> All this noise about the younger OSes (Linux, FreeBSD)
> got me thinking. I vaccilate between amused and annoyed
> over the bickering between the Linux and FreeBSD contingents.
> That kind of thing is part of the reason Windoze owns as
> much of the matket as it does. I realize nobody could
> predict the way it would take off, but when MS first started
> to own the desktop, the *users* of UNIX should have started
> cooperating. But instead, they went along with the vendor
> factions, and Windoze won.
>
> Yeah, I know, it was somewhat inevitable. But I don't think
> it would have been quite as bad as it is. So learn from
> history. Feel free to argue in private, but in public, I'd
> push the overall UNIX-like OS, with just a recommendation.
>
> Of course, it's a good feeling to even have the option.
> Because 10 - 12 years ago, what were your UNIX options, if
> you weren't the government or a university?
>
> 1) You could buy expensive hardware that ran a UNIX variant.
Very expensive.
> 2) You bought a workstation from Sun or Apollo - still not cheap.
As above.
> 3) If you were lucky, you got one of the few Cromemcos or
> Perkin-Elmer desktops, that ran UNIX. But they weren't
> much less expensive than the Sun, Apollo, etc workstations.
> (Fortune's desktops were in the workstation price range.)
The machine's maxed out at 2.5 mb of memory for the XF-200's.
The 7300's and 7350's originally maxed out at .5mb.
The Perkin-Elmers were just 68000-8mhz. Dog slow. No virtual memory.
Slow as death graphics.
They existed to control Perkin-Elmer lab stuff for lab automation.
They were mostly replaced by DEC MicroVaxes after Perkin-Elmer
got out of the computer business.
We had the problem of management not supporting faster models because
the Versabus couldn't run faster with their hardware without bus timing
problems.
Perkin-Elmer/Concurrent ran into a lot of problems with Unix because they
didn't do virtual memory until they purchased Masscomp in 1987-88.
Masscomp ran their own OS called RTU Real Time Unix.
(A SysIII varient with Berkeley and DEC extensions (picked up from RSX/11).
Perkin-Elmer desktops also were running one of three OS's:
Idris.
Uniplus Sys III
MicroXelos (UniPlus Sys V)
Their larger mini's ran:
Edition VII
Xelos (SysV rel 0 through SVR2 - swapping only no virtual memory paging)
OS/32
> 4) If you were really lucky, you found a good deal on a used
> PDP from someone with a UNIX license who forgot to wipe the
> disks or tapes - but then you were illegal.
Or in this area you found a machine owned by some AT&T employee who
pirated a tape 8-). I kept looking but never found one.
> 5) You bought Minix. Minix was cheap, and you got source, but
> it was really meant to be a teaching tool. It was well done,
> but extremely limited. (Nevertheless, Tanenbaum's _Operating
> Systems Design and Implementation_ is still an excellent book.)
Minix 1.3 was very limited. V1.5 was better.
> 6) If you were *really* lucky, you got a good deal on a working
> workstation.
>
Just got my first Sparc this year 8-)
> Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a Perkin-Elmer desktop
> running Linux? IIRC, it was pretty much a straight port of
> whatever was current from bell Labs at the time - or maybe an
> older version.
>
But the hardware wan't close to anything there's current drivers for.
And it wasn't a 68020 so forget Linux.
> -Miles
>
Bill
ex-DEC, eX-Concurrent Computer (who was Perkin-Elmer's computer group)
ex-IBM. Currently at Bell Labs.
---
Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a
villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller
bpechter_at_shell.monmouth.com|pechter_at_pechter.nws.net|pechter_at_pechter.ddns.org
Received on Sat Jan 16 1999 - 14:53:36 GMT