Venix86 Users Group News

[Jim Rosenberg]

By the process of consent by osmosis, the Venix Users Group is hereby
christened VUG.  I've heard from several people via usenet & several more have
left their names on the database at Unisource.  In cooperation with them I'm
going ahead to try to organize the group.  Pending some calamity I now plan to
be at UniForum where I will try to organize a B.O.F. session where we can get
together.  NOTE:  If you left your name on the uni3 machine at Unisource as
being interested in a VUG and are on Usenet, please send me your net address.
(uucp mail preferably.)  I've heard from several users of Venix on PDP-11ish
machines & we should probably form a single group, or else coordinate our
efforts.

/VUG/motd:

1.  Dorris at Unisource tells me that Unify is now available under Venix.
Leverage sounds like an interesting product but as I understand it it's not a
true relational DBMS, so those interested in running a DBMS under Venix should
be grateful for this.  Unisource *is* interested in marketing competing
applications in the same niche.  They'd love to market everything they can get
their hands on, but have had problems getting the vendors to port to Venix.
Any ideas on making this easier would be welcome.  Better memory models for
the C compiler would obviously help.  I believe 2.0 has a medium memory model;
some programs might need a large model to be ported.

2.  For those wanting an Xmodem program for Venix I have found the best of the
bunch to be uc, downloaded from /vaxsig/unix XA on CompuServe.  Believe it or
not it compiles on both 4.1 BSD and Venix with *no ifdefs*!  Let me know if
you need the code.

3.  Venturcom has *put out an appeal* to Unisource to come up with a wish list
for System V.  This is an offer we won't refuse!!  It might be difficult to
prioritize our wishes through usenet -- maybe we can do this at UniForum --
but for starters I will be delighted to pass on all requests for what we want
in the Sys. V. release.  My own personal wish list follows, in no particular
order:

A.  Clean up tty read() in raw mode to make it consistent with other flavors
of Unix & return when 1 char arrives from a multi-char. read.

B.  More full suite of Berkeley stuff, including:  Mail, ctags, strings, xstr,
mkstr, etc.

C.  4.2 BSD version of uucp utitilizing modemcap, if possible.  (This is not a
pipe dream.  This version of uucp is available under Sys. V on the Convergent
Mini-Frame.)  If that's not possible do *something* to uucico so that the
timeout does not abort the dial on Hayes-compatible modems.

D.  Korn shell if AT&T will release it.

E.  Better flexibility on FDISK partitions.  I've talked to at least two
people who paid for Venix & are not using it because they need a partition for
DOS and one for Concurrent.  As it comes off the shelf I think Venix can be
configured to run in only two partitions, by simply not mounting /tmp.  But
there's no documentation on this for those not familiar with Unix.

4.  We're going to try to coordinate a single unified bug list.  If you have a
bug list & haven't sent it to me I'd appreciate a copy.

Thanks to Randy Seuss at ihnp4!wlcrjs!randy for putting up his machine as a
bbs for net news.  It's easiest to get in touch with me by uucp mail at:

 Jim Rosenberg
 decvax!idis!pitt!amanuen!jr
 (412) 784 2806