Berkeley Software Design Ships BSD/386 V1.1 for the PC

New Release of BSDI's UNIX-Like Operating System Delivers Faster
Performance, Greater Scalability, and Offers Range of New Features 

March 21, 1994  -- SAN FRANCISCO -- At UNIFORUM '94 this week, Berkeley
Software Design, Inc., (BSDI) will be showing BSD/386 V1.1, the new
release of BSDI's UNIX-like operating system for Intel architecture
computers. BSDI's new PC operating system release offers a dramatic
improvement in throughput performance and incorporates a variety of key
features including mountable access to DOS files, added memory
capabilities for better system scalability, extended NFS support,
multicast support, and much more. 

Its economical redistribution licenses make BSD/386 ideal for use as either
a delivery platform or for embedded systems applications. BSD/386-based
PCs can also act as full peers (including functionality as a router and
name server) on the Internet (including 56K and T-1 serial interfaces).
The complete software development environment eases porting of
applications to the commodity PC world. 

"Now that the litigation with UNIX Systems Laboratories has been settled,
we can move ahead even faster and develop new, more extensive open
computing solutions for our customers," said Rob Kolstad, president of
BSDI. "The release of BSD/386 V1.1 is our first step. We plan to offer 4.4
BSD Lite and SPARC-compatible versions of our operating system in the near
future. With the release of BSD/386 V1.1, we have taken the next step to
demonstrating our solid, evolving technology that continues to grow to
meet expanding computing needs." 

New with BSD/386 V1.1

The most obvious improvement customers will see in BSD/386 V1.1 is an
increase in both the performance of both the networking I/O and serial I/O
by factors of two to ten, depending on the PC hardware being used. Using
certain network adapter cards, throughput speeds were clocked at rates of
almost 10 Mbps, the maximum speed of Ethernet. Serial users at beta sites
have indicated that V1.1 also demonstrated a dramatic increase in
performance. 

The new BSD/386 kernel sports a mountable MS-DOS file system to enable the
use of all the BSD/386 utilities and access features (including NFS) on
MS-DOS  file systems -- just as if they were native BSD/386 file systems.


BSD/386 networking now supports IP multicast, so IP data can be transmitted
to a large group of specified hosts with a small set of packets rather
than a large number of replicated packets. Multicast is particularly
valuable to multimedia developers whose voluminous data transmission
requirements can now be dramatically reduced. 

To improve scalability and ease the integration of PCs and large-scale UNIX
systems, BSD/386 V1.1 sports improved memory handling and addressing
schemes. The operating system now accommodates interfaces for 32-bit user
and group IDs, device numbers, and process IDs as part of its addressing
structure. Real and virtual memory limits have been expanded; V1.1 handles
up to 256 Mbytes of RAM. The new release also removes the former 640-Kbyte
limit on the kernel size. To improve file handling, support for
asynchronous NFS has been added for faster data writes -- a real plus for
certain client/server applications. 

BSD/386 V1.1 new utilities include a new, faithful implementation of the
popular vi editor and updated compilers: GCC 1.42, GCC 2.5.8, and g++
2.5.8. The new Sendmail 8.6.5 with added configuration and security
features is included along with the unique checksendmail verification
suite. Users can also invoke FlexFax to send and receive FAXes from their
PC. 

X Window System support has also been extended with new client support for
X11 clients, including NCSA Mosaic 2.1 and XV 3.00. The popular Tcl 7.2
and Tk 3.5 X Windows development tools are incorporated as well. 

BSD/386 V1.1 also supports more peripherals, including a wide range of new
video display adapters as well as the economical Mitsumi FX001 CDROM
drive. V1.1 also adds support for some DigiBoard serial multiplexers and
Specialix multiplexers, as well as the BusLogic (BusTek) BT-445S SCSI
adaptor for access to the high speed VESA LocalBus. New keyboard mapping
files are also included. 

A UNIX-like Environment for the PC 

BSDI's BSD/386 is based on the Net/2 release from the University of
California, Berkeley's Computer Systems Research Group. Designed to run on
any ISA- or EISA-based 80386, 80486, or Pentium computer system, BSD/386
is a complete, multitasking computing environment with full networking
support, including TCP/IP, OSI, SLIP, and PPP and all the tools needed to
join the Internet (e.g., named). It also includes a full set of POSIX
tools and other popular tools like vi, emacs, yacc, awk, perl, and others.
BSD/386 includes a complete software development environment with
compilers for C and C++, profilers, source code debuggers, and source code
control systems. 

BSD/386 V1.1 is currently shipping. A single system, unlimited user license
for BSD/386 starts at $545 for binaries and $1,045 for binaries plus
source code. Additional system licenses are only $200; site licenses are
also available. The software comes with 60 days of telephone support and a
90-day money-back guarantee. Three tiers of additional support are also
available. 

About BSDI 

BSDI develops and markets open systems computing solutions, with current
ports available for PCs and PC-clones. BSDI is located at 7759 Delmonico
Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919; telephone: (800) 800-4273 or (719)
593-9445; FAX: (719) 598-4238; electronic mail: info@bsdi.com. 

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