Ancient History: Microsoft and UNIX

[Mercutio]

I picked this up off Slashdot this afternoon.

Xenix was the first OS I ever used, so there were, um, memories (I won't pretend they're good ones) for me.

I figure some of you young bucks might be entertained to read this stuff.
And yes, I'm 26. "Young" is subjective. It means "for those of you who don't remember personal computing in 1985".

 

[Corvair]

. .
I have used systems running the original Xenix -- which was designed to run on the 16-bit 8086. A number of years later, I built a system for data acquisition that ran Xenix/386. A bit later, SCO merged in some System V code into Xenix/386. Finally, Xenix/386 was replaced by the equally terrible SCO Unix. Microsoft stopped ended their relationship (and investment) in SCO a bit after the SCO Unix came out in 1993 or so. Caldera (Digital Research) owns SCO these days.


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[Buck]

Interesting history. It is funny how you could be around in 1985 and not even have heard of Xenix. My computer world started with an Apple IIe in 1983 and moved to a Macintosh Plus in 1985/86. I was strictly a Mac user until 1994, when I bought my first PC, a Leading Edge 486/66. What a dream machine that was (granted, an Apple IIe only has a 1.02 Mhz CPU with a 1 Mhz bus). Windows 3.12 was unbelievably quick on that machine, with 8 MB of RAM and a 200 MB HDD upgraded later to a WD AC11200 (1.2GB). My biggest mistake was being lured into the Windows game and moving from DOS up to XP. In between, I should have taken more time to smell the roses (UNIX, OS/2, more Netware, and more MAC); I suppose I'll have to make up for that now. I just wish I could get a newer version of OS/2 (ECS 1.0) for a good price.

Things have changed, but memories still stay the same. The odd thing for me, is that it wasn't that long ago, things just change so quickly.

BR

 

[Corvair]

. .
And there was also Interactive Unix. Kodak (of all companies) owned Interactive Unix for a while, then they sold it off to Sun in '90 or '91. Interactive Unix was based on AT&T System V source code. Interactive Unix was actually a bit better than SCO Unix or Xenix.

Before that, there was Microport Unix, which was a Unix-like operating system not based on AT&T Unix (like Xenix always was).


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[Mercutio]

My first PC was a Honeywell XT clone running Xenix. It had a black and white display, an acoustic-coupled modem (I don't remember how fast, probably 300bps though), and an attached serial terminal. There was a lineprinter, too.

I hated that thing. Dad taught me to type papers for school using vi (and if he was running vi on his terminal too, the machine slowed to a frickin' crawl) and eventually broke down and got me a copy of DOS (2.1) so I could play games. But mostly it ran Xenix, which was uttlerly incomprehensible. DOS had a nice tutorial, so it was easy to learn. Xenix? Well, I got a sheet of paper with the names, but not descriptions, of all the commands.

People who complain about Linux nowadays, try THAT.

Couple years ago I converted a machine that had been running some latter-day version of Xenix to a Linux box. Kind of a neat project. The thing had been running a custom application that wrote data out to plaintext files in comma-seperated form, so it was dirt-simple to make a perl script to do the same thing. It was really weird, though, going between a modern *nix like Linux, and crufty, ancient Xenix. Even modern SCO unix releases haven't outgrown it. I don't think OpenServer comes with ksh, for example.

Ever use Coherent, iGary? That's another one of those ancient history lessons. Or Dell Unix? Or AIX/x86?

Considering how many PC Unix systems there were, you'd think one of them would've caught on.

 

[Corvair]

. .

...Ever use Coherent, iGary? That's another one of those ancient history lessons. Or Dell Unix? Or AIX/x86?...

I evaluated Coherent once (1990 / '91-ish?). It was a cheap Unix-alike OS for the 286 or 386 PC. It was buggy as hell. I'm thinking now that Coherent came from the UK. Minix was another not-ready-for-prime-time Unix-alaike O/S from that same period.

