle No. 12 on Inquiry Card 34 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 LET THE SOFTWARE RACE COMMENCE! A preliminary handicapper's guide to the software companies in the running for the PC/IX market by Steve Rosenthal Software that runs under PC/IX is on the way — but it will be at least a few months before you’ll find much of a selection. And unless IBM contracts with major UNIX and MS-DOS software houses come through soon, many of the early offerings may come from small firms. That’s what industry insiders told UNIX REVIEW in an informal poll conducted over the last few weeks. Until PC/IX accounts for a large number of installed systems, potential sales of software packages to run under it will remain small. Therefore, most firms consider a decision about whether to produce software for PC/IX primarily a question of long term strategy. The situation is further complicated by shifting alliances in the industry and the existence of several competing UNIX-based systems for the PC. Some of the smaller developers, in fact, plan to sit tight for a while so as to avoid falling into a possible battle between IBM and AT&T. Developers therefore say that the first available applications for PC/IX are likely to come from three sources: large firms under contract with IBM, small and medium-sized firms that already have software running under System III or Microsoft Xenix, and new startups. UNDER CONTRACT It’s clear that if PC/IX is going to become a popular operating system for the IBM PC and its work-alikes, users will need to have a wide choice of application programs. IBM took a step toward filling the void in early May — with the announcement of two software packages developed by Interactive Systems Corporation, the Santa Monica-based UNIX house that produced PC/IX. One package, named INfort, offers users an adaption of Bell Lab’s FORTRAN 77, while the other, an amalgamation of three communication utilities (INmail, INnet, and FTP) affords a range of local and remote communication options. NEIGHBORING PORTS Companies already running software under UNIX are expected to serve as a major source for PC/IX software. Because PC/IX is a fairly straightforward port of System III, the IBM version should be able to host any System III software that can fit within the memory and disk limitations of the PC-XT. Software companies that already have microcomputer-based software for System III or Xenix should have little trouble adapting it to PC/IX. June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 35 PC/IX FEATURE Indeed, some of the minicom¬ puter software companies say PC/IX may be just the vehicle they need to get a piece of the burgeoning PC market. With a much smaller investment than would be required to produce an MS-DOS version, these companies can tailor some of their existing UNIX-based software to PC/IX. For example, Horizon Software Systems, whose principal UNIX-family market has been tied into DEC and Altos machines, is one firm ready to make the translation. According to spokesperson Larry Swartz, “as soon as we can get a copy, we’ll start porting our Horizon word processor,” followed by spreadsheet, database and some graphics utilities. The biggest bottleneck slowing the migration may come in the availability of suitable compilers. With UNIX-based programs com¬ patible only at the high-level language source code plateau, each application will have to be modified slightly for the peculiarities of the PC and then re-compiled. Among the compilers needed are ones for C, Pascal, COBOL and FORTRAN. So far, however, the heavy- hitters in the PC compiler market are still on the sidelines. Microsoft, still smarting over the IBM rejection of its Xenix port of System III, says it has no plans to provide any of its software tools on PC/IX. Digital Research has signed up with AT&T to provide applications and software tools for System V, and it also has contracts pending with chipmakers Motorola and Intel. Spokesperson Dave Graebel says these arrangements don’t preclude a DRI effort for PC/IX, but the company would at least wait for a sizable PC/IX market to develop before making any commitments. Many of the business and financial packages for System III UNIX were written in COBOL. For example, Bytel Corporation whose COGEN and Menu Pro packages already run under Xenix, reports it “definitely will produce a PC/IX version as soon as RM COBOL or Level II COBOL is available.” Ryan-McFarland is also planning on porting its COBOL software to the PC/IX. Micro Focus, vendors of the popular Level II HOPE FOR THE IMPATIENT You don’t have to wait for PC/IX software to get UNIX ap¬ plications running on the IBM PC. Although largely eclipsed from popular notice by the more widely-used MS-DOS, Microsoft reports that its Xenix implemen¬ tation of UNIX System III accounts for more installations than any other UNIX derivative. The PC implementation of Xenix is licensed through The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), which claims its system can support up to three users, has been proven in the field and comes with extensive software support. Among the software tools already available are compilers for C, Level II COBOL, FORTRAN H and BASIC. Appli¬ cations include word processing, spread sheets, database programs and accounting packages. Other PC look-alikes include VenturCom’s VENIX, Quan¬ tum’s QNYX, Mark Williams’ Coherent, Whitesmith’s Idris and Network Consulting’s Coherent (different from the Mark Williams product of the same name). All report that applications software is available now. COBOL, had no comment except to say it expects to make products available for PC/IX “when some¬ body pays us to.” Other compiler houses say they would like to work on PC/IX, but just don’t have the time. Silicon Valley Software, for example, sells Pascal, FORTRAN and C compilers ...the heavy-hitters in the PC compiler market are still on the sidelines. as well as a BASIC interpreter that run under Xenix. But all their implementations generate code for the Motorola 68000 and National 16000 processors. “UNIX is such a big market,” says SVS President Steve Glanville, “and you can do everything at one level or a smaller part at a higher level.” For now, at least, SVS will forego PC/IX. A LONG WAYS FROM PC-DOS Just as PC/IX offers UNIX houses a pathway into the PC market, PC/IX offers companies now writing software for the IBM PC a possible route to future UNIX systems. But if any of the PC- market leaders is thinking about UNIX, they’d prefer not to talk about it. Most of the large MS-DOS software houses will only say they have made no announcements thusfar concerning PC/IX and, as a matter of policy will not comment on unannounced products. Among those taking this position are MicroPro International, Lotus Development and VisiCorp. MicroPro, developer of the best¬ selling Wordstar package “has no 36 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 13 on Inquiry Card UNIX" EVALUATION NEWS!! AIM OFFERS APPLICATION - CONFIGURABLE UNIX BENCHMARK DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE A UNIX PURCHASE DECISION IN THE NEAR FUTURE? If you have to compare competitive UNIX systems in the marketplace or even evaluate the performance of your own system in light of new enhancements available, you know it can be a bewildering task. THERE IS MORE TO COMPARING UNIX SYSTEMS THAN VENDOR STATISTICS ALONE. How do you decide which UNIX system should be the standard for your company? You could compare published vendor data sheets but you would not be sure how they support your specific needs. UNIX SYSTEMS RANK DIFFERENTLY WHEN COMPARED IN SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTS!! If your target needs are heavily database oriented, obviously the disk transfer rate of each system dominates your selection criteria, but if you need graphics capability, then the CPU resource becomes the center of evaluation. You might even need to select a system which does both functions well. A UNIX BENCHMARK TAILORABLE FOR YOUR ENVIRONMENT IS AVAILABLE. AIM Technology's second UNIX benchmark product, SUITE II, is parameterized so that you can evaluate how various UNIX systems, (such as Version 7, System III, System V, Xenix, etc.) would perform in your processing environment. Application characteristics (such as word processing, spreadsheet, graphics, communications, compilations and scientific requirements) can be weighted to reflect how much they are a factor in your overall evaluation. This testing can be run, tuned, and re-run on as many as 20 systems for comparison ... CALL OR WRITE FOR FREE “EVALUATING UNIX COMPUTERS” MANUAL"' This manual discusses how to evaluate the performance of various UNIX systems in specific processing environments. It will be most valuable to the multiple-purchase buyer who must decide which UNIX system is best suited for the application mix representative of his company's requirements. ■Wt- AIM TECHNOLOGY While the 60-day introductory 25% discount is in effect, AIM's Suite II Benchmark is available for $2575. It can be ordered for immediate delivery from AIM Technology, 4655 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 390, Santa Clara, CA 95050. For manual or additional information contact Ms Jamie Mendez (408-727-3711). ,M UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories •Additional copies of the manual can be obtained for $9 75 current offerings for PC/IX,” says spokesperson Judy McLean. “We simply have not made an official announcement either way/’ echoes Chris Morgan of Lotus Development, producers of Lotus 1-2-3. Other firms are more willing to comment, even if only to say that they will wait and see. With the PC-DOS market booming, most PC-DOS houses see little reason to invest effort in a new operating system when their current market is far from saturated. “There are no plans in the R&D schedule to develop software under UNIX. However, if the market develops, we'll take another look,’’ says Software Publishing’s John Page. His firm’s pfs: series has consistently made the lists of top-selling software for the Personal Computer. THE GREAT UNKNOWN At least tens of thousands of PC users have had some experience with UNIX in the past, mostly during college. If you look at the waves of new software companies formed to write programs under CP/M and MS-DOS/PC-DOS, it’s safe to predict that there is potential for a new cresting of companies formed to write UNIX software. One of the keys to the virtual explosion of software for CP/M and PC-DOS was the low barrier to entry. For only a few thousand dollars, developers could get the hardware and software tools they needed to engage in Interview To get another slant on the race to develop PC/IX software, UNIX REVIEW went to Heinz Lycklama, Vice President of Technical Develop¬ ment at Interactive Systems Corpo¬ ration. If there’s anyone who knows about PC/IX, it’s Lycklama. First, he worked with IBM to design the system and then he managed the ISC team that executed the port. Before going to ISC, Lycklama built a solid reputation as a designer and implementor of operating systems at Bell Laboratories. REVIEW: What software currently exists for the PC/IX apart from stan¬ dard System III offerings and the INed editor? Lycklama: Well, for now, it’s basi¬ cally System III. You can pretty much do a one-to-one comparison of what’s there and what’s not there. Of course, some machine-specific programs — you know, some DEC- isms — are not there. Some commu¬ nications programs, X.25 programs 38 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Photo by Debbie Leavitt serious program development. Similarly, the cost of a complete PC/IX system is within reach of many employed recent graduates and even some students. If they already have access to a PC, the cost of entry is less than $2000. If not, programs can be developed on other UNIX systems and then downloaded and customized on a borrowed machine. As in the commercial market, expectation and perception will be the most important factors in determining the amount of effort these developers spend on PC/IX. But because individuals working on their own time can afford to bet on long shots, a significant number of these unknown developers will take a chance on being one of the few players in an uncrowded market unless PC/IX clearly stumbles in its first few months. So while PC/IX may technically be nothing more than a competent port of a superseded version of UNIX, which in itself was not designed to support casual end users, the product still has potential. Many more fortunes have been made in the recent decades betting on IBM than have been made betting against it. If IBM backs PC/IX, software will appear. You can take that to the bank. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve Rosenthal is a lexicographer and writer living in Berkeley. His columns regularly appear in six microcomputer magazines. ■ and bisync stuff are also not there. It is the standard PC device that is supported — the floppy, the hard disk, asynchronous lines and the display monitor (both monochrome and color). REVIEW: But , at present , there is no off-the-shelf software? Lycklama: Right. Actually, besides the INed editor, there is one other package that plugs into the system. That is our (ISC’s) Connect pro¬ gram, which is a virtual terminal communication program. This is all bundled in with the basic offering. PC/IX is sold as one package, but it is bundled in subsets. There are a total of 19 diskettes, eight of which make up the core sys¬ tem, which is completely functional with the editor. The other packages are things like SCCS tools, program development tools, communication tools and word processing tools, each offered on separate diskettes. So users can load the core system and use only a few MB of disk storage and then load other pieces selectively. On a 10 MB disk in a minimum system, a user would typically take up, say, 8 MB for a UNIX partition and 2 MB for an MS-DOS partition. They would cohabitate so you could boot up either MS-DOS or the PC/IX system. If you loaded just the core subset, though, you would only take up 2.5 to 3 MB of disk storage. REVIEW: With the IBM PCs ma¬ jor account orientation , how long do you suspect it will be before business applications begin appearing? Lycklama: We ourselves are commu¬ nicating with IBM about marketing our own application programs, called IN packages. [Editors Note: A partial offering was announced by IBM in early May.] REVIEW: Can you detail those a bit? Lycklama: The packages include INmail, a complete user-friendly mail system not at all like the Bell mail system. The Bell mail system is also provided as part of the basic offering, but our INmail system is an additional option that we now offer to all our end user customers. Then we have the INnet pack¬ age, which is our networking package. This, again, is a proven product we currently market to our end users. The INnet package is fairly independent of whatever com¬ munication link is available. You could use an RS-232 line, you can use an RS-232 line with a modem or you could use an X.25. Another program is what we call FTP, for File Transfer Program, to be used for interactively transferring messages or files between two sys¬ tems. You just log into the remote system and extract the files you want. Those are the three basic com¬ munication packages. We also have a word processing package called INword, which is much more simplified than nroff. It is not quite a “what you see is what you get” type of word processing system, but it is somewhere between that and the complex primitives of nroff/troff. Then we have INfort, our FOR¬ TRAN compiler based on the FOR¬ TRAN from Bell, FORTRAN 77. It contains some improvements and, of course, it’s tailored to the archi¬ tecture of the PC, which is no mean feat. Just try squeezing that compiler into a 64K address space and see if you can still generate fairly efficient code. [Editors Note: The IBM announcement made in early May unveiled two packages: INfort and an amalgamation of INmaif INnet and FTP ] Continued on Page 84 The PC/IX is not something I would characterize as a home computer system - at least not today. It is really for the professional. June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 39 40 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 It is a sunny day in Santa Mon¬ ica at Interactive System Corpora¬ tion’s headquarters, where Ted Dolotta, Senior Vice President of Technology, talks with UNIX REVIEW about PC/IX, Inter¬ active’s port of UNIX to the PC-XT commissioned by IBM and given IBM’s official blessing. REVIEW: What is PC/IX? Dolotta: PC/IX is an implementa¬ tion of AT&T’s UNIX System III on the IBM PC. It presents the user and the programmer with the same interface as System III with the obvious hardware limitations and differences. And, it has some additional features — such as the Interactive editor, changed to make good use of the PC keyboard and display — and some other improve¬ ments to the user interface we have found useful. It also has some internal, invisible-to-the-user kernel differences to make it run better on the PC. But as far as the user is concerned, it is for all intents and purposes System III on the PC. REVIEW: It has System III system calls and such? Dolotta: Absolutely. REVIEW: If you wrote, for example, a device driver under System III on other hardware, will it run under PC/IX? Dolotta: To the extent that the device can be attached physically to the PC, yes. REVIEW: In a demonstration before this interview, I saw PC/IX come up in multiuser mode, and yet, of course, there is only one keyboard attached. Why? Dolotta: The PC is a personal com¬ puter. That is point number one. Point number two is that the PC CPU is an 8088, which does not offer memory protection. To suggest that it is a good idea for more than one user to use it in general would be dangerous. And lastly, there was the issue of licensing: the system is sold as a single-user system. REVIEW: Are there extra slots for other RS-232 ports? Dolotta: The answer is yes, you can attach another terminal to it, but one would be doing that at one’s own risk. The system is sold by IBM, and if you read their general information manual, PC/IX is described as a single concurrent user, multitasking system. REVIEW: What makes PC/IX seem so fast? Dolotta: The terminal interface is not standard RS-232, but rather writes directly to the display memory. So, when a user issues a command nothing much seems to happen at first, and then the whole screen suddenly fills. Also, we have implemented con¬ tiguous files. All object code for the system resides in contiguous files, so that an exec gets the file all at once — which helps performance a great deal. User files are also contiguous — to the extent they can be. The implementation has float¬ ing point emulation, but can make use of a 8087 chip if the chip is there. Whether the chip is there and is to be used is a run-time decision, and does not affect compilation — the code is the same. The first attempt at using floating point traps into a routine that determines whether the co-processor is there or not, and thereafter (if it is not) the code is interpreted. But if the co-processor is there, floating point instructions are executed directly, without being trapped. DISK REQUIREMENTS REVIEW: What is the disk size on the PC? Dolotta: The PC disk holds 10 MB. You must have at least one, but you can have two. This is not a floppy- only system. REVIEW: Your back up media is ... ? Dolotta: Floppy disk. REVIEW: How many floppies does PC/IX require? Dolotta: Nineteen diskettes. NETWORKING REVIEW: Let us now turn to net¬ working considerations. Does uucp exist on PC/IX? “As a general philosophy, we had no problem with adding those things we had available and perceived as useful . “ Generally, I think it is fair to say that the code and documentation took an awful lot of polish and improvement to make it more consistent, more robust and less buggy. ” June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 41 PC/IX FEATURE Dolotta: Yes. It uses an RS-232 port. REVIEW: But you are not supposed to hook a terminal to that port? Dolotta: No. The lack of memory protection makes simultaneous use dangerous, and I would seriously advise people debugging C programs simultaneously not to do so. REVIEW: What about SNA, so that PC/IX would be able to call up “Big Blue"? Dolotta: At this point, that just is not quite part of the plan. REVIEW: Ethernet? Dolotta: No, although - there is obviously nothing to keep others from developing code that would provide these facilities on the PC. I should point out that there is a document provided to every licen¬ see called, “How to Write Device Drivers for PC/ IX.” So the fact that those facilities are not a part of the initial offering by IBM is not to say that they cannot be provided later by somebody else. REVIEW: The PC seems to be a potential candidate as a diskless workstation, with one PC having the hard disk option and other PCs hanging off of that Dolotta: Remember, you are talking about the PC, which is a personal computer. In theory, it is possible to connect a PC as a workstation to a multiuser system, but not in the current implementation of PC/IX. It requires at present a 10 MB fixed disk. REVIEW: Your mention of the device driver tutorial brings up the question about what you have done to System III documentation. The manual, I understand, is not online? Dolotta: That is correct. It normally does not exist in an online form, although getting it there is obvi¬ ously no big deal. 42 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 REVIEW: What revisions were made to the basic UNIX System III Manual set? Dolotta: Basically, the user manual is much like the traditional UNIX User's Manual in the small, 6-inch by 9-inch form. The only way you will immediately observe it to be different from the Bell System manual is that it comes in a loose- leaf binder as opposed to a comb binder. However, it has been pored over and scrutinized — quite a few errors, inaccuracies and inconsisten¬ cies have been eliminated, and it is more complete. It also has more examples. But if you look at it, you will have no problem recognizing the standard UNIX System III manual style. Supplemental documentation consists of four manuals. One is the general information manual, which is an overview and synopsis of facilities. SYSTEM MANAGER'S GUIDE There is also the Systems Manager's Guide, which Bell’s versions of UNIX never had — and Interactive’s always had — a manual for whomever takes care of the system: how to install it, all the housekeeping tasks that you do with the system. It has been almost totally rewritten with the single-user system in mind. Just to give you the flavor of it, it has several pages of definitions and describes privileged users, installation procedures, system startup, shutdown, accounts for users, tailoring the user environ¬ ment and the queueing system. That is the one thing we did add: the general purpose queueing system for printers, other devices or networks. It’s a much more general solution than you’ll find in System III. There are also sections on file system backup, creating new file systems, file system integrity, con¬ figuring the system and optimizing it, and interfacing terminals and modems. There is a section on configuring auto-dialers and a section on the file system check program, fsck. REVIEW: Is it different from Kowalski's article on using fsck? Dolotta: Yes, we have improved that signifi¬ cantly. Using fsck is a much, much more automated thing. Very seldom is any user involvement required. And there is also the article I mentioned earlier on how to write device drivers for PC/IX, with plenty of examples, and a uucp installation guide. There are two other documents. One is called the Programmer's Guide, and one called the Text Processing Guide. REVIEW: Are these not just the Bell documents warmed over? Dolotta: Well, they are in many instances parts of the same docu¬ ments, but they have been signifi¬ cantly revised, bringing them up to date and making them more consis¬ tent. There are articles on C programming for the PC/IX, the C Continued on Page 80 AI EMM Operating Systems are becoming MIJK the versatile, powerful back- wI m l#m bones of more and more computer systems. Helping people build the many advantages of the tried-and-true UNIX’" Operating System into their systems is our business. Our UNITY" 1 adapta¬ tion of Bell Laboratories UNIX Operating System is available for the DEC PDP-1T, and for the DEC VAX ,m both under VMS’" 1 and stand-alone. We also have UNITY for systems based on the National Semiconductor 16032 and the Motorola 68000 available for OEMs. our growing array of software based on the UNIX Operating System in¬ cludes all the major languages; for example C, FORTRAN, PASCAL and BASIC. We also have packages for word processing, typesetting, and relational database management; an electronic worksheet; and a user friendly menu shell. can build these benefits into your system with full confidence, because we also back up all our software products with full customer training and support. Hundreds of customers around the world are now using HCR software products. To find out how we can put you and the UNIX Operating System together, call or write: Human Computing Resources Corporation 10 St. Mary Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 1P9 (416)922-1937 Circle No. 14 on Inquiry Card UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories UNITY is a trademark of Human Computing Resources Corporation PDP-11. VAX and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation c ADVISOR Working around PC/IX address limitations by Bill Tuthill Much UNIX software develop¬ ment today is done on VAX computers and MC68000-based systems. Both machines offer large address spaces so programmers need not be overly concerned with memory savings. On one hand, this allows soft¬ ware to be chock-full of useful features — the :map command of vi, for example, is not available without lots of memory. On the other hand, it also encourages extravagant programming practices of the sort found in VAXIMA, a LISP-based al¬ gebraic manipulation language that consumes about 2 MB of memory. Some software developed for the VAX and the 68000 will not port to the IBM PC because of address limitations. This article explores pitfalls in porting programs to, and writing new software for, the PC/IX. Writing C programs for the 8088 processor, the CPU running PC/IX, is much like programming used to be on the PDP-11. Processes are limited to 64K bytes of memory, although there is an option to segment text and data into 64K byte partitions, making for a total of 128K. Words are 16 bytes long, as they are on the PDP-11. One minor difference is that the 8088 has forward byte ordering, while the PDP has backward byte ordering. This does not affect most programmers, however. A more important difference is that the 8088 has no memory management, so array subscripts and pointers that go out of bounds will crash your program, and perhaps even the operating system, by mistake. The C compiler on the PC/IX is based on Stephen Johnson's pcc (portable C compiler), taken from the System III release and revamped by Interactive Systems. This means that many recent extensions to 44 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 C — enum, void, structure assignment, identical names across structures — are available. The compiler will complain about assignment and comparison between incompatible types (such as integer and character pointers). More impor¬ tantly, the data types unsigned char, unsigned short and unsigned long are implemented. This is not true of the C compiler for the 8088 imple¬ mentation of Xenix. One drawback, however, is that flexnames have not been implemented (this was a Berkeley innovation to support Pascal), so variable names must be unique in the first eight characters. MEMORY LIMITATIONS In order to run PC/IX, the PC-XT has to have at least 256K of main memory. The operating system takes up roughly half this space, leaving about 128K available for user programs. User programs are limited to 64K each, except when compiled using the -i flag for separate I&D (Instruction and Data): $ cc -i program. c -o program This means that instructions (or text) are loaded into one 64K partition, while data is loaded into another 64K partition. The bss (block storage segment) area is for uninitialized data and is included in the latter partition, after initialized data. This whole arrangement may alleviate the space crunch somewhat, but it does not solve the problem of small programs with large amounts of data or large programs with small amounts of data. NO MEMORY MANAGEMENT IBM does not supply a memory management unit Circle No. 15 on Inquiry Card—► | |1||W Operating Systems provide the Ml JK standard environment for appli- UlllA cations so they can be ported across advanced multi-tasking and multi-user systems. Word processing, spreadsheets, and database management are some of the applications already available under UNIX. Until now, no business and financial software has been avail¬ able. Until now, the only solution has been to retrofit existing financial packages —packages that were written for systems with limited storage resources and limited interactive capability. Until HCR’s Advanced Business Applications Software for UNIX. software designed especially for the UNIX environment is now available from Human Computing Resources. Incorporating an ever-growing series of integrated modules with a powerful relational DBMS, the package presently includes Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and General Ledger in a form that users can query and interact with directly. HCR’s software takes advantage of System V, making it the first truly multi-user system. like this could only come from HCR. This new applications family is designed so OEMs, distributors and dealers can easily support, extend and adapt it. Demonstration versions are now being evaluated by OEMs. To find out how we can put our business software into your UNIX system, call or write: Human Computing Resources Corporation 10 St. Mary Street, Toronto. Ontario. Canada M4Y 1P9 (416)922-1937 UNIX is a trademark ol Bell Laboratories C ADVISOR for the PC. Memory protection is almost non-existent on the 8088 and Intel has been slow to provide support chips for memory management. This problem is explain¬ ed away by advertising the PC/IX as a single-user machine. This may be true when it’s running MS-DOS, essentially a single-tasking operating system, but since UNIX is multitasking, a single user can strain the hardware as much as several users. On the PC/IX, the operating system takes care of memory management. When there are more processes running than can fit in memory (in a long pipeline, for example), the least active ones are swapped out to hard disk. This is one reason why you need a PC-XT to run UNIX. Swapping is done in segments of 64K: an entire 64K segment will be swapped to disk when memory runs out and brought back into main memory when space becomes available again. Problems may result when programmers get care¬ less. Consider the following short program, guaranteed to crash itself. main() { char *cp = “Goodbye!”; for (; ;) *cp — = 0; } On computers with adequate memory management, this program will probably exit with a core dump and an error message such as “Memory fault” or “Bus error”. But on the PC/IX, the hardware won’t stop the pointer, which will soon zero out areas of memory where the program’s text is executing. This will most likely modify your code in an unhealthy way, and perhaps even crash the system. The only way to guard against such problems is to thoroughly debug your programs. If possible, they should be debugged on computers with memory manage ment, so you can inspect core dumps to investigate problems and avoid crashing your operating system. Unfortunately, lint provides no help in this area. What’s needed is a C compiler that can optionally check array subscripts to insure they are in bounds. INTEGERS ARE 16 BITS For programmers who have gotten used to 32-bit machines, such as the VAX, the 3B20 and the MC68000, it may come as a bit of a shock to realize that integers on the 8088 are only 16 bits long. This means that arith¬ metic overflow occurs above 32,767, and arithmetic underflow occurs below -32,768. For example, if you’re keeping track of the number of characters in a file with an int variable, when you reach the 32,768th character, your program will say it’s the -32,768th character, and so on, with negative numbers getting closer to zero. Using an unsigned variable doesn’t help much: after the 46 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 65,535th character, the program will start counting again at zero. These kind of mistakes happen more often than you would imagine. The mail program on 4.1 BSD, which was developed mostly on a VAX, kept track of the size Writing C programs for the 8088 processor, the CPU running PC/IX, is much like programming used to be on the PDP-11. of messages with an unsigned variable. On a VAX, where most of the testing was done, unsigned quantities can go above 4 billion before they recycle at zero. Needless to say, mail messages were hardly ever this long. However, when my organization started using this mail program on a PDP-11, users soon complained of truncated messages. Changing the unsigned declaration to a long fixed the problem. The moral of the story: when you think some quantity may get very large, declare it as a long, and don’t mess with half-way measures such as unsigned. Use unsigned only when storage space is at a premium and when you are certain values will never go above 65,000. There are several subtle type clashes commonly encountered when porting from a 32-bit machine to a 16-bit machine. Many of them will be caught if you use lint to check your programs, but there are some problems lint won’t detect. Consider the following code fragment: { long li; unsigned ui; li = someval; ui = otherval; printf(“li = %d, ui = %d\n”, li, ui); } This code will seem to work on a VAX or a 68000, because a long is the same as an int. In practice, the value of ui will seldom rise above 2,147,483,647 (at which point it would print as a negative number). Consequent¬ ly, moderate amounts of testing would not reveal any problem here. Because lint doesn’t know much about printf statements, it will not spot this as a type clash (only the System V lint will flag this as an error). Circle No. 16 on Inquiry Card —► Now you don’t have to be rich to be powerful. Riches and power don’t always go together. Take Plexus, for instance. The world’s most powerful UNDC-based supermicros. Powerful because multiple proces¬ sors share the UNIX load. So processing power is distributed to where it does the most good. Terminal I/O. Disk I/O. Data communications. And, of course, data processing. Our unique architecture also lets us bring you the world’s first UNIX Network Operating System (NOS). So you can combine Plexus sys¬ tems in an Ethernet network for even more power. NOS gives you real time, continuous access to files. From anywhere in the network. Files are also updated on the same basis. So everyone in the network works with up-to-the- minute data. Automatically. No waiting for file transfers. And that’s a decided improvement over everything else that’s out there. You also get to save money on powerful UNIX-based software, includ¬ ing COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, BASIC, and C. Database management and word processing, too. As well as hundreds of third party UNIX packages. Plus our own software and main¬ tenance support. And even a software referral service for your OEM programs. Does all this make us expensive? Absolutely not. In fact, Plexus systems cost thou¬ sands of dollars less than the minicom¬ puters we outperform. To get a better idea of just how good that performance is, come get a demonstration. Call 800-528-6050, ext. 1444. In Arizona, 800-352-0458, ext. 1444. Or write Ralph Mele at Plexus Computers, Inc., 2230 Martin Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050. You see? You don’t have to be rich to be powerful. Just smart. IPIUEXIUS Built for speed. © Plexus Computers. Inc., 1983 •UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. C ADVISOR However, as soon as you port this program to a 16-bit machine, you’ll realize there are problems. Printing a long variable with %d will yield garbage and the value of ui may soon exceed 32,767, at which point the program will start printing negative numbers. The code should have been written as follows: { long li; unsigned ui; li = someval; ui = otherval; printf(“li = % Id, ui = %u\n”, li, ui); The %ld means we are printing a long variable as a decimal number, and %u indicates we are printing an unsigned variable as a decimal number. FORWARD BYTE ORDERING In elementary C programming, differences in byte ordering from machine to machine don’t matter a great deal. The C language and libraries take care of specifics such as word alignment, memory allocation and For programmers who have gotten used to 32-bit machines, such as the VAX, the 3B20 and the MC68000, it may come as a bit of a shock to realize that integers on the 8088 are only 16 bits long. character, line or binary I/O. Binary I/O is done with read(2), write(2), fread(3) and fwrite(3). When you do it, you end up with non-ASCII files. Trouble arises only when a program does binary I/O to a file, which is transferred to a machine with a different architecture where another program tries to read the file. Most tape and network programs work character by character, without any notion of binary file structures. As a result, they may write individual bytes of whole words in the wrong order. For example, consider this program, which does a binary write of a structure and then reads what it has written character-by-character: #include struct threetypes { char cl, c2, c3, c4; short si, s2, s3, s4; long II, 12, 13, 14; } one_four = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 }; main() /* demonstrate byte ordering on a machine */ { FILE *fp; int c; if ((fp = fopen(“/tmp/junk”, “w”)) == NULL) perror(“/tmp/junk”), exit(1); fwrite(&one_four, sizeof(one_four), 1, fp); if ({fp = freopen(“/tmp/junk”, “r”, fp)) == NULL) perror(“/tmp/junk”), exit(1); while ((c = getc(fp)) ! = EOF) printf(“%d ”, c); putchar(‘\n’); exit(O); } Here’s what the program will print on different ma¬ chines (bars have been added to separate the three types: char, short and long): VAX: 1234|10203040|1000200030004000 68000: 1 2 3 4 | 0 1 020304|0001 000200030004 PDP: 1 2 3 4 | 10203040|0010002000300040 8088: 1 2 3 4 | 0 1 020304|0001 000200030004 The VAX and 68000 have four characters per word, while the PDP and 8088 have two characters per word. The VAX and PDP have backward byte ordering within words, while the 68000 and 8088 have forward byte ordering. Notice how the output on a 68000 is exactly the same as the output on a 8088, even though the 68000 has four-byte integers, while the 8088 has 2-byte integers. In sharp contrast, the output on a VAX and PDP differ from each other, and from the others as well. This is a good argument in favor of forward byte ordering. Many UNIX files have a binary structure that will not transport between machines unless you do byte swapping. Here are some examples of files that are not portable: tar files and tapes (inodes have many two byte quantities), dump files and tapes, most accounting files in /usr/adm, Versatec or Varian bitmap font files in vfont(5) format, core images and a.out executable images. To transfer these kind of files between a VAX Continued on Page 78 48 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 /usr/lib by Jim Joyce PROGAMMING IN C Stephen G. Kochan’s book on C (Hayden Book Co., 1983, 373pp, $18.95) is a pleasant contrast to many of the recent books on UNIX and C. The fact that Chapter 13 (27pp) discusses the preprocessor attracted my attention, and upon reading that chapter first, I found it full of good advice. The other chapters were also quite good. The introduction states, “As each new feature (of C) is presented, a small, complete program example is usually provided to illustrate the feature.” The approach of teaching by example is undeniably immedi¬ ate, rich and (when the code works) effective. Kochan’s code is followed by program output, which reassures the reader that what is seen really works. It all makes for a very impressive package. By and large, the formatting of code in the examples is quite thoughtful, though there is no explanation of why Kochan indents the first set of braces in every function definition. Given the overall clarity of what he does, such a quibble does not really count for much. A quibble that should be raised, though, is about the dot-matrix font used for the examples. Since the purpose of the book is to teach by example, the examples should be the clearest, cleanest part of the book. Even pasted-in character printer output would have been better. There is also one grammatical nit to pick: Kochan misuses the word “unique.” The frequency with which the word is used to mean “unusual” or “not frequent” is terribly jarring and does detract. But hold on! Is this the worst that can be said about the book? By and large, YES! Kochan has done things I would do in a different order, but on the whole, the book is too good to get bogged down in such detail. This is, simply, the BEST introduction to C published to date. Table of Contents for Programming in C 1. Introduction (3pp) 2. Some Fundamentals (6pp) 3. Writing a Program in C (7pp) 4. Variables, Constants, Data Types, and Arithmetic Expressions (17pp) 5. Program Looping (19pp) 6. Making Decisions (27pp) 7. Arrays (19pp) 8. Functions (39pp) 9. Structures (24pp) 10. Character Strings (34pp) 11. Pointers (38pp) 12. Operations on Bits (20pp) 13. The Preprocessor (17pp) 14. More on Data Types (8pp) 15. Working with Large Programs (6pp) 16. Input and Output (23pp) 17. Miscellaneous Features and Advanced Topics (13pp) Appendices A. Language Summary (30pp) B. Common Programming Mistakes (4pp) C. The UNIX C Library (8pp) D. Compiling Programs Under UNIX (3pp) E. The Program lint (2pp) F. The ASCII Character Set (Ipp) Index (5pp) Kochans book, simply, is the BEST introduction to C published to date. June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 49 Gould... Innovation and Quality in UNIX-based Systems The Firebreathers from Gould blast the competition into oblivion. ^ , . .. UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories '“PowerNode and PowerSej are trademarks of GoulcMn '“VAX is a trademark gfrOigit Ft. Lauderdale, FL 332W3 With blazing performance. Great leaps in raw performance are rare in the computer world. Usually, changes occur in incre¬ ments of half-a-MIPorso. Now real VAX 11/780. PowerNode 6000 runs 1.5 times faster. But with all this power and speed, the PN6000 has a dainty footprint... 60% less than the Firebreathers roar into the arena, quadrupling the best the competi¬ tion has to offer. With scorching speed. These creatures don’t run a little faster. Running real production code supplied by VAX™ users, our PowerNode™ 9000 bench- With sizzling simplicity. Even the hottest firebreather won’t fly if it’s hard to run. Ours are UNIX*-based, so ease of use and compatibility become part of the power. Plus we offer the “Compatibility Suite”, application software packages which are con- More than a myth. We know these claims sound outrageous. Make us prove them. Give us your benchmarks and production code. We’ll show you numbers that surpass all expecta¬ tions. Call 305-797-5459 for a test flight on the Firebreathers. Main¬ frame performance disguised as a supermini. The scorching perform¬ ance you expect from Gould. f Gould Inc., Computer Systems Division marks at 4.5 times faster than the sistent across our entire Gopld Distributed Systems Operation, VAX 11 /780... at a comparable price! Even our second-in-line PowerSeries™ product line...the widest range of UNIX-based sys¬ tems in the world. :Jr y / , #1Se Y'm GOULD J :.r . • ’• ' J ; • Electronics -=■> •: /usr/lib C PROGRAMMER S LIBRARY Jack J. Purdum, Timothy C. Leslie and Alan L. Stegemoller have teamed up to produce what Que technical editor Chris DeVoney admits is two books in one. DeVoney states in the Foreword that “the first is a textbook, making sugges¬ tions and showing examples on designing and writing functions for your personal C library/’ while the second contains functions and programs the authors consider useful parts of a C programmer’s library. C Programmer's Library (Que Corporation, 1984, 366pp, $19.95), Fact: Cardiovascular diseases will cause half of all deaths this year. Your gift can make a difference. % K t s A mer ' can Heart ^5 ^Association WE'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE sadly misses its mark though, as a textbook showing examples on designing functions for a personal C library. The second part of the book may well be useful, as it gives source code to implement ISAM, but frankly this reviewer grew so irritated by the bad font choice for the code that he did not finish reading the book. Unfair? Read on. The authors start with good intentions, taking the popular stance that building tools is a good thing. But the very first principle of building tools is to create ones that work. Advocates of tool building who do otherwise do no service to their philosophy. Nevertheless, the first example these authors present reads as follows: print f(“Divide by zero error”); This code, compiled on any C compiler I know of produces errors rather than running code, because of the space between “print” and “f” (presumably a typographical error). and dubbed “Highly Unreadable” by me and several programmers to whom I have shown the examples. Perhaps its illegibility kept the book’s proofreaders from detecting the “print f” error, even though it is repeated four times within 10 lines of code. The importance of single characters in C, such as wavy braces used as compound statement indicators make font readability an especially critical issue. With the Digital font, question marks trail off at the bottom into unreadability - no small matter in the following example taken from Figure 0.5 in the book: y = (x == 5) ? 