[TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code?
Charles H Sauer (he/him)
sauer at technologists.com
Wed May 11 04:05:43 AEST 2022
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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