Without dredging up nightmares on my part (e.g. -- the '70s / '80s: MVS, VMS, VM/CMS, DOS/VE, etc.), going back in time a few years (1980 / 81), I once used a fairly easy-to-use database O/S called PICK on a horrible Burrough / Sperry-Rand mini-computer. Howabout UniCOS? (Cray UNIX). I've used a few fidgety DEC PDP boxes that ran an operating system called RSX (DEC's ancient Realtime operating system). There was also Apple's flash-in-the-pan A/UX Unix that was used mainly to get government hardware sales (requiremets: your systems must alternatively support some form of Unix). A bit after that, Apple used a licensed version of IBM's AIX in its Apple Servers (mid-90s).


Dell Unix??? They likely just repackaged someone else's Unix (Interactive /386, I'm thinking at this point).


IBM's AIX? I've absolutely used AIX on a PS/2. The screwy thing about AIX was that it was based on "ancient" AT&T System III code, not System V (v3.2 / v 4.0) source code like everyone else was by the late 1980s / early '90s. AIX also had a microkernel, completely unlike other UNIXes which had a monolithic kernel. AIX also ran on the IBM /RT, which was a weird black AT RISC box (their very first RISC product), which I used at work. It was essentially junk. RS/6000 came along about 3 years later -- much better hardware.


Another UNIX-alike operating system was OSF/1 (Open Software Foundation). It basically went nowhere, though DEC, DG, and a few others did incorporate OSF/1 to varying degrees into their respective Unix operating systems.



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[Corvair]

. .
...And, how could I forget (well, easily actually), that I used to use the efficient but barebones O/S called CP/M. Then there was the oddball and somewhat UNIX-alike operating system called P-System that I ran on my old Apple III -- an operating system written in UCSD Pascal.


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[Mercutio]

I'm fairly certain Pick is still being used and developed (of course, so is Banyan VINES, it's just that the rest of the world doesn't care), although at this point I don't know what hardware it's running on.

Dell did indeed have a Unix system. I somehow doubt it's still sold or maintained but I saw printed manuals and a 1992-vintage 486 running it once. Licensed? I don't know. Maybe. Pretty much every Unix looks alike when the only thing you see is a textmode prompt.

UnicOS I've actually used - Purdue had, and retired, a Cray while I was there. They replaced it with an Intel Paragon that had a nasty tendency to catch on fire. The paragon made the daily computing center logs a joy to read.

AIX/x86 was another "primative" system. I saw it on PS/2s at a bank in the early 90s, but never again. There's no mention of AIX for PCs anywhere on IBM's web site, either. I'm not sure why that one never went anywhere. IBM generally did a very good job of making sure all their stuff interoperated properly... but I think in 94 or 95 AIX on x86 was dropped for SCO OpenServer.

Apple's AIX servers are very, very nice. The local newspaper here has a couple of them. If nothing else, they have good-looking cases.

Sun used to make Solaris for PowerPC. That was a kind of weird situation.
When I worked for Honeywell we were using Motorola workstations as a common-ground platform, since both NT4 and Solaris would run on them.

Lessee... DEC had Ultrix. That was their Unix-on-VAX system. They had Digital Unix, which I understood to be OSF-1 + some backward-compatible Ultrix nonsense, repackaged for their Alpha and VAX hardware. I wasn't aware that anyone else bothered to implement OSF-1.

 

[Corvair]

. .

I'm fairly certain Pick is still being used and developed

Hmmmmm..... I would suspect Pick lives as a virtual machine on an IBM, Amdahl, Unisys, or Fujitsu mainframe as opposed to a native operating system. The last I reall, Pick was fading fast in the mid '80s to the likes of DEC VMS.

(of course, so is Banyan VINES, it's just that the rest of the world doesn't care), although at this point I don't know what hardware it's running on.

Banyan VINES is actually a communications system built upon a licensed Unix. Yes, this was hush hush for many years, but VINES uses Unix. The last I heard, VINES was still being used to a small extent (maybe not too small) by the US military.

AIX/x86 was another "primative" system. I saw it on PS/2s at a bank in the early 90s, but never again. There's no mention of AIX for PCs anywhere on IBM's web site, either. I'm not sure why that one never went anywhere. IBM generally did a very good job of making sure all their stuff interoperated properly... but I think in 94 or 95 AIX on x86 was dropped for SCO OpenServer.

