[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Fred N. van Kempen]

Paul,

> Bleh, sorry for the blank post... notes went schitzo.... 
*smile*

> If MS can release WinCE source, then they would probably do
> the same for XENIX.... both PDP/11 and the x86 version perhaps... 
> Its not like we want the source... just a tape image would do me :) 
> Perhaps there is someone in MS who knows of XENIX's existance and
> can help....  I'll have a word with a friend of mine who works
> there :) 
Yeah, I agree.  I personally think MS would release Xenix, as it no
longer has any commercial value whatsoever to them.  The hardest part
might be finding people within who know about it, and who can point
us in the right (legalese) direction.  Once MS signs off on it, the
people at SC(O)aldera won't have a problem with releasing the tapes.

Cheers,
	Fred


            InterNetworking en Network Security Consultant
   MicroWalt Corporation (Netherlands), Korte Heul 95, 1403 ND BUSSUM
  Phone +31 (35) 6980059 FAX +31 (35) 6980215  http://WWW.MicroWalt.NL/

Dit  bericht  en  eventuele bijlagen is  uitsluitend  bestemd  voor  de
geadresseerde.  Openbaarmaking,   vermenigvuldiging,  verspreiding  aan
derden  is  niet  toegestaan.   Er   wordt   geen  verantwoordelijkheid 
genomen  voor de juiste en  volledige  overbrenging van  de inhoud  van
dit bericht, noch voor de tijdige ontvangst ervan.

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[quapla]

Ummmm, they can't. Windows XP most likely uses pieces of Xenix to get
it stable. And you know that they will not release sources of the 
windoze O.S-es :=)

Ed


> Paul,
> 
>> Bleh, sorry for the blank post... notes went schitzo.... 
> *smile*
> 
>> If MS can release WinCE source, then they would probably do
>> the same for XENIX.... both PDP/11 and the x86 version perhaps...  Its
>> not like we want the source... just a tape image would do me :) 
>> Perhaps there is someone in MS who knows of XENIX's existance and can
>> help....  I'll have a word with a friend of mine who works
>> there :) 
> Yeah, I agree.  I personally think MS would release Xenix, as it no
> longer has any commercial value whatsoever to them.  The hardest part
> might be finding people within who know about it, and who can point us
> in the right (legalese) direction.  Once MS signs off on it, the people
> at SC(O)aldera won't have a problem with releasing the tapes.
> 
> Cheers,
> 	Fred
> 
> 
>            InterNetworking en Network Security Consultant
>   MicroWalt Corporation (Netherlands), Korte Heul 95, 1403 ND BUSSUM
>  Phone +31 (35) 6980059 FAX +31 (35) 6980215  http://WWW.MicroWalt.NL/
> 
> Dit  bericht  en  eventuele bijlagen is  uitsluitend  bestemd  voor  de
> geadresseerde.  Openbaarmaking,   vermenigvuldiging,  verspreiding  aan
> derden  is  niet  toegestaan.   Er   wordt   geen  verantwoordelijkheid
>  genomen  voor de juiste en  volledige  overbrenging van  de inhoud 
> van dit bericht, noch voor de tijdige ontvangst ervan.
> _______________________________________________
> PUPS mailing list
> PUPS at minnie.tuhs.org
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups

[pups] UNIX/RT

[Lars Buitinck]

I think I've found the influence of UNIX/RT on the world at large, and
the Open Sores^V^V^V^Vource community in particular.
from OpenBSD 3.0 /etc/magic:

0       leshort         0401            PDP-11 UNIX/RT ldp

(can anyone tell me what ldp means?)


ps.

Thus spake quapla at xs4all.nl:
> Ummmm, they can't. Windows XP most likely uses pieces of Xenix to get
> it stable. And you know that they will not release sources of the 
> windoze O.S-es :=)

stable?
are we talking about the same OS?

