a/ux look-alikes etc (long)

[Phil Ronzone]

In article <126 at fishpond.UUCP> fnf at fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes:
>In article <16349 at apple.Apple.COM> jk at Apple.COM (John Kullmann) writes:
>>THAT company did not make A/UX for Apple. We conceived of, designed, and 
>>implemented A/UX.  We have no "supplier" for A/UX. We own it, build it,
>Hmmm, for the record then, perhaps you could answer the following:
>When and where exactly did Unix, running on the Mac-II hardware,
>first boot up and issue a shell prompt?

Well, since Fred Fish worked at UniSoft at the time (in fact, I hired him),
he does know the answer. A UNIX SV port issued the first prompt on Mac II
hardware at UniSoft about 2.8 years ago.

Other than historical note, this is a meaningless answer. For example, the
first UNIX prompt I ever saw on a VAX was an Interactive port in 1978/1979.
Nothing came of it (that I know of), and today, when we think UNIX on a VAX,
we all think of BSD 4.X (right? :-)).

BUT -- A/UX came from Apple. Some of the work was done by Apple people,
some by contractors to Apple (many of which later became Apple employees),
some by UniSoft, some by contractors to UniSoft, and even some by contractors
to Apple who were subcontracted to UniSoft and vice-versa.

UniSoft is and always was a contracting outfit to Apple.

For example, job control and the "real csh". Assigned as a piece of work
to UniSoft, their initial response was "we don't want to do that -- it's
too hard ...". In fact, it took them three tries to do it to our 
satisfaction. Then WE Q/A'd it (the UniSoft Q/A plan was "well, we just
figured to run the csh a while, do some CTL-Z's etc. ..."). We have
a fanatic and very very good Q/A group. As we Q/A'd it, we did not a small
amount of work on it to make it robust.

Such things as autoconfiguration, autorecovery, true BSD 4.x networking,
subnets, domain names, disk partitioning, job control, many BSD utilities,
rewriting the UNIX manuals, SASH, decent source code portability from BSD
to A/UX, toolbox and toolbox launch, slot manager, true and real SVID
compliance, and more, all are Apple features. We thought of them, and we
caused them to happen. Whether an Apple employee or contractor did them,
or a UniSoft employee or contractor did them is not relevant. The whole
A/UX project was and is managed by Apple, down to the project schedules
and Q/A plans.

UniSoft may have learned a lot from working with us (like doing real
software quality assurance and having a dedicated group to do it), but
that's O.K.

So to be CLEAR -- UniSoft makes and sells a UNIX port called UniPlus+.
It also was a contractor doing work on A/UX for Apple, to Apple specifications,
to Apple design documents and Apple project schedules (for amounts of
Apple money :-)).

UniSoft is very very good at getting a UNIX port up quickly on a strange
machine. Give them weird hardware and a weird MMU, and they can get a
port up in a few weeks (the standard UniSoft joke back then was "it just
gave the first prompt -- SHIP IT!!"). The record for a "custom MMU" get it
up to first prompt was TWO DAYS!!!

At Apple, our BASIC Q/A cycle is 12 WEEKS. Enough said?

So nothing in this in intended to put down UniSoft. If anything sounds like
that, I apologize. But UniSoft is (or was) "Ports-R-Us" that dealt only with
OEMs, and Apple is a very strong customer oriented outfit. The two companies
approach business in very different ways -- why not -- our customers are
very very different. UniSoft was a group of contractors to us, we paid them
very well, gave each UniSoft programmer who worked on the contract a Mac II, 
and thanked them.

In the meantime, we are hiring more and more people to work on the future
releases of A/UX. If you are interested, mail me a resume. We want strong
UNIX and/or Macintosh OS internals people.
+------------------------+-----------------------+----------------------------+
| Philip K. Ronzone      | A/UX System Architect | APPLELINK: RONZONE1        |
| Apple Computer         +-----------------------+----------------------------+
| Mail Stop 27AJ         | "Forgive him Caesar, for he is a barbarian, and    |
| 10500 N. DeAnza Blvd.  |  thinks the features of his release are the ways   |
| Cupertino CA 95014     |  of nature."                                       |
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
|{amdahl,decwrl,sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual,unisoft}!apple!phil                 |
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