There was plenty of publicity on this: AIX on the PC was dumped by IBM in favour of OS/2.

Now that I'm thinking about IBM, I just recalled a "weird" IBM PC that I used once for about an hour, back in 1991 or '92. This PS/2 actually ran the IBM mainframe operating system VM. It was called a "Deskside Mainframe" or some sort of nonsense. It was slow as hell and its price was over US$40K !


Another was an oddball PC was a Sun 386 box called an i386 that ran SunOS 1.x for the 386. The damn thing had a Sun S-bus along with an ISA bus and could not run anything but SunOS (no MS-DOS). It was expensive and basically worthless.

Lessee... DEC had Ultrix. That was their Unix-on-VAX system. They had Digital Unix, which I understood to be OSF-1 + some backward-compatible Ultrix nonsense, repackaged for their Alpha and VAX hardware. I wasn't aware that anyone else bothered to implement OSF-1.

Ultrix was simply DEC's first stab into the world of Unix (DEC was a long-time anti-Unix proponent, along with IBM). Ultrix was always behind VMS. Finally, this was all rectified with Digital Unix (D/UX). D/UX was built on OSF-1 and had binary compatibility with Ultrix applications. D/UX went through a 64-bit overhaul, then it was cleaned up some more, and now exists as Compaq Tru64.


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[Mercutio]

Canadian National (railroad) still uses VINES. ABC's radio division still had remote sites running LANtastic until 1999. I'm not sure which is more pathetic.

VINES is easily the most retarded NOS I've ever dealt with. That I am sure of. I'm pretty sure all the administrative abilities available to a VINES system are also present on a machine running Windows 95.

If I'm not mistaken, Netware is also a Unix derived system.

My awareness of the computing industry in general actually starts at around 1990. I really can't remember an announcement about AIX v. OS/2, though. I *DO* remember a war of industry press folks about early work on NT vs. OS/2... I suppose that was 1991 or 92. Probably about the time I started doing tech work.

I've seen those Sun PCs on ebay, actually. They're getting to be collector's items.

 

[Corvair]

. .

...If I'm not mistaken, Netware is also a Unix derived system.

Netware is unto itself. Just like NT, there's no Unix. And just like NT, Netware has been rewritten several times. Novell at one time "owned" Unix® (bought it from AT&T), but sold it off to SCO a few years later who in turn was bought by Caldera (Caldera was founded by retired Novell founder Ray Norda ...or Noorda).


I recall going to a Netware version 1.0 demo way the hell back around 1982. They had several hot-off-the-assembly-line Compaq Deskpro 8086 boxes all connected to a (gasp) ArcNet network at the demo, and all running Netware. Each box had a "function" -- some were file servers, one was router, another a mail server, and a couple were print servers. It slugged along, but it worked. A bit later, they bought B-treive and had database server capabilities.

...I *DO* remember a war of industry press folks about early work on NT vs. OS/2... I suppose that was 1991 or 92. Probably about the time I started doing tech work.

Of course, that would have been after Microsoft OS/2.

Microsoft wanted to do 32-bit OS/2 immediately, not messing with 16-bit (286) OS/2, but IBM was thinking differently (and stupidly). The two parted ways with IBM owning OS/2 and Microsoft essentially rewriting what would have been 32-bit OS/2 and calling it Windows NT (v3.1). About all I can say is that it was astonishing just how fast Windows NT 3.1 zoomed past 16-bit OS/2 as far as interest in the product and commercial sales went.


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[Bozo]

What goes around, come around.......

Mac's OS X is Unix based with a GUI.

MS is moving to a Unix based operating system with a "Windows" type GUI (X Windows??? :eekers: )

Bozo

 

[Prof.Wizard]

His Billness'... :lol:

Hahaha

 

[Corvair]

...MS is moving to a Unix based operating system with a "Windows" type GUI (X Windows??? :eekers: )

MS has lifted bits of BSD code here and there over the years, but so has everyone else.

The Beserkely Unix-alike OS gang has actually encouraged everyone to use BSD code this way, and they have. Sun would probably be numero uno on the list of code borrowers, with SGI and now Apple / NeXT a close numero duo.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

numero duo

due :wink: