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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu!ns1.nodak.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!ogicse!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!destroyer!news.itd.umich.edu!fir.cic.net!pauls Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Question(s) about MachTen Message-ID: <29i7rk$4i5@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu> From: pauls@css.itd.umich.edu (Paul Southworth) Date: 14 Oct 93 00:52:04 GMT References: <djc105-141093102330@150.203.18.80> Organization: University of Michigan ITD Consulting and Support Services Article-I.D.: terminat.29i7rk$4i5 NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cic.net Lines: 57 In article <djc105-141093102330@150.203.18.80> djc105@rsphy2.anu.edu.au (Damian Jackson) writes: >MachTen, and I wanted to know where I could find a little more about it. I >am not sure whose product it is (does the name Tenon mean anything?), but Tenon Intersystems is the manufacturer. >it sounds like a dream come true. Only if you don't have a Unix machine. I found it very slow, although as an operating system in general it was not offensive. I ran it on a IIfx with 20Mb RAM. I tested it with SCSI drives, CDROMs, Bernoulli and Syquest removables -- since the drivers were all handled at the MacOS level, it had no problems with compatibility. The X server was clunky, and the worst thing about it was that it relied on MacOS's virtual memory system (aaiiieeee!) but they assured me that they were writing their own VM support in the next release which I believe has already been released. My IIfx with 20Mb RAM and 40Mb of swap took about four hours to compile Perl 4.036. ;) A Sun 3/50 would have done it in less than an hour with vastly inferior hardware and much less memory. On the other hand you can't run Fetch or MeetingMaker on a Sun3. The network performance was bad but not horrible -- it relied on MacTCP 1.1.1 to handle TCP/IP networking (yikes!) but again, they were planning on releasing their own TCP/IP support which will probably work better (and probably break all your Mac TCP/IP applications). I also tried it on a Powerbook 170 which worked fine though VM tended to blow the battery in a hurry since it couldn't sleep. Overall integration of the filesystems was not great -- you had to use conversion tools to transfer files back and forth, although the filesystems used the same partition space. > If anyone has any information on this >package, or if anyone actually uses it, could you please email the >information to me. I am interested it's cost, availability and also any >comments on what it's like as a product and whether it's worth shelling >over the cash! Thanks in advance. Send mail to info@tenon.com. You can also find some stuff on ftp.tenon.com but their link is very slow. As I recall the full release (with the unbundled compiler and all the X stuff as well as Motif development kit) was over $1500. Prices have probably changed. > BTW, it is based on 4.3BSD, which is why I choose this newsgroup if >anyone is wondering. :-) You would actually have better luck finding answers on comp.os.mach since it is a CMU Mach variant if I'm not mistaken. Paul Southworth User Services Information Technology Division University of Michigan pauls@umich.edu