2 Apr
2021
2 Apr
'21
11:17 p.m.
I'm not sure that I have anything to add beyond repeating citation to
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beg….
It credits ISC and LCC appropriately.
AIX involvement with SCO, if any, would have been after I left IBM. I
find it hard to imagine what that involvement would have been.
Charlie
On 4/2/2021 11:03 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 11:54 PM Wesley Parish <wobblygong(a)gmail.com
<mailto:wobblygong@gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't think anybody was even thinking of porting any of
the *BSD to IBM mainframes till much later, am I right?
No. BSD was very much on IBM's radar in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Long before Linus released Linux into the wild in 1990 for the >>386<<
much less any other ISA, IBM had been shipping as a product AIX/370 (and
AIX/PS2 for the 386); which we developed at Locus for them. The
user-space was mostly System V, the kernel was based on BSD (4.1
originally) pluis a great deal of customization, including of course the
Locus OS work, which IBM called TCF - the transparent computing
facility. It was very cool you could cluster 370s and PS/2 and from
--
voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer
>any<< node run a program of either ISA.
It has been well discussed
in this forum, previously.
A for AIX/370 a quick history which Charlie can fill in more from the
IBM side, was that in the last 60s and early 70s, IBM had a strange hold
on the education/research market with the S/360; but lost it because of
the lack of timesharing to DEC and PDP-10 based systems as IBM was more
and more focused on the commercial sector where there was much more
money to be made. But ... there was a drive in the IBM
educational/research team to be able to reenter that market and Locus
was hired to develop AIX/370 (and later PS2) as it was felt that UNIX
was considered an important offering for those customers. After it was
released as a product, it turned out purchasing AIX/370 was exceedingly
difficult (for a number of reasons), although it was extremely well
received by those that ran it, but getting it was difficult. In fact, I
have been told by folks that there at the time, that using TCF was an
important feature here at Intel for the success of the simulation for
the 486 and Pentium.
Again, Charlie can tell you the history but IBM also developed AIX for
the RS/6000 which was the same OS (only different) from IBM Austin(no
TCF, but supported DS which was cool in its own right). Locus was
actually contracted to develop a UNIX subsystem for the AS/400 also, but
I'm not sure if that ever shipped. I had left Locus and hadgoneto DEC
by then.