Lan Manager/X

[Paul Gillingwater]

In article <785 at tiamat.fsc.com> jim at tiamat.fsc.com (Jim O'Connor) writes:
> In defense of our SR, she probably didn't know I was thinking about LM/X
> for 386 Unix.  However, someone at HP is probably at fault for why I didn't
> ask her ealier, i.e. there was no mention of LM/X for 386 Unix in any of
> the HP literature (price lists, product lists, magazines, etc) I've seen in 
> the past 6 months.  Therefore, I just assumed they didn't have it.

Actually, I believe HP developed it!  Yes, HP and Microsoft were
co-developers of LM/X, and HP OEM'ed LM for MS-DOS and OS/2 from
3COM.  Pity HP isn't very good at blowing its own trumpet.

I think i've found the reason why HP may not have mentioned it.  It
seems that both HP and 3COM are getting out of selling LM DOS
clients  -- because of Microsoft's better distribution channels, and
the huge investment they are making, I think both HP and 3COM (and
maybe IBM soon) will be telling people to buy direct from MS, just
like with Windows.  MS will no doubt have to roll in the HP TCP/IP
demand-loadable protocol stack into the standard release, which
seems like a pretty good idea.

As for LM/X for 386 platforms, I believe that SCO will be bundling
this with future releases, letting HP concentrate on LM/X for its
HP-UX and MPE/XL platforms. 

The other factor is that LM/X is now officially in OSF/1 (Operating
System of the Future? :-), which makes a lot of sense.

> Oh well, I guess this just goes to show - you'll never know if you don't ask.

True.  You might try asking a bit harder next time!  Why, they even
do site wiring, PC LAN cards, 10-Base-T test equipment, SNMP
LANalysers, and all sorts of nice goodies!

> Thanks for the info.

Welcome.
 
> P.S.  I've received several requests for opinions on LM/X on the HP 9000.  We
> will be using it more extensively over the next few weeks, so at that time,
> I'll post an article with any opinions/information that I have.

I've been using LM/X quite a bit.  I like the HP_UX end, but the PC
end sucks, due to memory limitations.  I believe this will be fixed
in the LOOOONG awaited next release (LM 1.1?)
-- 
Paul Gillingwater, paul at actrix.gen.nz