AT&T System V Rel 3 for 80386

~XT4103000~Frank McGee~C23~M24~6326~ fmcgee at cuuxb.ATT.COM
Wed Nov 23 10:06:28 AEST 1988


In article <9766 at watdragon.waterloo.edu> hjespersen at trillium.waterloo.edu (Hans Jespersen) writes:
>In article <1069 at hsi.UUCP> stevens at hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) writes:
>>I'm interested in obtaining true AT&T System V, Release 3 for
>>a Compaq 386/20.  I recall reading in this newsgroup that the
>>version for the 8386 WGS runs fine on the Compaq, and have a
>>couple of questions:
>
>Sure does. In fact, when you first install , it asks you whether you are 
>installing on a 6386 or a Compaq 386. Something to do with knowing how
>to format the drive I think.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this works in all cases.  There is a
known 80387 hardware bug that may cause process or entire system hangs.
You won't have any problems if you don't have the actual 80387 present
in the machine (ie, the floating point emulators supplied with Unix
don't exhibit the same behavior the actual hardware does).

AT&T has a fix, but it is unique to AT&T hardware.  It is known to NOT
work on a Compaq specifically.  If you have AT&T hardware and need the 
fix, I can email it to you (all you have to do is a little kernel tuning).

Also, there are two fp emulators supplied with Unix System V Rel. 3.2.
/etc/emulator.dflt is an emulator that was developed by Microsoft that
gives better performance than the AT&T emulator.  However, it isn't a
complete emulation (for instance, SCO FoxBase Plus won't run with that
emulator in place).  The other emulator (/etc/emulator.rel1) is the
AT&T emulator, and provides all 80387 functions, but it is slower.  The
default is the Microsoft emulator, but all you have to do to use the
AT&T emulator is link /etc/emulator.rel1 to /etc/emulator and reboot
the machine.

Hope this answers your question.

Frank McGee
Tier 3 Indirect Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee
-- 
Frank McGee
Tier 3 Indirect Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee



More information about the Comp.sys.att mailing list