On 7 Mar, 00:54, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6 Mar, 19:27, darko <darko.krs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > At least one major server vendor, HP, still sells new servers that can
> > run SCO OpenServer 5.0.7, and are certified for that OS. I am not sure
> > about other vendors, since all Intel/AMD based servers I've dealt with
> > recently were HP.
>
> Just because a server is "compatible" doesn't mean you can get it to
> work.

Nico,

Darko said that HP servers are Certified with SCO products, not that
they are "compatible".

SCO Certified Hardware has been certified by SCO's Engineering
Services team
in conjunction with the hardware vendor to ensure inter-operability.
SCO is the
initial contact point for any issues discovered with hardware listed
as Certified.
If the problem can be duplicated, SCO will escalate the issue to the
vendor and
will work together with the vendor for resolution of the issue.

Compatible Hardware is hardware that is reported to work with the
product based
on driver availability, but has not been certified, nor is supported
by SCO or
the manufacturer.

> I've been doing hardware evaluations and integrations with
> various OS's since BSD 4.1, and I've got to say that SCO configuration
> harkens back to the bad old '80's of having to know the answer to
> everything in advance. including details of SCSI configuration and
> driver installations that any modern OS either auto-detects or has
> decent probe tools to detect.

I suspect that your experiences are based on versions of the SCO
Operating System that are not current. The latest version of SCO
OpenServer and UnixWare auto-detect Host Bus Adapters, storage
peripherals, Network cards and Graphics cards at installation time.

If you want to evaluate OpenServer 6.0.0 for example, you can download
it from:

http://www.sco.com/support/update/do...se.php?rid=161

> The result is that adding peripherals,
> such as tape drives, external USB drives, graphics tablets, or
> slightly unusual monitors is awkward if not impossible. And it's only
> going to get worse.

OpenServer 6 and UnixWare 7 both autodetect Tape drives and support
both SCSI Hot adding of these devices to a running server.

USB devices are autodetected either at boot time, if they are already
in the machine, or ar runtime, if they are connected to a running
server.

As to monitors on OpenServer 6 we use the X.org X Server and I think
this
is the same X Server that is used in BSD?

> Virtualizing lets you sidestep these problems and leave them with a
> current operating system capable of handling contemporary hardware,
> and allows trivial transfer of your entire virtualized operating
> system to an arbitrary virtualization server. It also installs in a
> fraction of the time, because the underlying OS and hardware do the
> bad block management for you and that *AMAZINGLY* slow OpenServer disk
> configuration tools stays the heck out of your way.

Next time you are installing an old OpenServer 5 system you can avoid
bad tracking by selecting the Bad tracking option:

* None

during the installation. Bad tracking is a legacy option for older
hardware.

Regards,

John