[TUHS] Interesting post about Microsoft and UNIX

[Henry Bent]

This is all very enlightening, thank you.  Comments inline...

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 at 05:39, Jonathan Gray <jsg at jsg.id.au> wrote:

> The 1986 press release for the Deskpro 386 mentioned 386 Xenix
> was planned for 1987.
> https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-10-fi-13177-story.html


I found https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1987/0902.html which
includes the following quote:


"UNIX System V and the 80386 are a perfect technological match," said Bill
Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, in remarks at AT&T's press
conference here. AT&T and Microsoft are developing a new version of UNIX
System V for the 80386 chip that will run XENIX System V as well as UNIX
System V applications.


This is September 1987, so perhaps Microsoft's abandonment of Xenix was not
as early as I had thought.  Though this does imply that the Xenix port was
not ready at that point, and perhaps was ultimately abandoned by Microsoft.


> Intel and AT&T had ISC do a 386 port for SVR3.
>
> "The 386/ix is based on Release 3.0, which was developed by Interactive
> Systems Corp. Santa Monica, Calif., under contract to Intel and AT&T.
> The code was tested through an extensive beta program managed by Intel
> (with more than 60 80386 beta sites)."
> Mini-Micro Systems, January 1988, p 45
> https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_MiniMicroS_59292072/page/44/mode/2up
> https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Mini-Micro_Systems/198801.pdf


I'm not familiar with 386/ix so I'll have to let others comment here,
though I do note that we're now slipping into 1988.

AT&T sold rebadged Olivetti machines with SVR3 in 1987:
> "AT&T 6386 WGS is today's only 80386-based system to take full advantage
> of its 32-bit architecture"
> https://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/6386_wgs/6386_WGS_Brochure.pdf


This is fascinating, as it claims "concurrent running of both MS-DOS and
true 32-bit UNIX System V programs."  They were also serious about market
positioning - the larger model could handle up to 64MB of RAM and two 135MB
disks.  I'd appreciate any further details on the exact operating system.


> ISC work was also used by Microport:
> "Microport Runtime System V/386 is based on a version of Unix for the
> 80386 carried out by Interactive Technologies for AT&T and Intel."
> Microport to Ship Version of Unix for 386
> InfoWorld, Volume 9, Issue 9, 2 Mar 1987, p 3
> https://books.google.com/books?id=1TAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA3


Also interesting; I wonder if the "capability to run multiple MS-DOS
applications under Unix" was shipped in a functional form, and what
relation it might or might not have had to what was running on the AT&T
hardware.

-Henry
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