--
If I travelled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot is at the other end

Lars

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Michael Davidson]

Fred N. van Kempen wrote:

>Paul,
>
>>If MS can release WinCE source, then they would probably do
>>the same for XENIX.... both PDP/11 and the x86 version perhaps... 
>>Its not like we want the source... just a tape image would do me :) 
>>Perhaps there is someone in MS who knows of XENIX's existance and
>>can help....  I'll have a word with a friend of mine who works
>>there :) 
>>
>Yeah, I agree.  I personally think MS would release Xenix, as it no
>longer has any commercial value whatsoever to them.  The hardest part
>might be finding people within who know about it, and who can point
>us in the right (legalese) direction.  Once MS signs off on it, the
>people at SC(O)aldera won't have a problem with releasing the tapes.
>
Microsoft probably wouldn't have any problem releasing the PDP-11 version
of XENIX - it is, after all, really just a minor V7 variant with very 
little Microsoft
code in it.

The two problems you will have are:

- finding anyone at Microsoft who knows what PDP-11 XENIX is,  and 
understands that
  it has no commercial value.

- finding either a binary or source distribution of it


XENIX for the x86 family hasn't quite reached the status of "no 
commercial value" yet.
Caldera still ships XENIX compatibility with the OpenServer operating 
system,
customers still use it, and we still pay Microsoft royalties on every 
copy of OpenServer
that we ship for that very reason.

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[asmodai]

Bleh, sorry for the blank post... notes went schitzo....


If MS can release WinCE source, then they would probably do the same for 
XENIX.... both PDP/11 and the x86 version perhaps...
Its not like we want the source... just a tape image would do me :)
Perhaps there is someone in MS who knows of XENIX's existance and can 
help....  I'll have a word with a friend of mine who works there :)
Regards,
Paul.




Frank Wortner <frank at wortner.com>
Sent by: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org
04/03/2002 04:31

 
        To:     <asmodai at unixware.org.uk>, <pups at minnie.tuhs.org>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History


on 4/2/02 5:38 PM, asmodai at unixware.org.uk at asmodai at unixware.org.uk 
wrote:


I wrote to SCO/Caldera a while back about this one...   Here's a quote 
from the mail I got in reply: 

"XENIX will never be released under any license, as it is too full of 
Microsoft copyrights...?

Well,  there?s always the possibility that Microsoft could see fit to make 
a ?hobby? PDP/11 XENIX license available.  Why not?
-- 
Frank

"Don't Blame Me."
* Eeyore,  "Winnie the Pooh"


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20020403/700a9940/attachment.html>

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[asmodai]

Frank Wortner <frank at wortner.com>
Sent by: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org
04/03/2002 04:31

 
        To:     <asmodai at unixware.org.uk>, <pups at minnie.tuhs.org>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History


on 4/2/02 5:38 PM, asmodai at unixware.org.uk at asmodai at unixware.org.uk 
wrote:


I wrote to SCO/Caldera a while back about this one...   Here's a quote 
from the mail I got in reply: 

"XENIX will never be released under any license, as it is too full of 
Microsoft copyrights...?

Well,  there?s always the possibility that Microsoft could see fit to make 
a ?hobby? PDP/11 XENIX license available.  Why not?

-- 
Frank

"Don't Blame Me."
* Eeyore,  "Winnie the Pooh"


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20020403/630b9506/attachment.html>

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[asmodai]

I wrote to SCO/Caldera a while back about this one...   Here's a quote 
from the mail I got in reply:

"XENIX will never be released under any license, as it is too full of 
Microsoft copyrights, and "sanitizing" the source to remove such code 
would render the product useless, and would be a MASSIVE undertaking."

Looks like we wont get Xenix in source format unless Microsoft want us to 
have it.