1 : 0; The dot under the question mark in Digital is a speck I had to look hard to find. Complaining about fonts and typos is one thing, but true technical errors are quite another. The authors assert that the question-colon construct “reflects more expertise in C and generates less code” than the I wonder whether anyone looked at the page proofs. More irritating is the fact that the string does not end with a newline (\p) even though the message being shown is to be printed to a user’s screen. If the cursor is supposed to hang at the end of the message for any reason, none is given. Later examples also score low on human engineering. Part of the fault with the book lies with the choice of font, called “Digital” by the technical editor, equivalent if-else. This perhaps displays more expertise in C, but the if-else definitely generates less code and is more readable - though I also prefer the question-colon construct because there are fewer characters to enter. Could the authors have meant that the question-colon form generates less source code? If so, they should at least mention that the if-else equivalent usually runs faster. 52 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 This is a little known fact, perhaps, but it is certainly something that could have been explored before statements were made about economies of code. The error, ironically, occurs in a section titled “Knowing C and Knowing C” - the second, italicized occurrence of “Knowing” is presumably the wink of the cognoscienti. Another kind of technical error is that of formatting code, though it is true that there are no rules a C compiler imposes on formatting. There is, however, the basic principle of being clear so that when code is read, it is as understandable as it can be. This is especially true for difficult-to-understand constructs in C, such as the question-colon. Having taught C to hundreds of programmers, I know how hard some find the construct. Having read thousands of lines of C, I know how frequently the question-colon occurs in the UNIX utilities, the kernel and applications code. Readability is first inhibited by the choice of the font, second, compounded by nested question- colon constructs, and third, exacerbated by bad formatting. I wonder whether anyone looked at the page proofs. Table of Contents for C Programmer's Library 0. Laying the Groundwork (14pp) 1. Understanding C Data Types (29pp) 2. Sorting (47pp) 3. The General Terminal Library (67pp) 4. Code Fragments (21 pp) 5. ISAM (99pp) 6. A Book Catalog Program (52pp) Appendices A. ISAM Library (4pp) B. Terminal Library (2pp) C. Book Catalog Program (Ipp) D. Linking Order for the Libraries and Programs (Ipp) E. Using the Code in the UNIX Environment (2pp) F. Using the Code in the CP/M and MS-DOS Environments (7pp) Bibliography (Ipp) Index (6pp) in Chirlian’s program is another ’60s FORTRAN fingerprint, reminiscent of: PRINT 8,C 8 FORMAT(IIO) from FORTRAN II (with FORMAT, remember?). One nice Given a choice of the many books on C, this is not it. INTRODUCTION TO C Paul M. Chirlian’s Introduction to C (Matrix Publishers, Inc., 1984, 187pp, $15.95) harkens in thinking to FORTRAN books of the 1960s. The examples are highly arithmetic, bare-bones and user-negligent — right from the very first one: /* program to add two integers *1 main( ) } int a,b,c; a = 3; b = 4; c = a + b; printf(“%10d”,c); The program does what he says it does, but surely programming has progressed in grace and charm to the point that the printf might have been: printf(“The sum of 3 and 4 is %d\n ,c); so that there might have been some labelling of the output. The “\n” I also added so that the cursor prompting for the next command does not jam right against the answer if the program is running under UNIX. The gratuitous scale factor of 10 thing about printf is that it does intelligent things with formatting if it is given half a chance and is not interfered with. Incorporating text in output is not discussed until page 41, which seems rather late. One might argue that the code itself makes obvious what the output is, but not in the face of: ans = a-b; prod = a*b; quot = a/b; in the program given on page 21. Using “diff” for “ans” would have been clearer, at least, though even with that change I cannot be convinced that interpreting output from a program should rely on being able to read the source code. Also, the lack of spaces around operators is very ’60s. I was surprised to see code on page 49 that insisted on reading exactly four characters when the prompt indicated the user was to type his/her name. This is, simply, bad programming and something to be avoided by everyone concerned with the craft, especially those learning it. Speaking of reading the source code, the good news is that the code June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 53 THE VICTORY FACTOR. MICROCOMPUTER ARCHITECTURE WITH NO END INSIGHT. Real UNIX ’ Power. Real-Time Speed. Victory Computer Systems announces the FACTOR—the first 16-bit multi-CPU computer that gives you pure UNIX pro¬ gramming power with real-time response. We did it with a system architecture that simultaneously implements an entire array of 16-bit single board computers. Each SBC has its own MC68000'’ CPU, 256 kilobytes of dual-ported RAM, and VRix”— a rugged, real-time software-on- silicon operating system that switches tasks in as little as 100 jusec. So now you can run several UNIX programs at once. Or use your FACTOR to monitor auto¬ mated equipment while simultaneously processing words and data for up to 24 fully supported users. The VMEbus. Faster by a factor of 10. The FACTOR'S CPUs communicate over the VMEbus—an advanced new backplane design with 6 card slots, 4 bus arbitration levels and 32 -bit address and data paths. At 20 megabytes per second, the non-multiplexed VMEbus is an order of magnitude faster than the bus implemented in today's most popular microcomputer systems. Even if you don’t run a factory, the FACTOR’S speed will mean faster throughput as your computing needs grow. And growth is what the Victory FACTOR is all about. Exponential Growth. FACTORED-ln. The FACTOR’S expansion-oriented architecture will take you far beyond today's performance horizons. In pro- Inc^NIPLUS^a^radenfark oKJnlsoftJnc^ZSC^is aTradTmark orzHog^cXP/M a Uadem^k omig^^Rese^rchJnc^he'vMEbus^supptfrtedl^Philips^gn^ics, Mostek. Motorola and Thompson-CSF. C|rc|e ^ ^ Qn |nqu|ry Card cessor power. In multi-channel industrial I/O flexibility. In on-board memory. In built-in mass storage options. In the number of fully supported users. And there’s no end in sight. In designing a multi-user system with real-time speed, you’ve always had many factors to consider. Now there’s just one. We’ve got more to tell you about the Victory FACTOR. To get the whole story, give us a call today. System Hardware: □ Each single board computer with: 16-bit MC68000 CPU. 256 Kb dual ported RAM, VRTX real-time executive in PROM, 8 RS-232C serial ports, and a Centronics-compatible parallel port. □ New international standard 20 Mb/sec VMEbus/ □ Optional 1 Mb RAM expansion board. □ Mass storage: Hard disk, floppy disk, and removable cartridge hard disk built-in. (29-104 Mb UF) □ Fully supports Motorola 2 MHz I/O bus and industrial control interface cards. □ Alphanumeric terminals in green, international amber, or color. □ Graphics terminals in monochrome or color. □ Optional coprocessor board for concurrent execution of CP/M'* on four Z80’s, each with its own 64Kb RAM System Software: □ UNIX (UNIPLUS"') operating system (includes ".C" language). □ VRTX real-time operating system standard in PROM □ Available languages SMC Basic; Fortran 77; Pascal (IEEE Standard); RMCOBOL ANSI 74 Standard (Ryan-McFarland). □ Ethernet'* local area network interface □ 3780, and 3270 data communications protocols. Outside CA: 1-800-221-2419 Inside CA: 408-259-7370 Or TELEX 176-431 ANS; VICTORY SNJ OEM QUANTITY DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE COMPUTER SYSTEMS INC. THE ARCHITECTURE OF NTELUGENT COMPUTING. ©Copyright 1983 Victory Computer Systems, Inc. Circle 394 on inquiry card. /usr/lib is usually given in a readable monospace font, even though it is reduced in size more than I would prefer. The bad news is that I have shown the examples formatted as they were in the book, wiiich makes the code harder to read than it should be. Braces, thank goodness, are usually where they should be, but the absence of spaces and blank lines makes the code dense when it does not need to be. This book is readable by those who are arithmetically inclined, but is that what programming is about? Programs today read character data, and any program reading from a terminal will be reading characters, even if they are characters representing digits. A book on any programming language in which programs will be written to read characters from a file or a terminal needs to treat how to process characters rather than how to add, subtract, multiply or divide. Given a choice of the many books on C, this is not it. Table of Contents for Introduction to C 1. Introduction to the C Programming Language (13pp) 2. Fundamental Arithmetic Opera¬ tions (24pp) 3. Basic Input, Output, and Character Operations (22pp) 4. Program Control - The Elementary Ideas of Structured Programming (28pp) 5. Functions - Further Concepts of Structured Programs (26pp) 6. Arrays and Pointers (20pp) 7. Characters and Strings (12pp) 8. Structures (13pp) 9. Files - Further Discussion of Input/Output (20pp) Appendices A. C Keywords (Ip) B. C Operators (2pp) C. The ASCII Codes (2pp) Index (5pp) ABOUT THE AUTHOR While an instructor at UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s , Jim Joyce became the first person to teach UNIX outside of Bell Laboratories. He is now President of International Technical Seminars , Inc., and The Independent UNIX Bookstore. For more information about UNIX and C books , call (415) 621-1593. ■ NUTSHELL, Training aids available for UNIX and “C” How does $1 an hour sound? That's the typical cost of using Bunker Ramo’s new NUTSHELL software to bring you and your staff up to speed. Compare with any video-based or instructor-led training methods. No other UNIX or “C” training programs can match our low cost. No other UNIX or “C" training programs can match our features: • On-site training using your own computer. • Continuing guidance for experienced users. • “Help" when you need it without interrupting on-going routines. • On-line and available on demand. • Three levels of UNIX expertise can be obtained. • Two levels of “C" experience can be obtained. • The lowest cost anywhere. To find out more about NUTSHELL or about our cost-effective, instructor-led UNIX training curriculum, contact the Training Services Group, Bunker Ramo, 35 Nutmeg Drive, Trumbull, Connecticut 06609; telephone (203) 386-2223. Dealer opportunities are available. Available from: Bunker Ramo Information Systems An Company UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Circle No. 30 on Inquiry Card 56 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 RULES OF THE GAME Copyright law made easy by Glenn Groenewold So you’ve spotted a need for a new program that no one else has filled and you plan to write it and license it to Goliath Corporation for marketing (or perhaps you intend to market it yourself). Is there an easy way you can protect yourself against the possibility that Goliath or someone else might rip you off by copying your program, making a few inconsequential changes and selling it as their own? Yes, there certainly is. All you need to do is take the simple steps necessary to guard the copyright that the law automatically gives you. Asserting and maintaining your copyright is easy. You don’t need to go to a lawyer since you can do it all yourself. The first and most important thing you need to do is make sure that the copyright notice or legend appears in (or on) each and every copy of your program that you let out of your possession. The copy¬ right legend is made up of three things: (1) the symbol © or (c), or the word “copyright” or the abbrevia¬ tion “copr.”, (2) the year you first let other people have access to a copy of your program and (3) your name. For example: Copyright 1984 by Bruno Braino. That’s all that’s needed, at least in the United States. But don’t make the mistake of doing anything less. Remember that if you leave out any of the required three items, your copyright notice / \ V_ J will be defective. Though this does not always invalidate your copy¬ right, it’s not something you want to take a chance with. Should you expect your creation to reach foreign countries, it’s a good idea to add the words, “All rights reserved.” There is also one thing you should definitely not do. Adverse as you may be to cold legal notices, do not merely write a sweet little state¬ ment asking people who have your program to please, please not circu¬ late your work among others. This may read warm and cozy, but it can jeopardize your copyright. And once a copyright is lost, it is gone forever. The fruits of your labor then become public property. Where then do you put the copyright notice? This is another easy matter. You simply put it every place you reasonably can. It should be incorporated in the program itself so that it will print out as part of the program, preferably both at the beginning and at the end. It should be on any written copies of the program. It should be on the container which houses the disk, tape or whatever your program is encoded on. Finally, it should appear in the documentation and any promotional material you send out regarding your program. With these steps complete, you will be protected when you send your program to Goliath for its evaluation or let someone use it for a beta test. Nothing you’ve done up to this point requires sending any¬ thing to the government. There will come a point at which that should be done, but that won’t necessarily be until later. RECOVERING FROM ERRORS Let’s suppose you’ve let some of your friends have copies of your program that lacked a copyright notice. What can you do to repair the goof? Well, before January 1, 1978, which was the date the present copy¬ right law went into effect, you would have been in trouble. But the current law is a lot more forgiving of foibles. It says that if you’ve released only “a relatively small number” of copies of your program, you’ll be all right. If you’ve let out more than that, things will still be okay if you register your copyright with the Copyright Office and make a reason¬ able effort to add the notice to the June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 57 RULES OF THE GAME copies you have already distributed. In this instance, though, you must register your copyright within five years of the date you first let out copies of your program (this is called the “date of publication”). Aside from this circumstance, you’re not required to register your copyright with the government. As a practical matter, however, once you start distributing your program to the public you’re going to want to do this. For one thing, you can’t sue anyone for infringement of your copyright until it’s been registered. Simple as the registration pro¬ cedure is, you may not even have to do it yourself. If Goliath decides it wants to market your program, one of the provisions of your contract can require the company to register your copyright for you in your name. REGISTERING COPYRIGHTS If you’re going to register the copyright yourself, a telephone call to the Copyright Office’s 24-hour number, 202/287-9100, will get you the form. The number for answers to any questions you may have is 202/ 287-8700. Form TX, which is used for software, is uncomplicated — believe it or not — and the $10 fee shouldn’t put undue strain on your pocketbook. You’ll have to send the Copyright Office the first 25 and last 25 pages of your program in printed form. Obviously, if the complete printout of your program doesn’t run 50 pages, you must send all of it. 58 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 So far we’ve been talking about registering the copyright for a “published” program. There are also times when it’s a good idea to regis* ter the copyright for an unpublished program. For instance, you may have created a program that you don’t intend to release until you have finished some other programs which are to be used along with it. But your new program is on your computer, which is routinely access¬ ed by other people. The Copyright Office will register your copyright for this unpublished program. The nice thing is that you can still claim that your unpublished program is your trade secret, even though you’ve registered the copyright. (We’ll be discussing trade secrets as a means of protecting computer programs in a later article. Don’t get the idea that you can stop using your copyright notice once you’ve registered your copy¬ right. You must still put the notice in or on your program and the things associated with it. If you fail to do this with a significant number of copies of your program, it will fall into the public domain, where any¬ one will be free to copy, use or sell it. PROS AND CONS Fine, so now you have your copyright. What does it do for you? Perhaps it’s best to start with what your copyright won't do for you. It won’t prevent other people who know of your program from Copyrights apply to software because under US. law , programs qualify as written works. Call it "high tech literature ." writing one which in different fashion accomplishes exactly the same purpose as yours. A copyright does not protect an idea , but only the expression of that idea. This means that so long as nobody actu¬ ally copies your program, other people are free to create and market programs in competition with it. What your copyright does do is give you the right to prevent anyone else from copying or selling your program without your consent. This protection extends to your lifetime plus 50 years after your death. The period is different for a copyright Announcing the WY-75. Our new WY-75, VT-100* software-compatible terminal has a style that’s truly impressive. It offers a combination of features you can’t find in any other VT-100 software-compatible terminal. Like a compact, ergonomic design. A sculpted, low-profile keyboard. And a swivel and tilt non-glare 14" screen, tailored with an 80/132 column format. Priced in a class by itself, the WY-75 lists for only $795. Contact Wyse Technology for more informa¬ tion. And discover a great new outfit. $795 All DEC’d out and ready to go. WYSE I I I I Make the Wyse Decision. Wyse Technology, 3040 N. First Street, San Jose, CA, 95134,408/946-3075, TLX 910-338-2251, Outside CA call toll free, 800/421-1058, in So. CA 213/340-2013. •VT-100 and DEC are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. Circle No. 19 on Inquiry Card RULES OF THE GAME TM VCworks WORKS! Here at BASIS, we’ve checked PC works carefully. And It does just what it claims to do: it makes your IBM PC™ (or compatible) a part of the UNIX™ revolution. • Access UNIX programs • Transfer PC & UNIX files • Use the UNIX printer ♦ Back up PC files on UNIX ♦ Read, Create, & Send mail * Access public & private networks CALL or WRITE for More Information B.D.S.I.S. UNIX Software, Hardware, & Timesharing 1700 Shattuck #1 Berkeley, CA 94709 (415) 841-1800 PCworks i$ a trademark of Touchstone Software IBM PC is a trademark of IBM Corporation UNIX Is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Circle No. 286 on Inquiry Card owned by a corporation. Someone who rips off your program can be made to pay damages to you and to pay your attorney’s fees. A court can order the infringement stopped, and the government can seize the pirated programs and ban their further importation if they are being made outside the United States. Criminal charges can also be brought against people who have infringed your copyright. OTHER PROTECTIONS All in all, you get a pretty good package in exchange for taking very little trouble. You should take a few additional steps, though, to con¬ found anyone who tries to lift your program. You can encrypt some unique identifying feature, perhaps your name, somewhere in the pro¬ gram. You might also insert some¬ thing which does nothing at all. Since an infringer will seldom go without destroying the character of what was already there,” Blake said. “To accomplish this, IBM had to turn outside of their own resources to Interactive Systems Corporation. ISC is the oldest commercial licensee of UNIX, employing some of the original Bell Labs group, including Ted Dolotta and Heinz Lycklama.” IBM demanded a lot from Inter¬ active Systems. All documentation had to match the product and there could be no known bugs in the system before it was release^. The working relationship be¬ tween IBM and ISC is quite simple. IBM and IBM’s beta test sites find bugs, which ISC in turn fixes. “Beta testing,” incidently, is a term that was invented by IBM. Due to money and time con¬ straints, most UNIX system houses ship their products before they’re fully tested and debugged. Thus, first customers (willingly or through your program carefully enough to catch such items, they’ll usually appear in the pirated program. These encodings are by no means a substitute for the copy¬ right, but they do provide a strong backup of evidence should you end up in court. Since a copyright for your pro¬ gram is easy to arrange and is inexpensive, there isn’t really any good reason why you, a hardworking programmer, should lose the results of your labors to some ripoff artist or make an involuntary gift of them to the world at large. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Glenn Groenewold is a Cali¬ fornia attorney who divides his time between computer law and service as an administrative law judge. He has been active in trial and appellate work and has argued cases before the state Supreme Court. ■ unwillingly), serve as de facto beta test sites. IBM, though, being the Goliath that it is, has had the time and money it’s needed to test PC/IX, and to make it both optimized and bugfree. “Most other software manufac¬ turers view bugs as inevitable,” ex¬ plained Blake. “On the other hand, IBM views bugs as defects which should be fixed as soon as possible. As such, IBM has set up a special defect repair service called Informa¬ tion Programming Services Product Support Center (IPS/PSC). All owners of PC/IX who report a defect will be provided with an update free of charge. Large customers of IBM, so called NAD/NMD (National Accounts Customers), will be provided with an electric bulletin board to relay questions and problems with PC/IX to the Support Center.” T.G.andJ.B. UNIX COURTSHIP Continued, from Page 21 60 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 MAINSAIL SPEAK MAINSAIL BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE SPEAKS UNIX. Most computer programmers like the UNIX environment. It gives them a con¬ venient set of software development tools. There's one problem, however. Applications must often run on machines that don’t have UNIX. That’s where MAINSAIL comes in. MAINSAIL is a powerful program¬ ming language that can help cut your development time and eliminate soft¬ ware conversion costs. You'll be able to take advantage of the development power of UNIX, while retaining the abil¬ ity to move to other systems. And you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to learn this proven, versatile language. If you like UNIX, but need to keep your portability options open, just let us know. We'll show you how MAINSAIL can accelerate your development of portable, sophisticated application pro¬ grams—not only under UNIX, but under VAX/VMS®, VM/CMS®, and a variety of other operating systems. For details, contact us at: XIDAK, Inc., 530 Oak Grove Ave., Suite 101, Menlo Park, CA 94025, (415)324-8745. UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. VAX/VMS is a trademark of Digital Equip. Corp. VM/CMS is a trademark of IBM Corp. Circle No. 20 on Inquiry Card When you make the best computer system there is— you can offer the best warranty there is. For ten years CompuPro has led the way in science and industry—from components for the Space Shuttle program to components for IBM to test their components. Now we’ve put that performance and reliability into computer systems for business. 365 DAYS-A FULL YEAR CompuPro’s business systems—the expandable System 816 and the new multi-user CompuPro 10™— are designed to give you unfailing performance 365 days a year. And we’re guaranteeing it! 365 DAYS-WE COME TO YOU. If anything goes wrong with your System 816 or CompuPro 10 within one full year of purchase date, we provide on-site service- within 24 hours-through the nationwide capabilities of Xerox Americare™ Five-Star service. * UP TO FOUR TIMES THE WARRANTY OF MOST COMPUTER SYSTEMS. But with the quality and reliability we’ve built into the System 816 and CompuPro 10—we’re betting the only call you’ll ever need to make is this one: For business, scientific and industrial computing solutions, call (415) 786-0909 ext. 206 for the location of the Full Service CompuPro System Center nearest you. CompuPro. A GODBOUT COMPANY 3506 Breakwater Court, Hayward, CA 94545 CompuPro 10 is a trademark of CompuPro Americare is a trademark of Xerox Corporation. System 816 front panel design shown is available from Full Service CompuPro System Centers only. Prices and specifications subject to change without notice. *365 Day Limited Warranty. Optional 24- and 36-month programs available. Service calls within 24 hours limited to work days and locations within 100-mile radius of Xerox service center. ©1983 CompuPro Circle No. 21 on Inquiry Card THE HUMAN FACTOR On finding idyllic harmony with UNIX by Richard Morin All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace... I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. R. Brautigan Ah, yes. But weren’t we talking about UNIX? The dreaded land of greps, yaccs and such? Can one really talk about UNIX in terms of idyllic harmony? In a word, yes. Most properly functioning sys¬ tems are distinguished by harmony. The pieces interact smoothly, with little waste of time or energy. The interaction of an experienced user with the UNIX system is a good ex¬ ample of this. Rapid and effective use of computer resources is made possible by use of a myriad of power¬ ful and synergistic commands. One might think that Brautigan’s “mu¬ tually programming harmony” was already at hand. Consider, though, the plight of the less experienced UNIX user, beset with a confusing variety of commands, files and rules. Little harmony is evident as this user shakily attempts to use UNIX to perform mundane functions without destroying a month’s worth of pre¬ vious work. While some problems may stem from a lack of proper training, others are inherent in the nature of UNIX. UNIX was developed in the world of research laboratories and univer¬ sities, amidst source code, gurus and other amenities unavailable to the increasing number of isolated bi¬ nary licensees (estimated to exceed 100,000 at this point). Problems acceptable in an initial development environment conflict strongly with the emerging status of UNIX as a mature operating system. PROBLEM AREAS Although the UNIX user inter¬ face has been critiqued before (see The Trouble with UNIX, David A. Norman, November, 1981, Datama¬ tion, or The UNIX User Interface series, Michael Heffler, August - December, 1983, UNIX REVIEW), a brief review of the major problem areas may now be in order: 1) The command syntax of UN IX is inconsistent. A standard exists, but there are many special cases, tricks and “features.” 2) UNIX offers atrocious error messages. Cryptic, mostly un¬ documented and occasionally cute, they often fail to point the user in useful directions. 3) UNIX has, in general, very poor documentation. While the refer¬ ence manual is relatively com¬ plete and refreshingly honest, it is all but inaccessible to novices. It is terse, and the needed information is often tucked away in obscure places. 4) The exceedingly obliging nature of UNIX can be a problem. UNIX assumes that you know what you are doing, and that you never make mistakes. Although the C shell (csh) provides some help in this regard, mistakes can still be deadly. 5) UNIX has no inherent notion of graphics, windows or any of the other nifty features found on many new UNIX workstations. This forces vendors to develop proprietary (hence, non-portable) software. 6) UNIX is not an easy operating system to learn. It has a large number of necessary yet difficult concepts. The structure of the file system, protections, pipes, regular expressions and daemons are just a few examples. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS Not all of these problems will be easy to solve, but the emerging June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 63 HUMAN FACTOR UNIX industry is at work on some of them and could perhaps be cajoled or enticed to work on the rest. Point by point, then, what are our options? A number of efforts are already being made to resolve problems with UNIX command syntax. One of these is an attempt at standard¬ ization. The use of flags and such can be cleaned up fairly easily. Some of the larger utilities, such as awk, will not be so easy to sanitize. Still, the effort is laudable and its results will be beneficial. Other efforts seek to bypass cur¬ rent user shells entirely, often by means of menus. These “friendly” shells have the defect of hiding the powerful and expressive UNIX com¬ mand language from users. This may lead users to employ a great number of “simple” commands to do jobs that could be better done by far fewer “difficult” ones. Cleaning up and standardizing error messages would be a modest but very worthwhile effort for the UNIX industry to tackle. Some minimum standards for format and content could be developed and implemented. Leaving aside lan¬ guage processors and such, a skilled C hacker could solve the vast majority of UNIX error message problems with a few months of work. As a complementary effort, a listing of all possible error messages, along with their sources and possible remedies, would be a very valuable addition to system documentation. A limited effort in this vein is a publication called Responses to UNIX Commands , by Henry McGilton and Rachel Morgan. BIGGEST CHALLENGES The documentation problem will not be solved quickly. Although some good introductory material has begun to surface, one has only to look at the comparable documenta¬ tion on, say, VMS to see the holes. Several vendors are attempting to clean up the traditional documenta¬ tion on their own, but it may well be that the task exceeds the resources of any one company. A UNIX in¬ dustry consortium of some sort, though, could tackle the job and perhaps produce a new standard. The obliging nature of UNIX is one of its charms, but a few safe¬ guards should be installed as a matter of course when new systems are shipped to users. The alias Circle No. 22 on Inquiry Card —► DO YOU USE UNIX*? DO YOU USE UNIFY*? Then You Must Have ... .GinnMerge.... • GinnMerge: is a report/letter generator for UNIFY. • GinnMerge: uses unix like command syntax. • GinnMerge: uses ENTER* query subset files. • GinnMerge: accesses related and default records. • GinnMerge: generates headers. • GinnMerge: sorts up to 9 fields. • GinnMerge: allows variable page lengths. • GinnMerge: is powerful, but simple to use. • GinnMerge: is available from: Ginn Computer Co. U 3320 Simpson Ave. Ocean City, N.J. 08226 ( 609 ) 398-9675 Circle No. 33 on Inquiry Card ‘UNIFY is a registered trademark of UNIFY Corporation ’UNIX is a registered trademark of Bell Laboratories ‘ENTER is a registered trademark of UNIFY Corporation 64 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Your PC can now “speak” C when using Registered Trademarks: IBM—International Business Machines Corp. Microsoft. MS, XENIX—Microsoft Corp.; Applesoft—Apple Computer. Inc.; TRS-80—Tandy Radio Shack Corp , CBASIC—Digital Research. Inc Distributors Australia Fawnray Pty Ltd., P.O.B 224. Hurtsville. NSW 2220 (612) 570*6100, Japan, Advanced Data Controls Corp . Chiyoda ku. Tokyo (03) 263 0383; United Kingdom. Real Time Systems, Newcastle upon Tyne, 0632-733131 E CONSULTANTS, INC. • 1422 EASTON ROAD • R0SLYN, PA 19001 • 215-657-5660 The BASTOC single unit binary price is $350, and includes documentation, media, and ship¬ ping. To order, or to get more information, write or call JMI Software Consultants, Inc., 215-657- 5660. Check, Money Orders, VISA and MC are acceptable. A BASIC-ToC Translator JMI’s BASTOC is a versatile software tool which converts BASIC source programs to C source pro¬ grams. BASTOC also translates multiple dialects of BASIC. BASTOC FEATURES Supports Microsoft Disk BASIC. Full run-time support library is provided. Provides conventional BASIC compiler when used in conjunction with a C compiler. Produces formatted and structured C code, easily maintained and modified. The output of BASTOC may be used directly as input to a standard C compiler. Several dialects of BASIC may be translated to C on the same system. BASTOC will soon translate CBASIC and Apple¬ soft BASIC. AVAILABLE NOW JMI’s BASTOC is available now for the IBM PC and PC-compatible computers using PC-DOS or MS-DOS, and the Radio Shack TRS-80, Model 16, running XENIX. BASTOC will be available for other systems soon! ORDER NOW HUMAN FACTOR feature of csh can easily be used to install a few protections. The csh “noclobber” flag is a perfect example of a worthwhile safety device. It is clearly unreasonable to expect a UNIX novice to know which safeguards are good ideas, and how they should be installed. Vendors thus have a responsibility to ship systems in the safest and most usable configuration. The lack of any notion of graph¬ ics is perhaps more of an opportu¬ nity than a problem, but it does need to be addressed. Two graphics stan¬ dards are currently emerging in the industry. CORE is a 3-D standard developed by the ACM’s SIG- GRAPH. GKS is a 2-D standard that was developed internationally. The UNIX community could easily declare a set of language bindings (calling sequences) for CORE, allow¬ ing portability of graphics applica¬ tions. GKS, being defined more tightly, may not need such assis¬ tance. No windowing standards are yet on the horizon. Assorted vendors are busily developing their own notions of windowing packages and some consensus will no doubt emerge eventually. The UNIX community is in a position to assist with this process, since most of the terminals and workstations offering window¬ ing will be running UNIX. Perhaps the most intractable problem, however, is the inherent sophistication demanded of the UNIX user. Written by and for systems programmers, UNIX gives its users access to a wide range of powerful techniques, but requires that they understand them. Every part of UNIX reflects this, from the editor, with its myriad of commands; to the C language, with its tricky but powerful constructions; to the utili¬ ties, with their regular expression syntax. UNIX USER REQUIREMENTS It is often said that UNIX is as usable by clerical staff as by soft¬ ware developers. This is true only in the sense that both can perform the simpler UNIX functions, but even then a lack of understanding of the nature of a command or of the structure of the file system can be very damaging. The minimal know¬ ledge base for an effective UNIX user would include notions of hierarchical file structures, file He/ MIPS, SOFTWARE PROVIDES THE APL - UNIX® SOLUTION: DYALOG APL UNIX® based - fully functional commercial APL including nested arrays, upper and lower case data sup¬ port for the UNIX® environment, dynamic workspace size, external functions (callable subroutines written in other languages) full screen editor, error trapping, com¬ mercial formatter and a host of other desirable features. DYALOG APL is available for a variety of UNIX® computing environments including VAX®, PE, Gould, Zilog, Fortune, Perq, Pyramid 1 and Sun 1 . For further in¬ formation about DYALOG APL on your 68000, 16032 or 8086 base system, call or write today. MIPS Softwarh Development. Inc. 31555 West 14 Mile Road Suite 104 Farmington Hills. Ml 48018 313-855-3552 UNIX* is ;i trademark of Bell Laboratories VAX' is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. I Call lor Availahilil) naDD to cj _Op a Le|o Circle No. 24 on Inquiry Card C COMPILER • FULL C • UNIX* Ver. 7 COMPATABILITY • NO ROYALTIES ON GENERATED CODE • GENERATED CODE IS REENTRANT • C AND ASSEMBLY SOURCE MAY BE INTERMIXED • UPGRADES & SUPPORT FOR 1 YEAR C SOURCE AVAILABLE FOR $2500 00 HOST 6809 TARGET PDP 11* LSI 11* TARGET 8080 (Z80) TARGET 8088 8086 TARGET FLEX* UNIFLEX* OS-9* $ 200 of) $85ooo 500 00 500 00 500 00 rt n* rsx n* PDF 11* 500 00 200 oo", ■; 350 00 ; 500 00 500 (X) CP M* 8080 (Z80) 500 (X) 500 00 200 00 ' 35000 500 00 PC DOS* CP M86* 8088 8086 500 00 500 00 500 00 i ° *PCDOS is a trademark of IBM Corp MSDOS is a trademark of MICROSOFT UNIX is a trademark of BELL U\BS RT 11 RSX 11 /PDP 11 is a trademark of digital Equipment Corporation FLEX/UNIFLEX is a trademark of Technical Systems consultants CP'M and CP M86 are trademarks of Digital Research OS 9 is a trademark of Microware & Motorola. 408-275-1659 TELECON SYSTEMS 1155 Meridian Avenue, Suite 218 San Jose, California 95125 66 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 23 on Inquiry Card E PLURIBUS UNIX* Out of many-there is UNIX E PLURIBUS UNIX EXPO Out of many-there is ... THE UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM EXPOSITION & CONFERENCE October 16, 17,18, 1984 Sheraton Centre Hotel, New York City— Conference Marina Expo Complex, New York City— Exposition The comprehensive, practical, business/learning event designed solely and specifically to address the myriad technical and business aspects of the UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM. This national trade show is created to bring together manufacturer, ISO and sophisticated end-user in order to facilitate the transaction of business in this dynamic field. Exhibiting in UNIX EXPO will ensure that your firm can position itself in the vanguard of the UNIX revolution, and claim your share of the market dollar. The UNIX Exposition Experience State-off-the-art exposition featuring more than 350 exhibit booths of UNIX related hardware, software, peripherals, professional associations, trade publications, and service organizations. Penetrating, multi-track conference pro¬ gram focusing on major technical, marketing, and sales aspects of UNIX. Coordinated by noted UNIX advocate James Joyce, the program will assemble industry leaders -to address topics of vital interest to all segments of the UNIX environment. An innovative, on-site Job Fair hosted by PENCOM SYSTEMS, INC., the nationally recognized leader in UNIX recruiting, will permit exhibiting firms to disseminate information concerning employment oppor¬ tunities. Career objectives can be discussed, and meetings with company representatives scheduled. New York City— the core of the largest computer marketplace in the world. National Expositions, a leader in show management for more than three decades will conduct a massive audience promo program to ensure maximum attendance of qualified UNIX resellers and sophisticated end-users. THE COMPLETE UNIX EXPO EXPERIENCE IS A MUST FOR: MANUFACTURERS WISHING TO SELL, ISO'S, TECHNICAL PERSONNEL AND WHOLESALERS WISHING TO LEARN, END-USERS WISHING TO EXAMINE, COMPARE, AND SELECT. For Complete details regarding exhibit space availability or attending UNIX EXPO contact: Expositions Co., Inc. )th Street, New York, NY 10018. 212/391-9111 Telex: 135401 DIMCOMM mmm National 14 West 4( Telephone ♦UNIX ® 11 IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF BELL LABS UNIX EXPO IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH BELL LABS APPLICATION SOFTWARE ENGINEERS VCT, a high technology firm specializing in creating voice response systems, is looking for APPLICATION SOFTWARE ENGINEERS ready to accept the challenge. • to create solutions to new and exciting problems in the evolving field of computer VOICE PROCESSING. • to craft programs using both state-of- the-art development tools and STRUCTURED SOFTWARE DESIGN techniques. • to work with a highly-motivated team of hardware and software professionals in an environment that emphasizes the importance of group effort without losing track of individual creativity. If this Is your kind of challenge and you have • an extended RECORD OF ACCOMPLISHMENT in software engineering including a minimum of 5 years experience, • Commercial programming experience, particularly in order processing, • a demonstrated VERSTILITY IN PROGRAMMING languages and skills (C and UNIX are of particular interest), • a strong ORIENTATION TOWARDS USER REQUIREMENTS in a program design, • and a desire to grow into project leadership responsibilities; Submit your resume to: VCT Corporation 5730 Oakbrook Parkway, Suite 175 Norcross, Georgia 30093-1888 no calls - applicants only please Circle No. 26 on Inquiry Card —-'l UNIX JOBS REGISTRY National registry of candi¬ dates and jobs in the Unix field. Please give us a call; send a resume; or request a free Resume Workbook & Career Planner. We are a professional employment firm managed by graduate engineers. 800 - 231-5920 P.O. Box 19949, Dept. UR Houston, TX 77224 713-496-6100 Scientific Placement, Inc. ^*Uni)a^tradQmarl^fBel^bs J Circle No. 27 on Inquiry Card 68 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 HUMAN FACTOR protection schemes, I/O redirection and regular expressions. While the Apple Macintosh environment provides a blatant contrast, even CP/M or VMS demands less of a novice. Accomplished UNIX users em¬ ploy a wide range of expertise in the course of a typical session, and have a broad and deep understanding of the techniques being used. Experts can quickly do jobs that might otherwise take hours of clerical drudgery, but only because of their extensive UNIX expertise. The use of complex combinations of com¬ mands depends upon a thorough the uninitiated. Where, then, does this leave the UNIX community? Well, the above changes, if effected, would produce a syntactically consistent UNIX, more properly documented and reasonably clean in terms of its diag¬ nostic messages. This would help both novices and experienced users, though novices would be the pri¬ mary beneficiaries. Protective shells could also help new users enter UNIX’s complex world in a safer manner. Some users might never feel the need to move into raw UNIX at all. This would not be a bad situa- ...one could do much worse than UNIX as the basis for almost any sort of portable , flexible, powerful user interface. knowledge of the nature of each command being used. There is an excellent new intro¬ ductory text on UNIX called The UNIX Programming Environment (Kernighan & Pike, Prentice-Hall, 1984) that goes through shell scripts, grep, sed, awk, yacc and troff, as well as the C programming environment. It is hard to imagine a UNIX novice even trying to use a compiler-compiler such as yacc, let alone using it on a regular basis. Why then is yacc to be found in an introductory UNIX text? Simply because it is a key component of UNIX use. The nroff program, UNIX’s answer to word processing, is generally considered to be too difficult for direct use by any but the most daring. The use of macro libraries is nearly universal, but a significant degree of flexibility is thereby lost. Again, the full power of UNIX is simply not available to tion, then, and might even carry us through to that golden age of artificially intelligent user interfaces capable of always doing those things we intend to request. It may also be that UNIX will be found lurking underneath such a system, since one could do much worse than UNIX as the basis for almost any sort of portable, flexible, powerful user interface. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard Morin is an independ¬ ent computer consultant specializing in the design , development and documentation of software for engineering , scientific and operating systems applications. He currently operates the Canta Forda Computer Lab in Ft. Washington , Maryland. TM PC/I X SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM SCI 1000/SDS TM • PC/IX Compatible • Multi-User TM • IN/ix Operating System From: • 8MHZ 80186 • 43MB Winchester Disk • 4 Terminals • .5MB Floppy Disk Drive • Up to 1 MB RAM Available Now SCI SYSTEMS, INC. • Contact Jim Lawson (205) 882-4304 Computer Division • P.O. Box 1000 • Huntsville, Alabama 35807 ™IN/ix is a trademark of INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation ™PC/IX is a trademark of IBM Corporation Circle No. 288 on Inquiry Card OFF THE SHELE UNIX in review by Doug Merritt Some friends who know me all too well have claimed that Off the Wall might be a more appropriate name for my column than Off the Shelf. I can only plead, though that with this title, readers are more likely to guess that this is a software review column. Most of us, after all, are more interested in what is avail¬ able in the way of off-the-shelf prod¬ ucts — that is, what we want — than in off-the-wall products, which is what we all too often get. Let me establish some ground rules. I will not use the same ap¬ proach as Consumer Reports, which buys ten cars and then proceeds to test them to destruction. This gives it a sterling reputation, since it is obviously not bribed with the products it tests. While I would like to think that I am just as free from bias, I’m not willing to pay several thousand dollars each month to buy software. The good news, though, is that I am willing to review any software received that I verify to be in work¬ ing condition. A reference to the product will appear as a continuing listing in the “Software Yellow Pages,” a new department to start in the August issue of UNIX REVIEW . I will also review competing or similar products together, when possible, to provide fair comparisons. CRITERIA FOR REVIEWS I assume most people read product reviews for the same reason I do: to benefit from someone else’s experience with a product’s quality 70 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 without having to risk getting their own fingers burned. The review columns that I have tried to follow most regularly are those that are either most inform¬ ative about my favorite topics, or are simply amusing and outrageous, such as Jerry Pournelle’s column in Byte. My personal experiences will give shape to the direction and format of this column; if you send me your opinions about what I am doing, I promise it will have an impact. I am not omniscient and so may even be unaware of some products unless you express an interest in hearing about them. Every time I use a new piece of software, I grade it by my own standards. It can be quite difficult to say where objectivity ends and subjectivity begins. A summary of my criteria, though, would certain¬ ly include: • Purpose (what is it for?) • Scope (how powerful is it?) • Flexibility (how many ways can it be used?) • Ease of use (first time, every time) • Environment (what do I need to use it?) • Support (am I on my own?) • Documentation (can they explain it?) • Price (cheap or ridiculous?) All judgements are, to some degree, subjective. I will demon¬ strate here how I intend to put these categories to use in making my assessments by offering a sample review of UNIX itself. Most of my conclusions should come as no sur¬ prise, since UNIX has been so thor¬ oughly analyzed by so many people. Thus, to save space I will not exhaustively consider the relative merits of different versions of UNIX. PURPOSE What functionality does UNIX provide, and for whom? UNIX was originally designed by Ken Thompson at Bell Laboratories to make a PDP-7 usable for his orbital simulator program. As far as I know, it worked fine for this purpose. Later it was billed, by word of mouth mostly, as a useful software development and instructional en¬ vironment for PDP-lls. Again, it seemed to work quite well for this purpose. Recently, UNIX has been called the ideal operating system for just about any purpose on just about any machine. Although UNIX is avail¬ able on more machines than any Circle No. 28 on Inquiry Card —► Finally. s Some answers in Wonderland. Coming soon, a next-generation office software system from APPLiX APPLiX, INC. 302 TURNPIKE ROAD, SOUTHBORO, MASSACHUSETTS 01772 (617) 481-4721 OFF THE SHELF other operating system, it is not perfect for everyone since there are still far too few application packages available. Yet, it is an excellent soft¬ ware development environment, and is quickly becoming a good answer to a number of other needs as more application packages appear. It might be more accurate to say UNIX is a very good environment for software development, text proc¬ essing and portability (due to its widespread availability). There are other operating systems that out¬ perform UNIX in given areas, but none that are as widely available or as standard, despite the multitude of UNIX “standards.” SCOPE OF FUNCTIONALITY (POWER) UNIX rates unusually well in this area, although it does have some major flaws. Among its good points are its hierarchical file system, an online reference manual, a universal file type and structure (sequence of characters), pipes and a plethora of filter utilities that can be used in conjunction with pipes. UNIX also typically offers two very powerful programmable command inter¬ preters, an extremely flexible text formatting system (nroff and troff), a wide range of powerful software and text development utilities and a remarkably small number of the misfeatures plaguing many other operating systems. Among UNIX’s weak points are its lack of real time features, its underdeveloped network features (though this is changing), its inflex¬ ible interprocess communication (with 4.2 BSD a possible exception), its badly designed user interfaces (poor error diagnostics and confus¬ ing command options are two exam¬ ples), its lack of a useful help system (apart from an online manual and some quick reference features such as Berkeley UNIX’s whereis and apropos), and its overabundance of not-so-standard standards (Version 7, System 3, System 5, 4.2 BSD, Xenix, etc.). FLEXIBILITY OF FUNCTIONALITY (ADAPTABILITY) UNIX rates fairly well here. It has been used as the environment for just about every conceivable kind of application, although it has been sometimes necessary to modify it to suit certain needs. On an abso¬ lute scale of perfection, its flexibility rates about medium. Relative to most other widely used operating systems, though, it is very good. EASE OF FIRST-TIME USE (USER FRIENDLINESS) This is probably the weakest area in UNIX, and certainly the one most often complained about. UNIX software and documentation really does nothing to make learning easy, despite several well-written tutorials in certain areas. Chiefly responsible for this are a bewildering inconsis¬ tency in command syntax, a lack of mnemonic names, a dearth of online help software and an overwhelming number of available commands. New users have to contend with utility commands, shell commands, editor commands and nroff commands. EASE OF LONG TERM USE (EXPERT FRIENDLINESS) This is one of UNIX’s strong points. Although there are a few things that long term users dislike, UNIX is generally easy to use once you learn what is necessary to the task at hand. Most things that need to be done can be accomplished with a fairly small number of keystrokes or commands. Berkeley’s screen editor, vi, for instance, has a pleas¬ ing set of commands that let you enter and manipulate text in a very effective way, although it could definitely use windows and multifile editing. Compare this, if you will, with the popular CP/M editor, Word¬ star, which continued to annoy me even after two years of use. Another example of long term ease is offered by UNIX’s set of file manipulation commands (cp, mv, cat, more, emp, diff and sed, to name a few). These provide a well-rounded, powerful, straightforward set of capabilities. While working with many different versions of the same program or text file can be painful on other systems, it is easy under UNIX. SUPPORT This is a favorite area of com¬ plaint. Until recently, UNIX was a I assume most people read product reviews for the same reason I do: to benefit from someone else's experience with a product's quality without having to risk getting their own fingers burned. 72 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 29 on Inquiry Card Information Retrieval Down lo Size ...with BRS/SEARCH— the Software That Comes In Mainframe, Micro and Mini Sizes. BRS/SEARCH, the same information retrieval software that runs one of the world's largest online database systems is now available for your mainframe, mini, or micro computer. BRS/SEARCH gives you instant access to all your own information, regardless of its length or format. Many powerful, easy-to-use features developed through millions of online searches have made BRS/SEARCH the system of choice among informa¬ tion professionals. BRS/SEARCH runs on IBM and compatible main¬ frames, as well as 16 and 32 bit mini and micro computers. And because the search query lan¬ guage is the same no matter what size computer, you can use it on a variety of systems without any additional training. For more information about these three new sizes of database software, call toll free: (800) 833-4707; in New York State (800) 553-5566. Or write BRS Software Sales Support, 1200 Rte. 7, Latham, N.Y. 12110. Dealer and OEM Inquiries invited. SEARCH SOFTWARE An ITG Company I'd like to know how to cut my information retrieval problems down to size. I am interested in SEARCH for the following systems: Mainframe: . Mini:. Micro: . □ Please have a salesman call. □ Send me more information. NAME COMPANY ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP PHONE ( ) UR 6/84 That’s what we do in UNIX REVIEW We listen, and look, and probe It’s surprising how much there is that’s fresh and new. Just waiting to be shared It’s often that way with things that are simply elegant. Like a shell. Like UNIX UNIX" REVIEW THE MAGAZINE FOR THE UNIX COMMUNITY UNIX is the trademark of Bell Laboratories, Inc. UNIX REVIEW is not affiliated with or sponsored by Bell Laboratories. “support-it-yourself” operating sys¬ tem because AT&T and Berkeley notions of support consisted of new releases at unpredictable intervals. Supporting UNIX is an expen¬ sive proposition, since it involves purchase of the source code, main¬ tenance of a contingent of all-too- rare UNIX gurus, and efforts to keep up with both the numerous bug reports from customers and the numerous new UNIX “standards ’ that keep appearing. Some companies, such as Micro¬ soft and UniSoft, claim to offer more support but in my experience have been no more responsive than AT&T. This is rapidly changing today. Within the next few years I expect everyone with a commercial offering of UNIX to provide extensive sup¬ port. A growing number of other companies, too, are beginning to offer third-party support for UNIX. A binary license for UNIX is now quite affordable — about $100 per user — since AT&T restructured its price list last year. For this, you get a lot of bang for your buck. Source licenses are still fairly expensive ($43,000) but only in terms of affordability for small companies. This is still a cost-effec¬ tive price. Some companies have charged over $100,000 just for the source code to a BASIC compiler! DOCUMENTATON My feelings about UNIX docu¬ mentation are mixed. Volumes Two and Three of the UNIX Program¬ mers Manual are valuable additions, but Volume One has some serious problems. While Volume One is gen¬ erally quite thorough, it can take a marathon session to find things unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and where to find it. The format of the Programmers Manual also takes some getting used to. The Permuted Index is usually obsolete, and is only helpful half the time whenever it is current. There are a number of good tu¬ torials on some UNIX areas that are now provided with the basic doc¬ umentation, but they still aren’t enough and there are still too few quick reference aids. An appendix or two might help. FUTURE COLUMNS In next month’s Off the Shelf I will review Touchstone’s “PC- Works’’ communication package, which transforms IBM PCs into workstations for UNIX systems. I’ll be testing it on a 68000 Dual Systems 83/20, running UniSoft’s Version 7 UNIX. In columns to come, I intend to cover a wide range of areas, including business applications, software development tools, communications and network¬ ing (anyone interested in modem or terminal reviews?), text formatting, graphics, artificial intelligence and computer aided design. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Doug Merritt became one of the earliest UNIX users outside Bell Laboratories while attending UC Berkeley in 1976. He helped to debug termcap and contributed to the development of vi and curses. Mr. Merritt now works as a consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. ■ MEDICAL INFORMATICS . . . UNIQUE to the WORLD of UNIX USERS Medical Informatics, your one source for all the computer help you need or only the support you want. Medical Informatics - don't let the name throw you. The industrial, manage¬ ment, university, research and accounting professionals at Ml know data: getting, organizing and displaying it. Our com¬ puter medicine may be just the prescrip¬ tion for your business. Rely on Ml to perform a thorough and unbiased analysis of your operation and to set up a turnkey system, or to just supply that “right"' element to enhance your already strong system. You can tailor Ml's service to match your requirements with a basic system or a greatly expanded system that includes a broad array of Ml hardware and software. Take the Medical Informatics Report Writer and Applications Generator (MIRAGE), for example. MIRAGE gives you an information management system to organize and process data from any source. It actually builds custom computer software to exactly fit your particular needs. MIRAGE allows you to rapidly define the data you want to enter into the computer; it uses your definitions to prompt you to enter, revise and delete data, without error; and, it allows you to quickly specify what data you want retrieved and in what form. But that's what you'd expect from the company that makes computers work the way you always thought they should. Medical Informatics, Inc. 12023 Lakeshore Blvd. • Cleveland, OH 44108 216-249-8353 TM UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. J Circle No. 31 on Inquiry Card June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 75 We ve Moved I Announcing our new location. UNIX REVIEW™ REVIEW PUBLICATIONS 901 S. 3rd Street, Renton, WA 98055 (206) 271-9605 ACUITY® business software is compatible with any budget, and all these systems: UNIX-based Micros VAX, VMS or UNIX PRIME Convergent IBM-PC Harris With prices from $700 to $6500 for a fully supported package, any size company can afford our general accounting and specialized project cost software. Packages available include project management, labor/ODC forecasting, work breakdown structure, customer order processing, bill of materials processing and inventory management. Plus a complete set of accounting software including general ledger, payables, receivables, payroll and fixed assets. Call (619) 474-2010 for details. #% compuTe %# coGniTion 225 West 30th Street, National City, California 92050 Circle No. 32 on Inquiry Card The Best Learning Captivates And it saves you money. CALL NOW user TRammE (408) 370-971 o CORPORaTIDR 591 W. Hamilton Ave. • Campbell, CA 95008 76 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Visit UTC at booth #102 at the USENIX Show Circle No. 34 on Inquiry Card i I i r m* 0 seKl 2 I LETTER E HANDS-ON TRAINING SEMINARS • VIDEO-BASED TRAINING • AND NOW INTERACTIVE VIDEO userOS I userOS's! Saved -Mal l^lFile Select your training medium according to the type of training you prefer and the number of people to be trained. VIDEO-BASED TRAINING. The Computer Technology Group’s Video-Based Training integrates professionally de¬ veloped and produced video and text material, as well as hands-on exercises, into complete training programs. Our courses are produced with the highest standards of video quality, applying the latest techniques of instructional design in¬ cluding the use of computer graphics and animation techniques to compress learning time. The students’ time is not wasted with the “camera at the back of the classroom’’ or “chalk talk” approach which is so inefficient, and often ineffective, in transfer¬ ring skills. Our Video-Based Training courses are completely self-contained, including the hardware-independent hands-on exercises. All you need is a video cassette player. , , „ , , Number of Modules COURSE Video-Based Interactive Computers at Work 15 UNIX—An Executive Perspective 1 UNIX Overview 6 6 UNIX Fundamentals 15 15 ‘C’ Language Programming 16 16 INTERACTIVE VIDEODISC TRAINING. Our new UNIX Videodisc Training Curriculum combines the benefits of our Video-Based Training with the flexibility of microcomputer access. Designed as a one-on-one tutor, our interactive system asses¬ ses the training needs of each student and dynamically tailors the training to his/her specific needs, thus eliminating redundant training. Through engaging exercises and interactive video, we are able to increase student comprehension while reducing train¬ ing time. Developed by the Computer Technology Group and Interactive Training Systems, the curriculum uses the latest laser videodisc technology—including IBM PC, color moni¬ tor and Interactive Training System Controller. PUBLIC AND IN-HOUSE SEMINARS. Both public and in-house seminars are offered on a wide variety of UNIX and ‘C’ Language subjects, including: UNIX Overview • UNIX Fundamentals for Non-Programmers • UNIX Fundamentals for Programmers • Shell as a Command Language • *C’ Language Programming • Shell Programming • Using Advanced UNIX Commands • UNIX Internals • UNIX Administra¬ tion • Advanced ‘C Programming Workshop • Advanced ‘C’ Programming Under UNIX • Berkeley UNIX Fundamentals and “csh" Shell. See us at Booth #225 and 227, USENIX Association Conference, Salt Lake City TM UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories June 12-14 Call toll-free: (800) 323-UNIX or in IL (312) 987-4082 310 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60604 COMPUTER" TECHNOLOGY GROUP Telemedia, Inc. C ADVISOR Continued from Page 48 or PDP and a machine of any other architecture, it is necessary to use the swab(3) routine to exchange bytes. Outside of AT&T and Bell Labs, most UNIX programmers are still working with Version 7 systems, such as Xenix, or with descendents of Version 7, such as 4.1 and 4.2 BSD. Despite all the marketing hype, Memory protection is almost non¬ existent on the 8088 and Intel has been slow to provide support chips for memory management. System III is only beginning to be commercially available and System V offerings are rare (although AT&T systems will soon be generally available). PC/IX is based on System III UNIX. For programmers who are concerned with portability across different versions of UNIX, here are some tips: The C libraries on System III are slightly different from those on Version 7. Included are some improve¬ ments and bug fixes. For example, isprint( ) on Version 7 claims that a space is not printable; this has been fixed on System III. The names of index( ) and rindex( ) have been changed to strchr( ) and strrchr( ). The Version 7 macro calls tolower( ) and toupper( ) were replaced by functions that check to make sure the character being mapped is in fact appropriate for mapping; otherwise, punctuation marks may be changed to control characters. Macro calls are still available as _tolower( ) and_toupper( ). Here is a way to deal with these changes: #ifdef V7 # define strchr index # define strrchr rindex # define _tolower tolower # define _toupper toupper #endif Plan to be where the UNIX* technical community will be. The 1984 USENIX Conference and Vendor ExhibitionA, sponsored by the Usenix Association, is designed to promote the exchange of technical information and ideas among the Unix Community. The Technical Conference will be held at the Hotel Utah, June 12th through 15th, 1984. A series of tutorial sessions is offered which will provide in-depth treatment of topics relevant to many users of Unix systems. The technical sessions demonstrate the breadth and depth of the research and development work being done within the Unix Community. The vendor exhibition will be held at the Salt Palace Center, June 12 through 14th, 1984. The exhibition will bring together many major suppliers on Unix-related products showing the lastest technological achievements. Products exhibited will range from mainframes to micros, systems, peripherals and software. 1984 SUMMER USENIX CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION Conference: June 12th through 15th, 1984 at the Hotel Utah. Exhibits: June 12th through 14th, 1984 at the Salt Palace, Salt Lake City, Utah. For exhibit information, call (303) 696-6100: For conference information, call (213) 592-1381. ‘Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. ; * 1 * « _ ___ 78 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 36 on Inquiry Card With this at the top of a C include file, your software will port back to Version 7 systems, unless it interacts with the terminal at a low level - the terminal driver on Systems III and V differs from the one on Version 7. Unfortunately, the only way to deal with these discrepancies is to include separate code for each variant of UNIX: #ifdef V7 # include #endif #ifdef USG # include # include #endif #ifdef BSD int linedisc = NTTYDISC; ioctl(filedes, TIOCSETD, &linedisc); #endif The sgtty.h include file provides definitions for the stty(2) and gtty(2) system calls used for terminal handling on Version 7. The acronym USG stands for Unix Support Group, the organization within AT&T charged with supporting System V. The include file termio.h provides definitions for ioctl(2) system calls applying to terminals (both stty(2) and gtty(2) are gone from System III). The include file fcntl.h provides definitions for controlling file descriptors; it is available on 4.2 BSD as well. The new tty discipline, set for BSD systems in the example above, is the one that provides job control, word erase, echoing of control characters and other useful features still not available in System V. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bill Tuthill was a leading UNIX and C consultant at UC Berkeley for four years prior to becoming a systems software analyst at Imagen Corporation. He enjoys a solid reputation in the UNIX community earned as part of the Berkeley team that enhanced Version 7 (BSD 4. ft 4.1 and 4.2). ■ June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 79 TED DOLOTTA Continued from Page 42 Reference Manual and Assembler Manual , debugging aids, make, SCCS, lex, yacc, awk — all those. There is also the curses document. The Text Processing Guide contains all the text processing doc¬ umentation you need in System III for using nroff, troff, etc. There are three new documents, one a beginner’s tutorial for PC/IX that is about 80 pages in length. There is also the INed Reference Manual and a document called “An Introduction to Text Processing on PC/IX.” It is a very simple introduction to nroff and the mm-macro package for creating simple documents targeted for the PC/IX, and happens to be by design the only document not typeset, but rather run off on a PC printer. It is a short document that lets people get off the ground quickly and start formatting text. These are the main documents. In addition there is a classic little eight or 16 panel fold-out mm refer¬ ence and a plasticized keyboard template. REVIEW: You mentioned curses, the package for cursor control and in ii Ik: liii: in. iii: in, in, ii. Ii. Ii:: fei; fr: Bi : *** New Second Edition *** THE UNIX GUIDE A Concise Orientation and Reference Guide ■ Covers System V. System III. Version 7. and identifies release differences. ■ Includes UniSoft and Popular Berkeley Enhancements. ■ Suitable for end users. ■ Identifies software features and benefits. Contains simple, concise explanations. To order, send a check for $24.95 (US) + $2 shipping for US and Canada. Reseller Discounts Available. PACIFIC MICRO TECH 5819 Poinsett Ave. El Cerrito, CA 94530 (415) 233-3596 ‘UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories 80 fe» • ft, a h ft, ■, k, a, a a, Circle No. 135 on Inquiry Card UNIX REVIEW June 1984 .iii:: screen optimization. I noticed termcap is also in your port Why ? Dolotta: They are there because the perception was that people would be interested in using them and it was not very difficult to put them in — so we did. As a general philosophy, we had no problem adding as a superset things we had available and that we perceived as useful, and so some of the Berkeley file system robustness is in the system. REVIEW: The fast file system? Dolotta: Not the fast file system. Just the re-ordering of writes to insure better reliability of the file system. Basically, we had no reason for not adding things except avail¬ ability of resources and our desire to get the product out in time. REVIEW: Are there any missing System III utilities? Dolotta: Except for tar and a small number of device drivers, I really can’t think of anything significant that is missing. REVIEW: What other Interactive enhancements have been made? Dolotta: In addition to INed, our screen editor, we have replaced the cu program by our own program called Connect. The Connect pro¬ gram gives us a more general and more robust product. In addition to Is we have an li command, which is a Berkeley-style listing of directory contents and a number of other things of that nature, such as the ability to deal with a color monitor. REVIEW: Is that an option that you can purchase from IBM or is that a purchase from another vendor? Dolotta: IBM sells color monitors, as far as I know. REVIEW: What about aids for back¬ up. The dump and restor programs work with floppies. The same old dump and restor? Dolotta: No, a more intelligent one. REVIEW: Can you restart in y say, the middle of a dump on the fifth diskette? Dolotta: Yes, I believe you can. REVIEW: Is your version of mm stripped of comments? Dolotta: I’m not sure I understand the question. REVIEW: John Mashey put com¬ ments throughout the mm macros. ...you can attach another terminal to it, but one would be doing that at one's own risk. However , as he said at a local Uni- Ops meetings, they were stripped out, condensed and have never seen the light of day. Dolotta: If you get source, you get the whole thing. If you just get object, you get the condensed version. REVIEW: So this is the condensed version of the mm macros? Dolotta: It is not only condensed but it is one that does not insist on put¬ ting “Bell Laboratories” on top of every letter, etc. It has been general¬ ized so it is no longer Bell System specific, unlike the one that comes with System III and System V. Generally, I think it is fair to say that the UNIX code and docu¬ mentation took an awful lot of polish and improvement to make them more consistent, more robust and less buggy. We’ve done a significant upgrade of the system, although we did not go to great lengths to increase features. But there are some increased features: for instance, we have a grep command that allows users to search for paragraphs containing patterns. But, by and large, there are not many new features. SUPPORT FOR PC/IX REVIEW: Who will support PC/IX? Dolotta: IBM. REVIEW: Will Interactive he supporting IBM? Dolotta: Yes. REVIEW: One of the questions I heard after the PC/IX announcement the Thursday before UNIFORUM was “Why Interactive ?” Dolotta: Because we are the best. REVIEW: Everyone expected Microsoft or Bell Labs; some might have even expected UniSoft. Dolotta: I cannot really comment on that. The fact of the matter is that we were asked by IBM if we would be interested in doing the project, and we said “yes” — and we did it. It’s as simple as that. As to why IBM chose to do business with us as "Why Interactive? Because we are the best." opposed to any of the other entities you mentioned, you would have to ask IBM. Needless to say, we think they made the right choice. REVIEW: What was your role in the project? Dolotta: To stay out of people’s way. My role in the project, based upon my responsibilities at Interactive, is the management of the technical side of the house — so, as such, the project managers report to me. I did not have any direct technical hand in this particular project. THE PORT... REVIEW: Can we turn to the port itself? How long did it take? How many people were involved? Dolotta: You are beginning to touch on issues which are dangerously close to contractual matters. Our contract with IBM contains a clause that says that all the details of the port are confidential, so I find it a little uncomfortable discussing that sort of detail. It was not a trivial project by a long shot. It was a significant project. It was not a two- week port — I promise. ■ UniPress Product UPDATE LEXWORD word processing software LEX is a menu-driven, full-screen, interactive word processing system which allows extensive control over document formatting by use of “rulers” imbedded in the text. Runs on 68000 and 8086-based computers with any kind of terminal. In addition to such standard features as text insertion and deletion, LEX incorporates a four-function math calculator, very powerful cut and paste, a spell-checking system and a built-in customer/contact mass-mailing/database. LEX is easily programmable so that U N I custom forms, menus and prompts can be designed. LEX also permits standard text to be stored and recalled easily into documents. OEM terms available • Much more Unix Software, too! • Call or write for information. UniPress Software, Inc. 1164 Raritan Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904 201-985-8000 • Order Desk: 800-222-0550 (outside NJ) Telex: 709418 • Mastercard and Visa Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Circle No. 38 on Inquiry Card June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 81 UNIX. An ideal has been realized. Some say UNIX is the operating system of the future. We say, why wait till then? Because you can get it right now on a full range of HP computer systems. Yes. It’s running on our MC68000-based machines and our powerful 32-bit systems, so you can pick the right computer for the job. And since our HP-UX operating system is an enhanced version of the industry-standard UNIX operating system, you can take advantage of the growing array of applica¬ tions software available. You can also use the extra features of HP-UX, such as graphics and networking. The UNIX operating system is only one of the high-powered operating systems we offer. And we put our full service organiza¬ tion behind all of them. We’re ready to answer questions and to work with both end users and OEMs to find the best solution for any particular application. Sound interesting? Call your local HP sales office right now about the UNIX oper¬ ating system. Or write to Hewlett-Packard, Attn. Pat Welch, Dept. 100194,19447 Pruneridge Ave., Cupertino, CA 95014. In Europe, contact Henk van Lammeren, Hewlett-Packard, Nederlands B.V., Dept. 100194, P.O. Box 529,1180 AM Amstelveen, The Netherlands. Productivity. Not promises. r^l HEWLETT mLTM PACKARD BD02317 UNIX is a trademark of AT&T BelJ Laboratories. Circle No. 39 on Inquiry Card HEINZ LYCKLAMA Continued, from Page 39 REVIEW: Will the packages he marketed by Interactive Systems or IBM? Lycklama: They will be marketed by IBM as optional program offerings. You shouldn’t be surprised if IBM also works with some other third party vendors with industry standard applications for UNIX. REVIEW: So IBM will offer options produced by other vendors? Lycklama: Yes. There are a few good COBOL compilers on the market for the 8088 that are as good as you can make COBOL in that environment. And there are Pascal compilers, word processing systems and database systems that are being developed. REVIEW: Will there be competing options within the IBM optional offering? Lycklama: I’m probably not in a good position to comment on that yet. IBM makes up the rules as to what they are going to market and what they won’t. They will establish a relationship with companies to market specific applications but I’m sure others are not going to wait for IBM to port their packages to PC/IX. REVIEW: So they'll do it on their own? Lycklama: Yes. The IBM PC/IX will become just another system that their product runs on. REVIEW: Within which forums do you anticipate the competition will be most pitched? Lycklama: I think if you look through the /usr/group catalog (The UNIX Catalog) of available applica¬ tions, you’ll find a lot of relational database packages for small sys¬ tems, a lot of accounting packages and some word processing systems. There is much being developed in a number of different categories. REVIEW: Do you anticipate that support for the PC/IX will come chiefly from the traditional UNIX software community or from the companies that have been servicing the IBM PC right along? Lycklama: I think we’re going to see more sophisticated programs initial¬ ly that emphasize UNIX capabil¬ ities. There are a lot of programs available under MS-DOS today, but many of them are the obvious sorts of programs that are not very useful in a business environment. The more complicated programs like word processing, message systems and database systems are the kind that we are going to see developed for PC/IX. The PC/IX is not something I would characterize as a home com¬ puter system — at least not today. It is really for the professional. REVIEW: But what of the office environment where PC-XTs running PC-DOS are already in use? Assum¬ ing the staff is comfortable with the software they're currently using , it would seem there might be some resistance to learning a whole new set of utilities. Doesn't that suggest it might not be long before the Micropros , the Digital Researches , the VisiCorps and other companies deep into MS-DOS software port their products to the PC/IX? Lycklama: I’m sure there will be some of that. In fact, you might note that a lot of the new applications we’re beginning to see for MS-DOS have been written in C. There are also some good C compilers out there today for PC-DOS. REVIEW: VisiCorp, in fact , has already made some public noises about porting some of its pack¬ ages to UNIX. Lycklama: It is a natural extension. The MS-DOS world is limited to a single task and that’s rather con¬ straining for some applications. I’m sure you’ll see these applications migrate up to the PC/IX market. REVIEW: Do you have a feeling for how long it will be until people who “We are rather proud of the way PC/IX performs. We have put a lot of effort into optimizing both the C compiler and the performance of the system itself " 84 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Photo by Debbie Leavitt SCO is proud to announce the release of the XENIX™ Operating System and a full line of compatible applications software for the IBM Personal Computer and the Apple Lisa 2. XENIX from SCO has more features, better documentation and higher quality support than any other version of AT&T’s UNIX™ Operating System for the personal computer. XENIX has been installed on more microprocessor- based computers than all other UNIX-based operating systems combined, and now the power of XENIX is available from SCO to set a new standard for personal computer productivity. Let’s go to work. SCO THE SANTA CRUZ OPERATION 500 CHESTNUT STREET, P.O. BOX 1900 SANTA CRUZ, CA 95061 • (408 >425-7222 • TWX: 910-598-4510 SCO SACZ XKNIX is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation UNIX is a trademark of Bell laboratories ® 1984 The Santa Cruz Operation. Inc. Circle No. 40 on Inquiry Card PC/IX FEATURE purchase PC/IX will have a true selection of off-the-shelf software? Lycklama: Well, I would expect very shortly because IBM has been working with third parties to get application code ported. Those ports should encounter few obstacles since PC/IX is a true implementation of System III in terms of its system calls and its use of the C language. So it shouldn’t take that long for those applications to become available once PC/IX is generally available. REVIEW: As you say, either with or without IBM blessings. Lycklama: Of course, I think most companies would like to see their software come out under the auspices of IBM because that would give them a bigger market. But even without IBM, these companies are not going to wait. They will go out and market their software them¬ selves. REVIEW: Can you specify any of the software vendors we're discus¬ sing here? Lycklama: I think you can almost pick them by going through the /usr/group catalog. Ryan McFarland COBOL is a natural. Micropro’s COBOL or some other implementa¬ tion of COBOL would probably be likely candidates. Database systems like UNIFY would also be strong possibilities. This is not to say that IBM is not working directly with any of these companies, but... REVIEW: You would be very surprised if they didn't generate something for the PC/IX? Lycklama: That’s right. All those popular packages will be available one way or another. As I said before, if IBM doesn’t do it, they will do it themselves because they’re just not going to miss that market. REVIEW: Do you see PC/IX ulti¬ mately selling to some market other than the small business market? Do you see the price dropping enough to push it into lower markets? Lycklama: Initially, PC/IX will be made available only through IBM’s National Accounts Division, but I expect it will eventually be made available through retail channels as well. That’s just the next natural step and it should open up the market considerably. [Editor's Note: PC/IX surfaced in IBM retail stores in late April Nineteen diskettes and the PC/IX series come in a 17-pound package bearing a $900 price tag.) REVIEW: Do you see an evolution of software for the PC/IX? What's the most pressing need? What sort of software will surface first? What will follow? Lycklama: Well, I think languages are the first natural step because if your application is written in a spe¬ cific language, you want to make sure that language has been ported to the environment. That’s why I mentioned that COBOL will probably be one of the first languages to appear on PC/IX. There are a lot of accounting information programs written in COBOL, after all, and that can be ported to the PC/IX right after the COBOL compilers are. So, I think you’ll see the current generation of applications being moved over first. Then I expect you will see more integrated environments being made available. There are a lot of people putting a lot of effort into creating integrated environments under MS- DOS, PC-DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, VisiOn and all of that. I expect some of those will move into the UNIX environment as well. If they don’t, equivalent packages will. Quadratron has an integrated package that runs on UNIX and we (ISC) have our TEN/PLUS System. These packages really create an environment for building other applications in an inte¬ grated way. I think you’ll also see software appearing that increases networking capabilities. You can’t do much with a single-user computer, after all — you can’t talk to anybody else or ex¬ change data. REVIEW: This is UNIX , after all. Lycklama: Right. This is UNIX. PC/IX does come with uucp, but that is a rather slow way to commu¬ nicate and it’s a rather limited envi¬ ronment. That’s one of the reasons why we use our mail system (INmail) in our networking system. It’s much more flexible than uucp. You can communicate over different commu¬ nication links. It doesn’t just have to be an RS-232. You can also use X.25, a synchronous link or even Ethernet. So I think you will see more software supporting communi¬ cation between PCs and between PCs and mainframes. People already have hardware in place that will perform communi¬ cation tasks from a hardware point of view. There are also some 3270 emulators available under both PC- DOS and UNIX that I expect to migrate into PC/IX. The MS-DOS world is limited to a single task and that's rather constraining for some applications. I'm sure you'll see these applications migrate up to the PC/IX market. 86 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 The,CONCEFT AVT+ In a word: capability. HI I THE CONCEPT AVT+ DISPLAY TERMINAL ANSI standard conformance, DEC software compatibility, eight pages of memory, 80/132 columns, windowing, multiple computer connections...and a full range of practical ergonomic features. Capabilities which enable all terminal users to maximize their productivity and explore their creativity. Only from Human Designed Systems. Introducing the new concept AVT+ display terminal from Human Designed Systems. Simply the smartest interactive display terminal available today. And at a very competitive price. It starts with ANSI standard (X3.64-1979) conformance and DEC software compatibility, and incorporates superior human design features, advanced functionality and highest quality construction. A commitment to quality that is reflected in each of the individual components. The concept AVT+ keyboard is ergonomically designed for optimum operator comfort, incorporating a VTlOO-style numeric pad for DEC software compatibility. And it builds on those human design features with a range of capabilities that make the concept AVT+ an ideal choice for smart terminal users. The concept AVT+ offers up to eight pages of display memory that eliminates unnecessary 'Quantity one DEC and VT are trademarks o( Digital Equipment Corporation hardcopy printouts and provides a powerful tool for applications requiring multiple formats and storage of large volumes of text; non¬ volatile memory that enables users to permanently configure a terminal for their needs or applications; windowing that allows users to create individual displays within display memory; program¬ mable function keys which transmit data and/or execute terminal commands; up to three additional communications ports for connection to other peripherals and computers; flexible user networking and functionality for use in a wide range of different applications, including multiple computer connections; and much more. The new concept AVT+. 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Ltd.: (02) 241 3385; Belgium — BELCOMP: 091-31.52.22; Canada — CAH Systems: Toronto: (416) 362-1063; Denmark — ADCOM Data Aps: 1 - 19 44 66; Finland —Evumatic. 0 594 141; France — Walton; ( 1) 226.06.90; Japan — Ampere: 03 (365) 0825; Singapore — DTS Singapore: (65) 33-88-566; Switzerland — Mitek ag 01/461 22 52; United Kingdom — Shandell Systems Ltd.: 02407-2027; Venezuela — H. Blohm SA 2 541.21.22; West Germany — COMKO Computersystemges. mbH: 0221-48 30 51. DISTRIBUTORSHIP INQUIRIES INVITED. Circle No. 41 on Inquiry Card PC/IX FEATURE REVIEW: That brings up a question raised in Groff and Weinberg's “Understanding UNIX" about spec¬ ulations that Interactive Systems is working on a port to the IBM 4300 series. Lycklama: I’ve heard some rumors to that effect. That is not a thing I can comment on. [Editor's Note: Rumors at press time had it that ISC would release the 4300 package May 15.] REVIEW: Bearing in mind the soft¬ ware evolution we were just discus¬ sing, how do you see the lineup of players changing over time? Lycklama: I expect PC/IX will wid¬ en the market for people presently producing applications for PC-DOS. We’ll see some of these applications ported to the UNIX environment. I also expect there will be new com¬ panies springing up. REVIEW: Do you think this product will be hot enough to spawn a whole new wave of companies? Lycklama: The market is big enough that there is room for more com¬ panies. There are only so many products that any one company can effectively build, market and sup¬ port. There will be companies that have expertise in special niches that will want to market their products. If you look at the microcom¬ puter world revolving around the PC, you’ll find four main operating systems. You’ve got UCSD Pascal, which, of course, is written in Pascal; then you have Digital Research’s CP/M (and eventually Concurrent CP/M), UNIX and MS-DOS. Of those four, two — DRI’s CP/M and MS-DOS are written in assembler. Future versions of those are now being written in C. You can see the evolution. UNIX, of course, is already written in C, so that means that three of the four PC operating systems are C-based. REVIEW: There are plenty of UNIX micros out there that offer arguably superior hardware to the IBM PC for running UNIX. But, obviously, Interactive holds high hopes for the success of this product Is that hope premised on the strength of IBM marketing, IBM support and the IBM name or is there something intrinsic about IN UNIX™ NETWORKING TODAY, UNISOFT SETS THE STANDARD. With UniSoft's B-NET networking software, true resource sharing networks^are up and running. Microcomputers running UniPlus+ System V can talk with any others or to VAXes running 4.2 BSD UNIX. All it takes is UniPlus+ and Ethernet™ hardware. The state of the art in networking hardware and software led UniSoft to adopt a networking scheme developed at Berkeley for VAX/UNIX systems. This IP/TCP protocol scheme is compatible with ARPA standards which have been in wide use on the ARPAnet. B-NET is a high-performance implementation of the ARPA IP/TCP protocols. Unlike other networking schemes, B-NET is complete. Applications programs, systems calls, and protocols: nothing is left out. B-NET provides process to process communications, remote file transfer, virtual terminal facilities and much more. UniSoft has optimized the basic UNIX OS for the 68000 family of microprocessors and named it UniPlus+. Now B-NET is a standard option of the UniPlus+ System V ports. This network software allows any system running UniPlus+ to communicate with other systems running the ARPA IP/TCP protocols. Incidentally, UniPlus+ has been ported to over 60 different computer systems. If you’re building or selling a 68000-based UNIX system and want to expand your network, call UniSoft Systems, the UNIX networking experts. See us at Booth #3029, USENIX Association Conference, Salt Lake City June 12-14 739 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94710 • (415) 644-1230 TWX II 910 336-2145 • UUCP ucbvaxlunisoftlunisoft VAX is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. 