5 ms·

Just from memory, I can sort of see how they could have mistaken those priorities. Windowing systems (with which X11 was synonymous on unixy systems) were a big

by anyfoo 7y ago

Just from memory, I can sort of see how they could have mistaken those priorities. Windowing systems (with which X11 was synonymous on unixy systems) were a big deal at the time, while TCP/IP, even networking in general, was still emerging in what probably was Coherent's target market. Coherent did have UUCP, didn't it? In a lot of cases, that got you much further in small to mid scale environments than TCP/IP. I wouldn't even be surprised if Novell Netware would have been considered more important.

teh_klev 7y ago
> I wouldn't even be surprised if Novell Netware would have been considered more important. Speaking as a field engineer from the UK from days of yore... Up until around 1995 IPX/SPX, Novell's default networking stack at that time, was hugely prevalent in corporate and governmental environments. I didn't start bumping into TCP/IP in any serious way until around 1992 in my job as a field engineer. The general kinda setup was groups of departmental Novell Netware 386 servers (I was a Netware engineer since around '87) with loads of DOS and Windows 2/3.x clients running Novell's IPX/SPX stack atop NE2000 compatible NIC's. Around '95 things changed. Novell Netware 4 (as did NT 3.51 - NT done properly) shipped and the default stack became TCP/IP...the rest is history.
- Jaruzel 7y ago
  I think people forget how prevalent IPX/SPX and Netware was back in the late 80s-early 90s. Fun anecdote: I used to work on a large MoD site as PC support during that era, and one call I got was to visit a bunch of porta-cabins to fix their Netware network because they wanted to play network DOOM and for some reason it wasn't working.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
    Haha, this sounds familiar :)
ecksii 7y ago
Coherent had Taylor UUCP. The most enthusiastic users were doing Usenet News delivered via UUCP. Coherent ran into big issues due to a nasty bug in the ATA disk driver. The users who got hit the worst were the ones running C news.
nils-m-holm 7y ago
It did have UUCP, I used to run a USENET leaf node back in the days.
wildduck 7y ago
Yeah but back then you got all kinds of stuff like Token ring, Novell as alternative to TCP/IP. Seems they have gone with other ones.

by anyfoo 7y ago

teh_klev 7y ago

> I wouldn't even be surprised if Novell Netware would have been considered more important. Speaking as a field engineer from the UK from days of yore... Up until around 1995 IPX/SPX, Novell's default networking stack at that time, was hugely prevalent in corporate and governmental environments. I didn't start bumping into TCP/IP in any serious way until around 1992 in my job as a field engineer. The general kinda setup was groups of departmental Novell Netware 386 servers (I was a Netware engineer since around '87) with loads of DOS and Windows 2/3.x clients running Novell's IPX/SPX stack atop NE2000 compatible NIC's. Around '95 things changed. Novell Netware 4 (as did NT 3.51 - NT done properly) shipped and the default stack became TCP/IP...the rest is history.

Jaruzel 7y ago
I think people forget how prevalent IPX/SPX and Netware was back in the late 80s-early 90s. Fun anecdote: I used to work on a large MoD site as PC support during that era, and one call I got was to visit a bunch of porta-cabins to fix their Netware network because they wanted to play network DOOM and for some reason it wasn't working.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  Haha, this sounds familiar :)

ecksii 7y ago

Coherent had Taylor UUCP. The most enthusiastic users were doing Usenet News delivered via UUCP. Coherent ran into big issues due to a nasty bug in the ATA disk driver. The users who got hit the worst were the ones running C news.

nils-m-holm 7y ago

It did have UUCP, I used to run a USENET leaf node back in the days.

wildduck 7y ago

Yeah but back then you got all kinds of stuff like Token ring, Novell as alternative to TCP/IP. Seems they have gone with other ones.