Regards,
Paul.
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that 
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go 
wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or 
repair" - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy





Robert Tillyard <rob at vetsystems.com>
Sent by: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org
03/25/2002 10:38

 
        To:     pups at minnie.tuhs.org
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History


Frank Wortner wrote:
> 
> on 3/23/02 11:26 PM, Warren Toomey at wkt at minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
> 
> > In article by Martin Crehan:
> >>  From a thread on Slashdot about Microsoft's Ancient History w/Unix
> >> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/23/1422243.shtml?tid=130
> >>
> >>   First Unix/Xenix (Score:1)
> >> by presearch on Saturday March 23, @01:58PM (#3213453)
> >> (User #214913 Info)
> >
> > I've left a comment in the thread asking if they would
> > donate a copy of the tape's contents to our Archive.
> 
> I also remember running PDP/11 Xenix.  The article is basically correct,
> although Microsoft (or HCR) did add a working paging system that enabled
> simulation of split I&D on small PDP/11s like the 11/23, 11/34, and 
11/40.
> I also remember that my copy of the installation document had been 
printed
> by Microsoft's PDP/10 (referred to as the "Microsoft Heating Plant" :-) 
in
> the printout).   I wish I still had the tape and that printout.  Sigh 
...
> 
> --
> Frank

Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this? SCO did the Intel port of Xenix
so they would probably have started with the PDP source. Would tapes be
copyright to Microsoft?

I doubt that they would release the source for the Intel version as it
is still in use today although I don't think that SCO/Caldera will sell
it anymore.

Rob.
_______________________________________________
PUPS mailing list
PUPS at minnie.tuhs.org
http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20020402/ef0272d6/attachment.html>

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Frank Wortner]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 647 bytes --]

on 4/2/02 5:38 PM, asmodai at unixware.org.uk at asmodai at unixware.org.uk wrote:


> I wrote to SCO/Caldera a while back about this one...   Here's a quote from
> the mail I got in reply:
> 
"XENIX will never be released under any license, as it is too full of
Microsoft copyrights...²

Well,  there¹s always the possibility that Microsoft could see fit to make a
³hobby² PDP/11 XENIX license available.  Why not?
-- 
Frank

"Don't Blame Me."
* Eeyore,  "Winnie the Pooh"


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20020402/3f385d5c/attachment.html>

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Frank Wortner]

on 3/23/02 11:26 PM, Warren Toomey at wkt at minnie.tuhs.org wrote:

> In article by Martin Crehan:
>>  From a thread on Slashdot about Microsoft's Ancient History w/Unix
>> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/23/1422243.shtml?tid=130
>> 
>>   First Unix/Xenix (Score:1)
>> by presearch on Saturday March 23, @01:58PM (#3213453)
>> (User #214913 Info)
> 
> I've left a comment in the thread asking if they would
> donate a copy of the tape's contents to our Archive.

I also remember running PDP/11 Xenix.  The article is basically correct,
although Microsoft (or HCR) did add a working paging system that enabled
simulation of split I&D on small PDP/11s like the 11/23, 11/34, and 11/40.
I also remember that my copy of the installation document had been printed
by Microsoft's PDP/10 (referred to as the "Microsoft Heating Plant" :-) in
the printout).   I wish I still had the tape and that printout.  Sigh ...

-- 
Frank

"I don't hold with all this washing.  This modern Behind-the-ears nonsense."
* Eeyore, "Winnie the Pooh"

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Johnny Billquist]

On Sun, 24 Mar 2002, Frank Wortner wrote:

> on 3/23/02 11:26 PM, Warren Toomey at wkt at minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
> 
> > I've left a comment in the thread asking if they would
> > donate a copy of the tape's contents to our Archive.
> 
> I also remember running PDP/11 Xenix.  The article is basically correct,
> although Microsoft (or HCR) did add a working paging system that enabled
> simulation of split I&D on small PDP/11s like the 11/23, 11/34, and 11/40.

I don't understand how any paging system could simulate split I/D space?
Do you remember any details?

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Frank Wortner]

> I don't understand how any paging system could simulate split I/D space?
> Do you remember any details?

Sure.  (Perhaps I used an incorrect term,  but "paging" seemed reasonable.)
The executing image consisted of 3 parts:  2 8K segments of instructions,
and 1 48K segment of data/stack.  One of the 8K instruction segments was
always resident in core and contained some program code and sort of jump
table.  As the program executed,  it used the jump table to map appropriate
8K sections of code into the other 8K instruction segment.  The 48K data
segment was always resident in memory.  The net effect was a slow pseudo
split I&D area with 56K instruction space and 48K data space.  For the most
part,  this was adequate to run system utilities.