88 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 42 on Inquiry Card D « High Performance UNIX™ Program for the IBM Series/1. SERIX provides lower software costs plus these outstanding advantages: A long term avenue for growth • AT&T licensed UNIX Program — The Coming Standard • Software portability • Access to a large, growing software base • Real-time extensions Increased programmer productivity • Programmer’s workbench • Large set of utilities • Hierarchical file structure • Synchronous, asynchronous and delayed processes Delivers more power from the Series/1 • Optimizing C compiler uses native code features • All code reentrant • Swapping — multiple concurrent users • Addresses the full megabyte of memory on the 4956 processor • Disk interleaving capability UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories SERIX was developed by COSI exclusively for CMI. Included subsystems: • Networking • Electronic Mail • Word Processing • Resource Accounting Optional systems: • COBOL and other languages • EDX-to-SERIX conversion package • Database • Spreadsheet • SNA Communication • The vi visual editor CMI Corporation is an IBM Master VAR. Leasing and other financial arrangements available. Contact CMI for more information: CMI @ A Torchmark Company 2600 Telegraph Rd., P.O. Box 2026 Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48303-2026 TWX/TELEX: 810-232-1667 CMI CORP. TRMI (313) 456-0000 Circle No. 290 on Inquiry Card PC/IX FEATURE UNIX PROFESSIONALS Our clients, nationally based, are seeking software specialists, systems engineers, and program¬ mer analysts for interesting projects both corporate and consulting. Excellent benefits, salaries range up to $70,000. We are an executive search firm, specialists in the growing com¬ puter industry and marketing development to service UNIX professionals. PLEASE CALL OR SUBMIT A RESUME IN CONFIDENCE TO: N.M. PRO DATA LTD. 172 MADISON AVENUE, SUITE 304 NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016 212-679-7966 ATTN: MARLENE SAFERSTEIN Circle No. 272 on Inquiry Card Q’NIAL A Portable Tool For UNIX Users * Interactive * Elegant and Powerful * For Programmers and Designers * Modelling, Prototyping, Al research * Engineering Work Station * Fifth Generation Version Price U.S. Dollars IBM PC (MS DOS) 395 IBM PC (Sritek XENIX) 995 Sun, Cadmus 1,995 Pyramid 4,995 VAX (UNIX/ULTRIX/VMS 1,495-7,995 See us at Booth 611 at Usenix or write: Nial Systems Limited 20 Hatter Street, Kingston, Ontario Canada K7M 2L5 (613) 549-1432 Q’Nial is the registered trademark of Queen’s University at Kingston. Circle No. 273 on Inquiry Card PC/IX that makes it attractive? Lycklama: I think if you look at some of the conventional benchmark comparisons with other equivalent systems, you’ll find we show very well. REVIEW: “Equivalent systems" being other systems that work on the PC? Lycklama: Right. We are rather proud of the way PC/IX performs. We have put a lot of effort into optimizing both the C compiler and the performance of the system itself — particularly in the areas of file handling and loading executable images off disk. We keep program images in contiguous files so that you can load the program with one seek to the disk. That has a tremen¬ dous impact on the performance of the system. When you benchmark that against some other systems, it really shows. Even the user level benchmarks come out very well. REVIEW: Of course , we're still talking about systems within the PC world. If we move outside that into 68000-based systems in particular , I suspect the comparisons are not so favorable. What is it about PC/IX that is going to lead a small business to buy a PC-XT instead of another piece of more powerful hardware? Lycklama: IBM has the name behind it and the applications that will soon be available. REVIEW: What about power per dollar? How does the PC/IX stack up there? Lycklama: A PC-XT loaded with PC/ IX costs much less than a 68000- based system, but if you compare it with other 8088 machines, the IBM PC tends to be somewhat more cost¬ ly than PC clones. But I think you get what you pay for. You have to consider the whole picture — the package of applications available and the support. The documentation is also very important and we put a lot of effort into our documentation for PC/IX. We started with IS/3 manuals that were specific to the DEC world of the VAX and the PCP-11 and did a significant amount of work to edit out references to DEC devices and other DECisms. REVIEW: How long was PC/IX in the works? Lycklama: Well, it’s been a while. I don’t want to give you an exact timeframe, but the time that elapsed between the first kernel and the first customer was a fairly lengthy period — about six to eight months, I would say. That’s because of the quality assurance that’s gone into it. Beta testing took about eight weeks in itself and then when all the results came back, the bug fixes had to be folded in, documentation had to be reviewed and all those changes had to be folded in. There was quite a bit of detail to tend to. REVIEW: The fact Interactive agreed to do the port for the IBM PC obviously indicates you believe the major account market is ripe for UNIX. What leads you to that conclusion ? Lycklama: I think you only have to read the UNIX press to validate that. There have been a few major announcements recently. AT&T is now in the UNIX market. That is the ultimate: first, IBM blesses the market and then AT&T blesses the market. REVIEW: By your own conjecture , though , what is it that UNIX offers that major accounts don't presently have? Lycklama: Flexibility in buying hardware. They can now choose dif¬ ferent hardware; they are not tied into one main factory because of the portability of UNIX. That’s flexi¬ bility. If Vendor A has cheaper hard¬ ware than Vendor B and they both have the same software, obviously a company would opt for the cheaper hardware — provided that vendor has a good reputation for support. 90 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Come meet MISTRESS at Comdex (Booth S9424-26) and Uniforam (Booth 703) MISTRESS is the fully rela¬ tional database management system (RDBMS) for UNIX? It features the Structured Query Language (SQL*) for the end user as well as stand¬ ard programming interfaces to the C language for the DP professional. Advanced con¬ cepts include variable-length character fields, dynamic stor¬ age allocation, and B+ Tree indexing. MISTRESS has been designed exclusively for the UNIX environment and is totally written in C. MISTRESS/32 is the advanced relational database management system for extended addressing UNIX products. MISTRESS/32 features enhanced capabilities for security, recovery and data integrity, as well as a fully integrated report writer and screen interface. MISTRESS/32 is the recom¬ mended system for more demanding applications. *UNIX is a trademark ol Bell Labs. IBM and SOL are trademarks of International Business Machines. RHODNIUS Incorporated 10 St. Mary Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 1P9 (416) 922-1743 Telex: 06-986766 TOR. Circle No. 44 on Inquiry Card PC/IX REVIEW Continued from Page 24 software tools that assist in producing compilers are also provided with PC/IX. The Bourne shell, which in many respects functions as a program¬ ming language, is also fully supported. Two versions of the shell are currently available under PC/IX, sh (the standard programming shell) and rsh (a restricted version of the shell). The standard shell provides full access to all of the system commands the user’s identification allows. The rsh shell, as its name implies, provides limited access to a small pre-defined set of commands. IBM views rsh as a device for restricting certain users to limited system access. As in other imple¬ mentations, both sh and rsh read commands from standard input. TERMINAL, GRAPHICS AND KERNEL INTERFACES The PC/IX kernel makes the IBM monitor and keyboard emulate the ANSI X3.64 terminal standard. Interfaces with terminals benefit from the inclusion of the Berkeley curses library and a /etc/termcap file description. The curses library is a subset of vi’s cursor manipulation routines that provides programmers with full screen cursor control. This is particularly useful for creating screen-oriented applications. Both IBM’s monochrome and color monitors are supported in text mode only. PC/IX’s lack of a graphics routine can be handled by software developers via a device driver. Although this may be seen as a deficiency, it also presents an opportunity for enterprising soft¬ ware developers to create standard graphics packages (such as the SIGGRAPH Core package) for the PC/IX. IBM is likely to be a willing buyer of such products. Read on for more details. IBM is making it easy for third party software and hardware developers to interface PC/IX with non-PC products. A copy of the kernel is provided in unlinked form and an excellent manual on how to write device drivers is included with every PC/IX system. To interface new hardware with the PC/IX, pro¬ grammers need only write several subroutines and link them into the kernel. ACCESS TO PC-DOS Unlike some other UNIX look- alikes available for use on IBM’s Personal Computer, the PC/IX kernel does not interface directly with PC-DOS or even emulate its system calls. PC-DOS is the most popular operating system on the PC and thus complete emulation would be very useful. Users can, however, transfer files to and from PC-DOS floppies through a set of four BIZPAK by CSSI Corp. Full Featured Business Software For UNIX™ Based Systems Accounts Payable Accounts Receivable General Ledger Inventory ' Order Processing ' Sales Analysis ’ Payroll Ideal for OEM's Source Licenses Available Now!! Multi-Company Multi-User Multi-Terminal Multi-Warehouse R/M COBOL™ Fully Integrated Scrolling CSSI Corp. 10700 Lyndale Avenue South Bloomington. MN 55420 / 612-881-4501 BlZPAK is a trademark of CSSI Corp R M COBOL is a trademark of Ryan McFarland Corp UNIX IS a trademark of Ben Labs circle No. 240 on Inquiry Card 92 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 utilities provided with PC/IX. These utilities include: dosread - copy files from PC-DOS floppies onto PC/IX’s hard disk doswrite - copy files from PC/IX’s hard disk onto PC-DOS floppies dosdir - perform a DOS directory command on a PC-DOS floppy dosdel - delete a file from DOS Normally UNIX files use just a Another nice feature of PC/IX not common to many other UNIX systems is its record locking scheme. newline character to separate lines in a text file, while PC-DOS files (and most other systems) use a carriage character followed by a newline character. The dosread and doswrite commands do the appropriate trans¬ lation if the correct flags are given. FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF PC/IX IBM has a long standing commitment to upward compatibil¬ ity of software developed between successive generations of systems. Successors to the IBM PC running Intel’s 8088 microprocessor will likely be running Intel’s 186 and 286 microprocessors. PC/IX is good on the 8088 and will be even better on a 286 processor. One does not have to be a fortune teller to know that if PC/IX is successful on the PC-XT and a large application software base is developed for it, a future IBM 286 product will also definitely have PC/IX on it. IBM is going to enhance and market the PC/IX product aggres¬ sively. The first marketing outlet for Circle No. 45 on Inquiry Card—► Presenting the most important part of Uniq’s DEC-UNIX package. TM Brains. Knowledge. Experience. Powerful hardware and the most advanced operating system can’t replace them. At Uniq Digital Technologies, we decided you should have them all. The power of the Digital’s VAX" superminis. The sophistication of the UNIX " operating system. Plus, the Uniq staff of design experts to work with you and bring it all together. Behind every Uniq DEC-UNIX package is a complete support plan. Support that includes the broadest variety of UNIX flavors offered by any Vendor—including the latest versions from AT&T and Berkeley. Additional capabilities include custom driver development, kernel modification and training classes in basic UNIX user skills, system administration and advanced C language programming. We’ve established a Customer Technical Assistance Center staffed with experienced software engineers to provide solutions to those critical calls. And our on-line diagnostics system is designed to find the problems before the solutions get expensive. Uniq also offers software tools, including UNIFY' relational data base, Unicalq electronic spreadsheet, compilers and other software development and office automation products. Today you can’t only depend on the computer environment to solve your company’s problems. You need to look beyond them to the most important part of the package. Support. Uniq support. For more information on how Uniq can make it all work for you, call or write for our free descriptive brochure. UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories VAX is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation UNIFY is a trademark of Unify Corporation Copyright 1984, Uniq Digital Technologies uniq) DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES 1 * 28 South Water Street. Batavia, IL 60510 • (312) 879-1008 We make it work. AUTHORIZED COMPUTER DISTRIBUTOR See UNIQ at NCC Booth B4010 and 4012. PC/IX FEATURE PC/IX will be IBM’s chain of prod¬ uct centers. If PC/IX’s popularity grows, it might well be marketed through independent retail stores as well. Presently IBM wants to establish PC/IX’s software base, especially in the development environment. IBM, in fact, is planning to acquire third party software to run on PC/IX. Currently it is most interested in languages and appli¬ cation software. Any parties wishing to offer a package to IBM for distribution can contact: Linda Paige PC/IX Acquisitions IBM 220 Las Colinas Boulevard Irving, Texas 75062 CONCLUSIONS Even without off-the-shelf software, we were very pleased with the PC/IX — limitations and all. The 64K address space limitation is cramping, but programmers can overcome this problem by dividing programs into several cooperating processes. Although limited disk space is also a shortcoming, larger IBM PC compatible disk drives already exist that can be interfaced with PC/IX. The only major software limita¬ tion we found is the lack of various Berkeley UNIX utilities. Program¬ mers will have to install these on their own. The most significant benefit of this product is that it comes with the support of IBM and thus is likely to dominate the PC UNIX market. This, of course, may have unfortu¬ nate consequences for other perfectly good UNIX PC systems not sold under the IBM logo. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Theodore C., Goldstein is a Santa Cruz, California, consultant specializing in compiler, kernel and application software. Among the firms he has worked for are Sorcim , Whitesmiths , Intel , Tolerant Systems, Yates Ventures and VisiCorp. Mr. Goldstein is currently optimizing a C compiler for the 8086 - 186 - 286 . Jessica A. Bernhardt is a free¬ lance writer and marketing consultant with a background in advertising and theatre. She is currently working to raise funds for a UC Santa Cruz humanities project. /USR/TROFF TM ROUND TRIP NEW YORK/ PORTLAND $36 « From the Big Apple to UNIX™ Paradise and back. 5 minutes out, 48-hour return. TYPESETTING at 15 V 2 feet-per-minute—wider than this entire UNIX™ Review page (about IV 2 " wider). Telecommunication of documents, including mathematical formulae, gets TYPE SET and RETURNED on first class ACCUCOM-ODATIONS. No waiting at the TYPESETTING counter, and no reservations required. We also "book" passage for magnetic tape and raw text. Call for details—1-800-ACCUCOM (222-8266) UNIX is a registered trademark of BELL LABORATORIES (503) 684-2850 /4CCUCON\ 9730 SW Cascade Blvd. / Suite 200 / Tigard, Oregon 97223 94 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 Circle No. 46 on Inquiry Card Circle No. 47 on Inquiry Card IBM-PC 68000 PDP-11 VAX UNIX MS-DOS VMS 3COM INTERLAN CMC XNS Ethernet Software We've kept the promise of Ethernet. With Fusion network software, you can now mix a variety of processors, operating systems, and local area net¬ work vendors' hardware. All on the same Ethernet cable. File transfer, remote program execution, remote login and a wealth of network utilities —with exceptional performance and compact code size. FUSION is a trademark of Network Research Corporation Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Ethernet is a trademark of Xerox Corporation VAX, PDP-11 and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation If you are looking for THE Ethernet software solution,contact: Kyle Todd Network Research Corporation 1101 Colorado Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90401 213-394-7200 Network Research Corporation RECENT RELEASES POWER DIRECTORS FROM COMPUTER ACCESSORIES CORPORATION Computer Accessories Corpora¬ tion now answers power line prob¬ lems with a series of desktop units that solve everything from glitching to switching to those tangles of cords at the outlet. The company encloses a well-organized coterie of expansion outlets, control switches and line conditioning circuitry for personal computer, video and audio systems within sleek, low-profile cabinets. Power Director power control and protection centers are available in three models. Stand¬ alone Model P22 (sized to stack with disk drives, modems or small video monitors) offers four outlets and is available for $99, Monitor base model P2 (sized to fit under a CRT or video monitor) offers five outlets and is available for $139. Model P12 (sized to fit atop an IBM PC system unit) offers six outlets, a digital clock and a disk storage bin and is avail¬ able for $199. Power Directors exceed the 1983 IEEE-587 Guide for Surge Voltages in Low Voltage Power Cir¬ cuits. Their fast response to tran¬ sients comes via TransZorb semi¬ conductor devices; TransZorbs respond to Voltage Spikes in less than a nanosecond (one billionth of a second). For additional information, contact Computer Accessories Corporation, 7696 Formula Place, San Diego, CA 92121, 619/695-3773. Circle No. 274 on Inquiry Card IBM MAKES EXPERIMENTAL MILLION-BIT MEMORY CHIP An experimental memory chip capable of storing more than a million bits of information has been fabricated by IBM. The experimental chip, called dynamic random access memory (DRAM), was fabricated on the same manufacturing line the company has used since 1978 for mass production of other high- density memory chips, including those that store 64,000 and 72,000 bits of data. Use of these existing manufac¬ turing facilities has both demon¬ strated the chip’s manufacturability and accelerated its development for potential use in IBM products. The megabit chip, developed at IBM’s laboratory in Essex Junction, Vermont, was made using an extension of IBM’s Silicon and Aluminin Metal Oxide Semiconduc¬ tor (SAMOS) processing technology, which the company has been using since 1978, when it became the first to begin mass production of 64K chips. The chip operates with a single¬ voltage, 5-volt power supply. The one-million-plus memory cells and their support circuitry occupy an 80.85-square millimeter area of silicon. The chip dimensions are 10.5 mm by 7.7 mm (about 3/8” by 5/16”). The time needed to read data out of the chip is 150 nanoseconds. A paperback novel of about 250 pages could be stored in just six of these chips. A number of improvements in photolithography and processing technology contributed to the development of the chip. Enhancements to conventional optical lithography and photoresist formulation made it possible to 96 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 How to capture your share of a new billion dollar market. (or take a larger share of your present one) Industry experts predict “...a phenomenal compound annual growth rate of 71 percent for CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) programs. A $70 million market in 1982, the market will just graze the billion dollar mark by 1987...during this period, sales of ‘courseware’ will increase from 2.3 million units to an astounding 34 million units. - (reprinted from PC Magazine, copyright 1983, Ziff-Davis Publishing) Introducing CAST (Computer Assisted Self-Training) A new, powerful and comprehensive authoring and information management tool positioned for this exploding market. Designed for integration with UNIX/UNIX work-alikes and UNIX applications, CAST launches CAI/CBT into the modern multi-user, multi¬ tasking and multi-processor networked environment. CAST shuns archaic “automated page turning,” bringing a highly interactive environment to computer based education and training. Now, with CAST authors are limited only by their imaginations. UNIX* standard From the desk top IBM PC to the largest mainframe, CAST is as universal as UNIX. Wherever UNIX can be ported CAST can be ported. Experts point to UNIX as the standard for the future. CAST, as a UNIX standard with powerful capabilities and unique features, offers unlimited market potential. CAST markets CAST is for environments where feedback, scorekeeping, recordkeeping, class status ranking, progress tracking, and per¬ formance validation are necessary for qualification or certification. • CAST is for computer manufacturers who wish to penetrate the educational marketplace and/or need cost-effective internal sales or technical training programs. • CAST is for OEM’s and systems houses who need to train both end-users and internal staff on the operation and maintenance of their products. • CAST is for software publishers who wish an economical on-line vehicle for training customers in productive use of their products. • CAST is for industrial and commercial training, continuing education and similar centers which require goal directed education. CAST A matter of course. MC 2 /Measurement Concept Corp. 1721 Black River Blvd., Rome, NY 13440 (315) 337-1000 CAST means sales • As a stand alone product As a powerful new CAI/CBT tool CAST easily stands on its own as a product. Sell CAST to your present customers. Or CAST can complement your current product lines and open new market opportunities. • As part of a package CAST provides an added incentive to your customers to buy your hardware or software product. Both as an integrated tool to train them on the operation of it, and as a valuable asset for subsequent continued training. • Both CAST means profits Whether sold as a stand alone product or as part of a package CAST delivers profits. The power and capabilities of CAST provide broad base market appeal. That means demand. CAST meets that demand. Sold as a stand alone product or with a package CAST will generate sales for you. CAST saves money Why? Because CAST means better training and better training saves money. In addition, CAST reduces or eliminates costs associated with traditional training programs and positively assures employee competency levels. CAST means happy users CAST means happy employees and happy employers. CAST is cost-effective because its users are well-taught without the unnecessary wading through manuals. As a result they work more efficiently, effectively, productively and thus more profitably. If you are interested in aggressively applying CAI/CBT technology, you will find our OEM volume discounts equally aggressive. I”■fa:TflC 2 /MEASUREMENT""cONCEPT CORP. 1721 Black River Blvd. Rome, NY 13440 I’d like more information Name__ Title j Company_ I Phone__Interest Area- | Address_- I City._State-Zip *UNIX is a registered trademark of Bell Laboratories. CAST is a trademark of Measurement Concept Corp. Circle No. 48 on Inquiry Card RECENT RELEASES fabricate circuit elements on the chip as narrow as one micrometer - about 1/50 the width of a human hair. Extending the capability of photolithography is of fundamental importance since, in general, halving the width of the lines of a circuit pattern made it possible to fabricate the same pattern in only one-fourth the area. The high storage density (13,025 bits per square millimeter) of the 3001 Latham Drive Madison, Wl 53713 Telex 469532 800/356-9602 In Wisconsin 608/271.8700 I. Heurikon presents Minibox - a multiuser UNIX workstation based on its powerful HK68™ single board microcomputer and Uniplus+™ UNIX System III or System V operating system with Berkeley enhance¬ ments. Designed with the OEM in mind, one size fits all Both compact and flexible, the Minibox includes within its 10.5V x 13.9"h x 20.51 frame a 200 or 400 watt power supply, six slot Multibus™card cage, (4-5 available for user use!), single double density floppy disk drive, streamer tape drive, and 31 or 65 Mbyte Winchester drive (expandable to 280 Mbytes). All this within the same cabinet! System status LEDS on the front panel in¬ form the user of CPU and disk drive activity. With Uniplus + ™, Minibox becomes a flexible and affordable tool for program development, text preparation, and general office tasks. Included is a full "C" com¬ piler, associated assembler and linker/loader. Optional languages are: Macro assembler, ISO Pascal compiler, FORTRAN-77 compiler, RM-COBOL™,’ SVS BASIC (DEC BASIC compatible inter¬ preter), SMC BASIC (Basic-Four BB3 com¬ patible interpreter), and Ada™. Other utilities include UltraCalc™ multiuser spread sheet, Unify™ DBM, Ethernet™, and floating point processor. Alternate operating systems available are PolyForth , Regulus™, CP/M 68K™, and others. ‘UNIX is a trademark of Belt Laboratories. Unify is a trademark of Unify Corp. UltraCalc is a trademark of Olympus Software. Ethernet is a trademark of Xerox Corp. Uniplus + is a trademark of UniSoft Corp. PolyForth is a trademark of Forth. Inc. Regulus is a trademark of Alcyon Corp. CP/M-68K is a trademark of Digital Research. Ada is a registered trademark of the U.$. government, Ada Joint Pro¬ gram Office. RM-COBOL is a trademark of Ryan- McFarland Corp. HK68 is a trademark of Heuri¬ kon Corp. Multibus is a trademark of Intel Corp. Circle No. 276 on Inquiry Card 98 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 new chip was also derived in part from the use of advanced processing technology. A new processing step that electronically insulates adjacent storage nodes from one another allows them to be placed less than one micrometer apart without creating unwanted electrical effects that would tend to impair chip performance. Another processing develop¬ ment that directly contributed to the density of the one-megabyte chip was the use of the extremely thin nodes. This layer is only 15 nanometers thick, or about 50-60 atoms high. Reducing the thickness of this layer makes it possible to increase the amount of electrical charge that can be stored without increasing the area of the node, which takes up a sizable fraction of the memory cell itself. In this way, a strong and easily sensed signal can be obtained from the cell without the need to enlarge its area. The chip is packaged on a 22-pin ceramic substrate 12 millimeters square (about one-half inch on a side) using IBM’s flip-chip bounding technology. This makes possible a packaging density of four megabits per square inch. For more information, contact IBM at its General Technology Division, Essex Junction, VT 05452 802/769-2221.) Circle No. 275 on Inquiry Card See Software. Dick is a programmer. Dick is bored. Harried. Dick strug¬ gles with trace chores. Debugging routines. Nonexistent documentation. Hidden bugs. So Dick is four months behind schedule. And customers are upset when bugs slip through. They yell and make Dick upset. They make Dick’s boss upset. Nobody is very happy. See Software I SI J T I Jane is a happy program- VVU,A * mer. She uses ANIMATOR™ It’s a VISUAL PROGRAMMING 1 " aid for MICRO FOCUS 1 " LEVEL II COBOL.” It runs on a micro. It makes child’s play of test and debugging tasks. With ANIMATOR Jane sees a picture of the program explaining itself. In real time. In COBOL source code. ANIMATOR tracks the program’s exact execution path. Including sub¬ routine branches. Jane can have the program run fast. Or slow. Or stop. With one key. This makes it easy to spot problems. Insert fixes. Set break¬ points. Instantly. Jane’s programs are best sellers. They’re delivered on time. With no hidden bugs. Jane’s boss likes this about Jane. Because he doesn’t like customers to yell at him. Run, Software, I \1 1 T| This software vendor just “®“ -*-• wen t public. Because he doubled productivity. Eliminated bugs. Cut costs. Produced terrific applications. Beat the competition to market. And customers don’t yell at him anymore. All thanks to ANIMATOR. See ANIMATOR now. Let ANIMATOR help you do better work. And speed your applications to market. Write for more information. Or call (415) 856-4161. Right now. MICRO FOCUS 2465 E. Bayshore Rd., Suite 400, Palo Alto, CA 94303 TARGET 3 c COMPILERS VAX, PRIME 68000 16000 8086/88 PASCAL COMPILERS VAX PDP-11, LSI-11 PRIME 68000 16000 8086/88 FORTRAN COMPILERS VAX PDP-11, LSI-11 68000 16000 8086/88 (4) ASSEMBLERS VAX, PDP-11, LSI-11, PRIME, IBM/PC, IBM 370 68000, 16000, 8086/88, Z8000, 680X, 808X, Z80 SIMULATORS VAX, PDP-11 LSI-11, PRIME, IBM/PC, IBM 370 68000, 8086/88 808X, Z80 (1) WE DISTRIBUTE PRODUCTS FOR: GREEN HILLS SOFTWARE, VIRTUAL SYSTEMS, COMPLETE SOFTWARE, PACER SOFTWARE; SOFTWARE MANUFACTURERS (2) HOST OPERATING SYSTEMS INCLUDE: VMS, RSX, RT-11, PRIMOS, UNIX V7, III, V, BSD 4.1, 4.2, UNOS, IDRIS, XENIX, MS/DOS, VM/CMS, CPM 68K (3) OTHER TARGETS ARE: M6801-6803, 6805, 6809, 8080, 85, 28, 35, 48, 51; Z-80 (4) ALL ASSEMBLERS INCLUDE LINKER, LIBRARIAN AND CROSS-REFERENCE FACILITY (5) AVAILABLE ON: CALLAN, OMNIBYTE, CHARLES RIVER DATA, PLEXUS, SAGE, FORTUNE, WICAT . . to name a few. ■/UNIX NATIVE TOOLS □rsvs 60 ABERDEEN AVENUE CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 (617) 491-4180 NATIVE ASSEMBLERS FOR 68000s < 4 5 > SYMBOLIC C SOURCE CODE DEBUGGER C-TIME PERFORMANCE UTILITY UP/DOWN LINE LOAD UTILITIES COMMUNICATION UTILITIES BASIC-TO-C TRANSLATOR C-BASED FLOATING POINT MATH PACKAGE ... AND MORE TRADEMARKS UNIX IS A TRADEMARK OF BELL LABORATORIES. XENIX AND MS/DOS ARE MICROSOFT CORPS, IBM/PC. VM/CMS. AND IBM 370 ARE INTX BUSINESS MACHINES. VAX. POP-11. LSI-11. VMS. RSX. AND RT-11 ARE TRADEMARKS OF DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP. CPM 88K IS DIGITAL RESEARCH’S; PRIMOS IS PRIME S. UNOS IS CHARLES RIVER DATA’S. IDRIS IS WHITESMITHS LTD Circle No. 50 on Inquiry Card RECENT RELEASES FOURTH GENERATION APPLICATION PORTED TO AT&T 3B LINE Software Express announced that its entire Fourth Generation environment is running and available on the AT&T 3B line of computers. The Fourth Generation environment includes APPGEN, a UNIX application generator and 10 application packages developed under APPGEN. THE INDEPENDENT UNIX* BOOKSTORE OVER 60 UNIX AND C ITEMS IN STOCK INCLUDING ■ UNIX BOOKS The UNIX System by Stephen R. Bourne (Addison-Wesley) Operating System Design: The XINU Approach by Douglas Comer (Prentice-Hall) The UNIX Programming Environment by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike (Prentice-Hall) A Practical Guide to the UNIX System by Mark G. Sobell (Benjamin/Cummings) ■ C BOOKS The C Puzzle Book by Alan R. Feuer (Prentice-Hall) The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (Prentice-Hall) Learning to Program in C by Thomas Plum (Plum-Hall) C Programming Guide by Jack Purdum (Que Corp.) ■ C and vi REFERENCE CARDS ■ PERIODICALS UNIQUE UNIX Review World UNIX & C ■ vi POSTER, UNIX SHELL POSTER ■ T-SHIRTS “UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories” “-rwxrwxrwx” “grep for it” “awk: bailing out near line 1” ■ NEW ITEM UNIX Coffee Mug “UNIX” in blue on outside “is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories” inside lip imprint Porcelain mug, kiln-fired permanent color Call or write for a complete catalog Mail and phone orders only. We ship anywhere in the U.S. Contact us for shipping elsewhere. THE International Technical Seminars 520 Waller Street San Francisco, CA 94117 * UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories (415) 621-1593 Circle No. 284 on Inquiry Card Since the APPGEN environ¬ ment utilizes a highly portable parametric methodology, it operates on all UNIX versions and is compat¬ ible across all 3B lines running under UNIX System V. Since the 3B line can be fully configured to handle over 100 terminals, large systems houses that are migrating to UNIX have a technical and financial need to evolve their “coded” applications over to a parametric Fourth Genera¬ tion environment to unburden them from the sheer weight of their pro¬ gramming overhead. APPGEN is a Fourth Genera¬ tion, non-procedural applications generator which allows developers to create new applications in 10 percent of the time typically consumed by older coded methods. The develop¬ ment process is accomplished through the English language, question/answer prompts in the development environment which in turn build parameter definition data files which drive the reentrant “C” level run-time modules. APPGEN is a complete applica¬ tion development environment in¬ cluding not only all the development facilities required for producing complex, transaction-driven applica¬ tions, but also induces a relational DBMS utilizing variable length records, field and multivalued attributes. The product pricing is based on the number of terminals supported by each 3B model. APPGEN De¬ velopment begins at $6000, and the applications begin at $600 each. They include General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receiv¬ able, Payroll, Inventory/Order Entry, Fixed Assets, Job Cost, Professional Time Reporting and Account's Client Write-Up. For more information, contact: Steve Thomas, Director, Marketing Communications, 713/974-2298, 800/231-0062. Circle No. 285 on Inquiry Card 104 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 CALENDAR UNIX REVIEW preview calendar of events JUNE May 30-June 1 CAPE Seminar, Los Angeles, CA: The UNIX System. Contact: The Center for Advanced Professional Education, 1820 East Garry Street, Suite 110, Santa Ana, CA 92705; 714/261-0240. June 2-3 International Technical Seminars, Sunnyvale, CA: File System Maintenance Tools (Bob Nystrom); System Administration Tools (Jim Joyce); File System Repair (Bob Toxen); UNIX Tuning and System Performance (Jeff Schriebman). Contact: International Technical Seminars, 520 Waller Street, San Francisco, CA 94117; 415/621-6415. June 4-8 Bunker Ramo Seminars, Trumbull, CT: Introduction to UNIX. Contact: Bunker Ramo Information Systems, Director of Training Services Group, 35 Nutmeg Drive, Trumbull, CT 06609; 203/386-2600. June 9-10 International Technical Seminars, Los Angeles, CA: Introduction to the Bourne Shell (Sharon Boucher); Introduction to the C Shell (Jim Joyce); User Friendly awk (Sharon Boucher); Fast Prototyping with UNIX (Gene Dronek). Contact; ITS (see June 2-3). June 11-15 Bunker Ramo Seminars, Trumbull, CT: Programming in C. Contact: Bunker Ramo Information Systems (see June 4-8). June 11-15 Plum Hall Training, Concord, MA: UNIX Workshop. Contact: Plum Hall, 1 Spruce Street, Cardiff, NJ 08232; 609/927-3770. June 12-15 USENIX Summer Conference, Salt Lake City, UT. Contact: USENIX Conference Office, PO Box 385, Sunset Beach, CA 90742; 213/592-3243. June 13-15 Digital Seminar Program, Boston, MA: UNIX Operating System Overview. Contact: Digital Educational Services, 12 Crosby Drive, Bedford, MA 01730; 617/276-4949. June 18-22 Bunker Ramo Seminars, Trumbull, CT: Introduction to UNIX; Advanced C Methods. Contact: Bunker Ramo Information Systems (see June 4-8). June 18-22 Plum Hall Training, Concord, MA: C Programming Workshop. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). CCA EMACS.THE MOST POWERFUL SCREEN EDITOR FOR UNIX AND VAX/VMS. No other text editor gives you so much power, speed, and functionality as CCA EMACS™ Or makes editing so easy. Close to 400 built-in commands let you do any task with only a few keystrokes. Even things that are impossible on other editors. And with our full extension language, Elisp™ you can custom¬ ize CCA EMACS to meet your program requirements. Multiple windows is another CCA EMACS plus. So you can manage concurrent processes and move information from one window to another. And Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories VAX and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation CCA EMACS and Elisp are trademarks of CCA Uniworks, Inc. CCA EMACS is sup¬ ported by a full online documentation package that includes a novice tutorial. So any user can quickly utilize all the power of CCA EMACS. CCA EMACS runs on Berkeley Unix™ (4.1 BSD and 4.2BSD), Bell Unix (System HI and System V), and VAX/VMS™ and requires 500 K of address space. Prices for a full source license range from $350 to $2400. For more information, or to find out how to get a trial copy, call Gwendolyn Whittaker at (617) 492-8860. CCA Uniworks, Inc. “ A Crowntek Company Four Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 Circle No. 51 on Inquiry Card June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 105 CALENDAR June 20-22 Digital Seminar Program, Boston, MA: The C Programming Language. Contact: Digital Educational Services (see June 13-15). June 23-24 International Technical Seminars, Sunnyvale, CA: UNIX’s Block I/O System (Bob Nystrom); UNIX Block Device Drivers (Bob Nystrom); UNIX Networking (Greg Chesson); Installing and Using uucp (Bob Toxen). Contact: ITS (see June 2-3). June 25-29 Bunker Ramo Seminars, Trumbull, CT: Advanced UNIX Methods. Contact: Bunker Ramo Information Systems (see June 4-8). June 25-29 Plum Hall Training, Concord, MA: Advanced C Topics. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). June 26 Local Area Networks, Palo Alto, CA: Low Cost Personal UNIX’s. Expert panel discussion on UNIX topics. Contact: Uni-Ops (UNIX users membership group), John Bass, 408/996-0557, or Paul Fronberg, 408/988-1755. June 30-July 1 International Technical Seminars, Los Angeles, CA: UNIX System Shell Scripts (Steve Bourne); Writing termcap Entries (Doug Merritt); Winning Strategies for Management (John Mashey); 1001 Ways to Sell UNIX (Jim Joyce). Contact: ITS (see June 2-3). JULY July 9-13 Plum Hall Training, New York, NY: UNIX LOTUS 1-2-3* MOVE OVER QUALITY SOFTWARE ANNOUNCES Q-CALC (version 3.0) • spreadsheet • data management • forms processing • graphics PLUS it runs on UNIX For more information write/call Quality Software Products 348 S. Clark Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90211 213-659-1590 *Lotus 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Corp. Circle No. 52 on Inquiry Card Workshop. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). July 14-15 International Technical Seminars, Los Angeles, CA: UNIX’s Block I/O System (Bob Nystrom); UNIX Block Device Drivers (Bob Nystrom); UNIX Networking (Greg Chesson); Installing and Using uucp (Bob Toxen). Contact: ITS (see June 2-3). July 16-20 Plum Hall Training, New York, NY: C Pro¬ gramming Workshop. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). July 18-20 Digital Seminar Program, Washington, DC: UNIX Operating System Overview. Contact: Digital Educational Services (see June 13-15). July 21-22 International Technical Seminars, Sunnyvale, CA: UNIX System Shell Scripts (Steve Bourne); Writing termcap Entries (Doug Merritt); Winning Strategies for Management (John Mashey); 1001 Ways to Sell UNIX (Jim Joyce). Contact: ITS (see June 2-3). July 23-27 Plum Hall Training, New York, NY: Advanced C Topics. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). July 25-27 Digital Seminar Program, Washington, DC: The C Contact: Digital Educational Services (see June 13-15). July 31 Uni-Ops Monthly Meeting, Palo Alto, CA: UNIX Kernel Overview. Contact: Uni-Ops (see June 26). AUGUST August 8-10 Digital Seminar Program, Seattle, WA: UNIX Operating System Overview. Contact: Digital Educational Services (see June 13-15). August 15-17 Digital Seminar Program, Seattle, WA: The C Programming Language. Contact: Digital Educational Services (see June 13-15). August 20-24 Plum Hall Training, Raleigh, NC: Advanced C Topics. Contact: Plum Hall (see June 11-15). August 28 Uni-Ops Monthly Meeting, Palo Alto, CA: UNIX and IBM PC's. Contact: Uni-Ops (see June 26). SEPTEMBER September 11-14 UNIX Systems Expo/84, Los Angeles, CA: Contact: Computer Faire, Inc., 611 Veterans Boulevard, Redwood City, CA 94063; 415/364-4294, or CFI in Newton, MA, 617/965-8350. OCTOBER October 16-18 UNIX/EXPO, The UNIX Operating System Exposition, New York, NY. Contact: National Expositions Co., Inc., 14 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018; 212/391-9111. Dear Readers; If you or your company are planning events of interest to the UNIX community, please send announcements to: UNIX Review Calendar 520 Waller Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 Please include sponsor, date and location of event, address of contact and relevant background information. g 106 UNIX REVIEW June 1984 AT&T Coming up in *"»y • A hands on review of AT&T's 3B2 • Glances into the AT&T crystal ball • The issues behind the AT&T System V vs IBM System III standoff • Interviews with leading AT&T authorities • The whos, whats, whens and wheres of the new AT&T • Strengths and caveats of the 3B line ADVERTISERS INDEX Accucom Data.94 AGS.7 Aim Technology.37 Applix.71 BASIS .60 BRS.73 Bunker Ramo.56 Cadmus.108, Cover III Cambridge Digital.9 CMI.89 CompuPro .62 Computer Cognition.76 Computer Corporation of America.105 Computer Methods.11 Computer Technology Group.77 CSSI Corp.92 Excelan .Cover II Ginn Computer Co.64 Gould.50, 51 Handle Corp.13 Heurikon .99 Hewlett Packard .82, 83 Human Computing Res.43, 45 Human Designed Systems.87 I.B.C.Cover IV InfoPro Systems.100 Interactive Training Systems.22, 23 ITS .102, 104 JMI .65 Litton.33 Manx Software.25 Mark Williams.17 Measurement Concept .97 Medical Informatics.75 Micro Focus.99 MIPS Software.66 Network Research. 95 NMProData . 90 Oasys.103 Pacific Micro Tech.80 Plexus.47 Quality Software .106 Q'N.I.A.L.90 Relational Database Systems.1 Relational Tech. Inc.101 Rhodnius .91 Santa Cruz Operation.85 SCI .69 Scientific Placement.68 Telecon.66 Teletype.15 Texas Instruments.30, 31 Unify .2, 3 Unipress Software.79, 81 Uniq Digital.93 Unisoft.88 UNIX EXPO.67 UNIX REVIEW.74 USENIX.78 User Training Corp.76 VCT.68 Victory Computer.Center Spread WYSE Technology.59 Xidak ..61 June 1984 UNIX REVIEW 107 mm ■Hi ; ‘H MM ifili 'i - - ^ With a complete set of tools, you can build almost anything. While other companies offer OEMs a few tools to build with, Cadmus provides the com¬ plete set. For example, the Cadmus 9000 combines all the power of a mainframe, the speed of a mini, the price of a micro and the unlimited application flexibility of UNIX ™ System Y with Berkeley 4.2 enhancements. All in a distributed environment. In fact, the system's unique UNISON ™ networking software provides the full resources of the entire network to any computational node through network-wide virtual memory with demand paging. A10 Mbit Ethernet™ or 50 Mbit fiber optic LAN serves as the interprocessor bus. And comprehensive graphics, development and decision support tools facilitate graphics applications in a windowed, multiple process environment. In addition, we support every Cadmus 9000 with Thunderbolt SM service that puts an engineer at your door anywhere in the country withm 24 hours. Guaranteed. To get the complete picture on this high powered graphics-oriented distributed system, call Cadmus at 617453-2899. The Cadmus 9000. Finally, you've got a complete set of tools. IfL The Distributed wlUfWU 1 Mainframe.™ COMPUTER SYSTEMS 600 Suffolk Street, Lowell, MA 01854 USENET:.. !wivax!cadmus TELEX: 948257 UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. Ethernet is a trademark of Xerox Corporation. Circle No. 199 on Inquiry Card ! UNIX HORSEPOWER! There are a lot of UNIX based systems on the market today claiming to be "SUPERMICROS". But do they really have what it takes to run multi-user UNIX well? The IBC ENSIGN™ does and here's why: FAST MEMORY: No computer running at any clock speed can run faster than it's overall memory design. The ENSIGN has up to 8MB of 120nsec memory with dual bit error correction. With IBC's proprietary memory management, all of this memory runs with no wait states as fast as the 68000 CPU will go. Compare this to other systems running only small cache memories at full speed. Other multiple user systems cannot load all their programs into a small cache memory. Their systems slow down considerably under a heavy multi-user load. INTELLIGENT SERIAL I/O CONTROLLER: Even the fastest CPU will slow down when it's trying to handle interruptions from multiple on-line users. The ENSIGN provides slave serial I/O CPU's and FIFO buffering for both input and output. The result is the ENSIGN'S ability to support up to 32 users, with heavy serial I/O demand, while leaving the main 68000 CPU free to run with little serial I/O overhead. INTELLIGENT DISK CONTROLLER AND HIGH PERFORMANCE DISK DRIVES: The ENSIGN has a slave CPU to handle all disk operations, plus 16K of disk buffering. IBC's proprietary disk DMA allows high speed data transfer to main memory without slowing down the main CPU. Further, the ENSIGN supports SMD type 8" hard disks with much faster seek times and transfer rates than 5'A" hard disks usually found in personal desk top computers. THE RESULTS: The IBC ENSIGN runs multi-user UNIX at performance levels not attainable by other supermicros. Call IBC and get a copy of IBC's multi-user bench¬ marks—benchmarks that test 8 users running large CPU programs, with heavy disk I/O and heavy serial I/O simultaneously. You'll find that nothing can compare t( If you want to run multi-user UNIX on a high performance system with up to 32 users, 8MB memory, and over 1,000MB disk storage, see the IBC ENSIGN. Chatsworth, CA 91311 Ogden, Utah 84403 (818)882-9007 (801)621-2294 Telex No. 215349 UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories Circle No. 202 on Inquiry Card