[TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code?

[Charles H Sauer (he/him)]

I mostly defer to Heinz and Clem regarding PC/IX. It is hard to imagine 
the IBM people in Boca Raton allowing the Chaplin imagery to be used 
with a secondary product like PC/IX, but I don't remember the packaging.

PC/IX was my first hands on experience with Unix. PC/IX was used 
extensively in the AIX development group while ROMP hardware was scarce.

Before I got my own RT/PC, I used PC/IX primarily, until I got a PC/AT 
and started using some instance of Xenix that supported the 286 MMU.

Charlie

On 5/10/2022 12:18 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Sorry, I  hit return too soon.
> 
> Mary Ann -  I think  PC/IX is what you were thinking.  FWIW: it was one 
> of the reasons why Andy developed Minix.  He said at the time it was 
> insufficient and if he was going to have a pure V7 port for the base 
> 8088-based PC/XT (not 286s-based PC/AT) then he wanted something he 
> could teach with.   IIRC the early PC/IX (and I know for certain Minux 
> did not) did not even recognize the MMU for the 286 of the AT (much less 
> the later 386), but it did have a driver for the AT disk controller 
> (which was/is a different controller than the XT).
> 
> As Warner says, PC/XT was based on the new System III license we had 
> just all negotiated earlier that winter.   Microsoft had already started 
> shipping Xenix on the x86/68000 and I think a z8000 using the V7 
> license, but I don't think IBM relicensed it.   HP was shipping HP-UX 
> for the original 9000 on the same, and Tek was also shipping it firsts 
> emulator system on the V7 license.    DEC had the original v7m which 
> begat Ultrix, although I don't remember if DEC ever shipped binaries on 
> the original V7 license.  Charlie can correct me, but I don't think IBM 
> ever shipped binaries on the V7 license either.
> 
> [The original V7 redistribution license had terms that makers of $100K+ 
> systems did not mind too much, but was difficult for what would 
> eventually be called PCs and workstations at the <$10K (much less < $1K) 
> price to swallow.
> 
> FWIW: Years later, Linus famously got his 386 box from his parents for 
> Christmas, got a copy of Andy's Minux (for a PC/XT), started writing his 
> terminal program, and was annoyed that it did not use the VM/larger 
> address space of hardware.
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
> 
> On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 12:59 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com 
> <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
> 
>     PC/IX
>     ᐧ
> 
>     On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 11:32 AM Mary Ann Horton <mah at mhorton.net
>     <mailto:mah at mhorton.net>> wrote:
> 
>         I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy
>         with a black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I
>         thought it was called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being
>         very different from UNIX for sysadmin (different logs, different
>         admin commands) but similar for users. I thought it was based on
>         System III or thereabouts.
> 
>         I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for
>         the original PC.
> 
>         Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called
>         or based on?
> 
>         Thanks,
> 
>              Mary Ann
> 
>         On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote:
>>         My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V
>>         source code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a
>>         days experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client
>>         issue. The shocker - they changed all the error messages to
>>         error codes with a look at the manual requirement.
>>
>>         Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not.
>>         But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch
>>         rewrite but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones
>>         of the time.
>>         License the source, change the name and then beat it to death.
>>
>>         On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com
>>         <mailto:rminnich at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the
>>             first, as I
>>             understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual,
>>             write the
>>             code."
>>
>>             Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done
>>             quite right.
>>             One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return
>>             an error if
>>             the full path existed. oops.
>>
>>             But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of
>>             code to
>>             handle AIX being different from just about everything else.
>>
>>

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