The link edit scheme was fairly complicated.  You first had to build two
executables:  a standard shared text executable,  and a standard split I&D
executable.  Then you had to run a special program which took those two
binaries as input and constructed the final image.  If any of your
subroutines couldn't fit into 8K,  you were out of luck.  Fortunately,  the
C compiler driver had a option to do this silliness automatically.

I remember being frustrated by the fact that Microsoft had,  for reasons
unknown,  forgotten to build /usr/bin/sort as one of these special binaries.
Instead,  it was a conventional split I&D executable.  I had to convince a
friend of mine whose institution had a source license to let me "borrow" the
source to sort so I could build an executable that ran on a PDP 11/23.

Robert Tillyard asked "Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this [PDP/11
XENIX]?"  I remember asking that same question on this very list several
years ago.  Warren's answer was essentially "No."  If I remember correctly,
he said that they really had no archival material at all.

I don't remember what happened to the copy I worked with.  It probably
vanished into a dumpster when the company I worked for went "belly up."

If anyone *does* still have a copy,  it would be great to see it in the PUPS
Archives,  since it is probably the "rarest" PDP/11 Unix variant.
-- 
Frank

"They haven't got Brains,  any of them,  only grey fluff that's blown into
their heads by mistake,  and they don't Think."
* Eeyore,  "The House at Pooh Corner"

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Michael Davidson]

Frank Wortner wrote:
>  
> The link edit scheme was fairly complicated.  You first had to build two
> executables:  a standard shared text executable,  and a standard split I&D
> executable.  Then you had to run a special program which took those two
> binaries as input and constructed the final image.  If any of your
> subroutines couldn't fit into 8K,  you were out of luck.  Fortunately,  the
> C compiler driver had a option to do this silliness automatically.

The program that did this was called "23fix" (since it "fixed" things
so that they could be run on a non split i&d 11/23) 

> Robert Tillyard asked "Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this [PDP/11
> XENIX]?"  I remember asking that same question on this very list several
> years ago.  Warren's answer was essentially "No."  If I remember correctly,
> he said that they really had no archival material at all.

Unfortunately all of the "official" SCO archives from this era went
into some offsite storage facility about 10 years ago, never to be
seen again. I expect that there are still a few copies around, but
I don't personally have one.

By the way, just to complicate things even more, SCO really didn't
do much at all with XENIX/11 since they already had their own V7
based UNIX, called "Dynix" (a name which was later sold to Sequent).
Most of the actual XENIX/11 systems that I encountered were actually
supplied by the "Software Products Group" of Logica (which was
ultimately acquired by SCO back in 1986)

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Frank Wortner]

on 3/26/02 2:41 AM, Michael Davidson at MichaelDavidson at pacbell.net wrote:

> The program that did this was called "23fix"

Yes!   Thank you for reminding me;  I had forgotten its name.

> Unfortunately all of the "official" SCO archives from this era went
> into some offsite storage facility about 10 years ago, never to be
> seen again.

Too bad.  It would be nice if a tape of XENIX/11 surfaced.  I'll look in my
attic again,  but I doubt I have anything from that era.
-- 
Frank

"Plez cnoke if an rnsr is not reqid."
Sign on Owl's Door, "Winnie the Pooh"

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Robert Tillyard]

Frank Wortner wrote:
> 
> on 3/23/02 11:26 PM, Warren Toomey at wkt at minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
> 
> > In article by Martin Crehan:
> >>  From a thread on Slashdot about Microsoft's Ancient History w/Unix
> >> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/23/1422243.shtml?tid=130
> >>
> >>   First Unix/Xenix (Score:1)
> >> by presearch on Saturday March 23, @01:58PM (#3213453)
> >> (User #214913 Info)
> >
> > I've left a comment in the thread asking if they would
> > donate a copy of the tape's contents to our Archive.
> 
> I also remember running PDP/11 Xenix.  The article is basically correct,
> although Microsoft (or HCR) did add a working paging system that enabled
> simulation of split I&D on small PDP/11s like the 11/23, 11/34, and 11/40.
> I also remember that my copy of the installation document had been printed
> by Microsoft's PDP/10 (referred to as the "Microsoft Heating Plant" :-) in
> the printout).   I wish I still had the tape and that printout.  Sigh ...
> 
> --
> Frank

Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this? SCO did the Intel port of Xenix
so they would probably have started with the PDP source. Would tapes be
copyright to Microsoft?

I doubt that they would release the source for the Intel version as it
is still in use today although I don't think that SCO/Caldera will sell
it anymore.

Rob.

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Warren Toomey]

In article by Robert Tillyard:
> Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this? SCO did the Intel port of Xenix
> so they would probably have started with the PDP source. Would tapes be
> copyright to Microsoft?
> 
> I doubt that they would release the source for the Intel version as it
> is still in use today although I don't think that SCO/Caldera will sell
> it anymore.
> 
> Rob.

SCO/Caldera only have what we have given them from the Unix Archive.
That's pretty ironical 8-)

I assume that any tapes of Xenix we found would be (c) HCR or Microsoft.
I don't even want to contemplate getting the release permissions :-(

	Warren

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Michael Davidson]

Warren Toomey wrote:
> 
> In article by Robert Tillyard:
> > Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this? SCO did the Intel port of Xenix
> > so they would probably have started with the PDP source. Would tapes be
> > copyright to Microsoft?

As I mentioned in another message, I believe that SCO really had
very little to do with XENIX/11, because they already had their
own commercial version of V7, called Dynix.

[ when I arrived at SCO in 1986 there was what appeared to
  be a pretty complete archive of everything the company had
  ever done in the "media library" - there were lots of Dynix
  and V7 tapes in there, but I can't recall ever actually seeing
  one labelled XENIX/11 ]

Most of the XENIX/11 systems that I am aware of actually came
from Logica.

There were several variants of the "Intel" port of XENIX
which supported the 8086, the 80286 and, ultimately, the 80386.

There were also a number of OEM versions, notably one from IBM 
(for the PC/AT) and several from Altos for machines such as the
Altos 586 (8086 processor) and Altos 986 (80286 processor).

Most of the work on these systems was actually done by Microsoft.

SCO's contribution was in three main areas:

- device drivers
- the "no MMU" port for vanilla 8086 / 8088 systems such as the PC/XT
- packaging and creation of a "shrinkwrapped" product which sold
  through distribution channels

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Lars Buitinck]

I'm getting really confused with all these companies.  If I understand
correctly...

AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
Microsoft had HCR develop XENIX from V7.
SCO licensed XENIX from Microsoft.
SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.

Please correct me.  I must be wrong.

(What happened to our MERT discussion anyway? :-)

Long & winding PS.: I read this really cute book about Linux at my local
library some time ago.  It discussed UNIX, Linux, their relation, and the
current state of affairs when it was written -- in 1994.  The book
started out with an etymology of XENIX, which would have been derived
from Dutch "'k Zie niks," meaning "I don't see a thing" -- the first
thing Dutch users uttered when XENIX booted.
Last year, I talked to a fellow member of the HCC (Hobby Computer Club)
UNIX gg (gebruikersgroep, user group) who remembered his worst
experience with UNIX -- having to use XENIX.  He was still shocked by its
Microsoftian performance.

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Michael Davidson]

Lars Buitinck wrote:

>I'm getting really confused with all these companies.  If I understand
>correctly...
>
It  was all very complicated ...
... much too complicated to describe accurately in a short piece of email.

One thing to understand is that the companies that you mention (and, of
course, many others, all had ongoing relationships with each other that
often lasted for a period of several years, so licenses and technology
transfers weren't usually just "one-time" events.

I have added a few comments below which may help to add to the confusion.

