[TUHS] PC Unix (had been How to Kill a Technical Conference

[Jason Stevens]

 There is some information and demos of the early 8086/80286 Xenix,
including the IBM rebranded PC Xenix 1.0 on pcjs.org

https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/unix/ibm/xenix/1.0/

And if you have a modern enough browser you can run them from the browser as
well!

It's amazing that CPU's are fast enough to run interpreted emulation that is
faster than the old machines of the day.

-----Original Message-----
From: Clem Cole
To: M Douglas McIlroy
Cc: TUHS main list
Sent: 4/7/21 1:09 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] PC Unix (had been How to Kill a Technical Conference

Doug -- IIRC IBM private-labeled a Microsoft put out a version of Xenix,
although I think it required an PC/AT (286)
 
<https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=
zerocontent&guid=6f435ae6-0f2c-4fbd-bfe2-adcbf3edac32> ?

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 11:36 AM M Douglas McIlroy <
m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu <mailto:m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu>
> wrote:


> I wonder. IBM introduced the IBM PC in August of 1981.
> That was years after a non-memory managed version of
> Unix was created by Heinze Lycklama,  LSX. Is anyone
> on this list familiar with Bell Labs management thoughts
> on  selling IBM on LSX rather than "dos"?

IBM famously failed to buy the well-established CP/M in
1980. (CP/M had been introduced in 1974, before the
advent of the LSI-11 on which LSX ran.) By then IBM had
settled on Basic and Intel.  I do not believe they ever
considered Unix and DEC, nor that AT&T considered
selling to IBM. (AT&T had--fortunately--long since been
rebuffed in an attempt to sell to DEC.)

Doug