UNIX 3.2 compatibility

[Peter da Silva]

In article <912 at n3dmc.UU.NET> johnl at n3dmc.UU.NET (John Limpert) writes:
> Are the 80386 UNIX systems from AT&T, ESIX, Intel, ISC and SCO
> compatible at the device driver level?

Some are, some aren't. For some reason ISC (and I think ESIX) uses a
slightly different structure in /etc/conf, and a slightly different
set of predefined system calls, than the Intel/AT&T baseline. You have
to jam drivers in, and if they just communicate through the standard
system calls they might work. The same products are available for both
branches (eg., VPIX), but unless you have the source they won't work.

> Is it possible to link a vendor supplied device driver into the
> ESIX kernel even though the device driver was written for ISC UNIX?

Probably. I have read on the net that ESIX is an ISC derivitive.

> Can I still run programs that were compiled and linked under
> Microport System V/AT?

Probably. But it's in an emulation mode so you won't get the performance
of the 386... they may even run slightly slower due to differences in
memory allocation (at least that's our experience). I'd really recommend
recompiling.
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