>
>
>AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
>
Not exactly. The only time that UNIX *rights* were really *sold* or 
transferred
were with the various changes in ownership of the group which developed
UNIX. ie the USL -> Novell -> SCO -> Caldera  series of transactions.

Microsoft was just another licensee of various versions of UNIX, starting
with V7 and ending up with System V Release 3.2

>
>Microsoft had HCR develop XENIX from V7.
>
Once again it isn't as simple as that - I'm not sure of the exact 
sequence of
events - HCR (which was acquired by SCO in the early 1990's)  was yet
another independent licensee of various versions of UNIX and had done
work on both V6 and V7. Perhaps Mike Tilson can shed some more
light on exactly what went on back in those days - I will ask him when I
get the chance.

>
>SCO licensed XENIX from Microsoft.
>
Yes.

>
>SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.
>
Yes, although SCO's main business was in selling shrinkwrapped OS
products for standard Intel hardware - SCO did sublicense the code
to a few people - mainly large OEMs.

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Lars Buitinck]

Thus spake Michael Davidson <MichaelDavidson at pacbell.net>:
> It  was all very complicated ...
> ... much too complicated to describe accurately in a short piece of
> email.

thanks for trying.  it helped!

> >AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
> >
> Not exactly. The only time that UNIX *rights* were really *sold* or 
> transferred
> were with the various changes in ownership of the group which developed
> UNIX. ie the USL -> Novell -> SCO -> Caldera  series of transactions.

I meant licensed.  sorry.

> >SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.
> >
> Yes, although SCO's main business was in selling shrinkwrapped OS
> products for standard Intel hardware - SCO did sublicense the code
> to a few people - mainly large OEMs.

Tandy, right?


this brings up memories of my first experiences in computing...
being +-6 years old and impressed by my cousin's 286/20 (we had a /12)

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday, 28 March 2002 at  0:24:11 +0100, Lars Buitinck wrote:
> I'm getting really confused with all these companies.  If I understand
> correctly...
>
> AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
> Microsoft had HCR develop XENIX from V7.
> SCO licensed XENIX from Microsoft.
> SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.
>
> Please correct me.  I must be wrong.
>
> (What happened to our MERT discussion anyway? :-)
>
> Long & winding PS.: I read this really cute book about Linux at my local
> library some time ago.  It discussed UNIX, Linux, their relation, and the
> current state of affairs when it was written -- in 1994.  The book
> started out with an etymology of XENIX, which would have been derived
> from Dutch "'k Zie niks," meaning "I don't see a thing" -- the first
> thing Dutch users uttered when XENIX booted.

Note that in English, the X is usually pronounced like an S ("zie
niks").  Siemens made a pun on this with their Sinix product; "Sinix"
in German is pronounced the same way as "XENIX" in English :-)

> Last year, I talked to a fellow member of the HCC (Hobby Computer
> Club) UNIX gg (gebruikersgroep, user group) who remembered his worst
> experience with UNIX -- having to use XENIX.  He was still shocked
> by its Microsoftian performance.

I've used XENIX/386 in the early 90s.  The development tools were
terrible, but I found somebody who had ported the GNU tools to XENIX
(doing it yourself would rob you of your sanity).  After that, it
wasn't too bad, but it was a pretty limited system.  I ended up
building a cross-build environment on UnixWare.

Greg
--
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2002-Mar-28 11:58:08 +1030, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>I've used XENIX/386 in the early 90s.

I recall using XENIX/286 in the mid 80's.  We were porting some
software from Micro/RSX on a PDP-11/03.  The AT-class box (an ITT
XTRA/XL) was significantly faster.  And later, having 8 developers on
one 8MHz 80286 was, err, interesting.  I also remember having it panic
when it tried to fork a large (~2MB) process.

>  The development tools were terrible,

And unbundled.  I don't recall too many problems with the C compiler,
but we were porting Pascal - and the Pascal compiler was atrocious.
The object code (and whether a piece of code would compile at all)
seemed to depend on whim of the compiler.  Obviously whoever wrote it
hadn't grasped the concepts of initialising variables, making arrays
large enough to fit their contents or only using a single piece of
memory to store one thing at a time :-).

> but I found somebody who had ported the GNU tools to XENIX
>(doing it yourself would rob you of your sanity).

I don't think you could get any of the GNU tools to run on a 286 so I
was mostly limited to the SCO tools.  I recall doctoring MicroEmacs so
that it was all small model but allocated the buffers in "far" memory
- that gave me the ability to edit large files with acceptable
performance.

Peter

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Lars Buitinck]

Thus spake Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>:
> 
> Note that in English, the X is usually pronounced like an S ("zie
> niks").  Siemens made a pun on this with their Sinix product; "Sinix"
> in German is pronounced the same way as "XENIX" in English :-)
> 

Siemens' computer division is (or was) called Nixdorf...
I always read Sinix as SIemens NIXdorf

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Saturday, 30 March 2002 at 12:03:28 +0100, Lars Buitinck wrote:
> Thus spake Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>:
>>
>> Note that in English, the X is usually pronounced like an S ("zie
>> niks").  Siemens made a pun on this with their Sinix product; "Sinix"
>> in German is pronounced the same way as "XENIX" in English :-)
>
> Siemens' computer division is (or was) called Nixdorf...

No, Siemens and Nixdorf merged in the early 90s.

> I always read Sinix as SIemens NIXdorf

Interesting derivation, but Sinix has been around since before Siemens
and Nixdorf merged.

Greg
--
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Martin Crehan]

 From a thread on Slashdot about Microsoft's Ancient History w/Unix
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/23/1422243.shtml?tid=130

  First Unix/Xenix (Score:1)
by presearch on Saturday March 23, @01:58PM (#3213453)
(User #214913 Info)

In 1979 all that existed of Xenix was a silver brochure from Microsoft
but there was no distribution. I wanted it to run it/sell it, seeing that
you could do the timesharing thing just like back at college, except
without a giant machine behind glass. I contacted the then tiny
Microsoft, asked, begged, pleaded but they had nothing to sell.

After multiple inquiries, they finally told me that they didn't have
Xenix yet, but they expected it to arrive shortly. Arrive? From where?
I was told, from Human Computing Resources (HCR) in Toronto.
Ahh, interesting. So I called HCR somehow got them to commit
to an early delivery. After a few weeks, and several dollars, the
day came. MS wanted a PDP-11 and 68000 version and was
only after the PDP-11 distro, I was 1 week ahead in the queue
from Microsoft. So, as I was told from HCR, I had the first Xenix
distribution in the US, ahead of Microsoft. I ran it on a LSI-11/23
with insanely expensive 256Kb of memory and a giant 20Mb
drive from Charles River Data Systems. It also had 2 eight inch
floppies (errrtt, clunk, clunk, errrrttt), and 2 four port serial cards
that each ran a VT100. The distro came on a 9-track tape (which
I still have) and the take drive was this weird, front loading thing
where you loaded the tape in the front like a big floppy and it
auto threaded the tape (sometimes). As I remember, it seemed
pretty fast, I'd start up stuff on all of the terminals, just to do it.
Of course, it wasn't that fast but at the time....

The Unix itself was a more or less pure Unix v7. The only thing,
as I remember that made is Xenix, was the boot message and
the captions on the man pages. There was no vi at that time,
the editor of choice was "ed". It did have a nice /usr/games
and I got a Zork for it from a friend.

We ended up selling a few of the boxes. The company was
called MSD. The only record of such is in a 1981 (Jan?) issue
of Byte with our little ad in the back. And that's the story of the
first commercial Unix sold in the US. 

[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[Warren Toomey]

In article by Martin Crehan:
>  From a thread on Slashdot about Microsoft's Ancient History w/Unix
> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/23/1422243.shtml?tid=130
> 
>   First Unix/Xenix (Score:1)
> by presearch on Saturday March 23, @01:58PM (#3213453)
> (User #214913 Info)

I've left a comment in the thread asking if they would
donate a copy of the tape's contents to our Archive.

	Warren