The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
@ 2019-11-03 21:05 Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-03 21:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

This stuff is extremely poorly preserved.  No time like the present to
fix that.  I was reading Tom's blog
https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of
Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while.

I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
Tell me where to go.

Regards,
Kevin

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-03 21:05 [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
  2019-11-04  0:06   ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-04  1:29   ` Dennis Boone
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dennis Boone @ 2019-11-03 23:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

 > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
 > 3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
 > Tell me where to go.

Don't forget to air cargo your tape drying mechanism too.

De

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
@ 2019-11-04  0:06   ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-04  1:29   ` Dennis Boone
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-04  0:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dennis Boone; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 714 bytes --]

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:39 PM Dennis Boone <drb@msu.edu> wrote:

>  > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
>  > 3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
>  > Tell me where to go.
>
> Don't forget to air cargo your tape drying mechanism too.
>
> De
>
There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time applied
“tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available almost
anywhere.  I haven’t had any issues with properly stored 9 track from the
late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

http://www.heeltoe.com/retro/tapes/ has links to the authoritative sources
but gives a good enough overview for water cooler talk.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1127 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
  2019-11-04  0:06   ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-04  1:29   ` Dennis Boone
  2019-11-04  1:58     ` Kevin Bowling
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dennis Boone @ 2019-11-04  1:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

 > There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time
 > applied “tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available
 > almost anywhere.

Problem is that you can't necessarily tell _which_ by inspection.  And
if you just try reading it, the one that needed help will take damage in
the drive.

De

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-04  1:29   ` Dennis Boone
@ 2019-11-04  1:58     ` Kevin Bowling
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-04  1:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dennis Boone; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

We live in an imperfect world.  All we can do is try; it will
certainly cease with inaction.  It's painfully ironic we have
effectively limitless perfect preservation systems [1] now, but are
losing worthwhile information at an astonishing rate.  I suspect most
estate sales, and even professional archivists[2] trash manuals, tape
and things like microfiche without really thinking much about it
because they don't really understand how to bring it to permanent
storage systems or that nobody else has done so either.

[1] Stack your favorite local filesystem, a public cloud, and/or archive.org
[2] I accidentally came across this pulling up the tape baking link
showing almost this
https://ricehistorycorner.com/2015/05/13/obsolete-technology-reel-to-reel/

Regards,
Kevin

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 6:30 PM Dennis Boone <drb@msu.edu> wrote:
>
>  > There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time
>  > applied “tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available
>  > almost anywhere.
>
> Problem is that you can't necessarily tell _which_ by inspection.  And
> if you just try reading it, the one that needed help will take damage in
> the drive.
>
> De

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-03 21:05 [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
@ 2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
  2019-11-04  4:49   ` Kevin Bowling
                     ` (3 more replies)
  1 sibling, 4 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Gregg Levine @ 2019-11-04  3:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Hello!
Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which
had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said.

If you do get a good copy then I'm interested.

The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well.

Adam any comments?
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com> wrote:
>
> This stuff is extremely poorly preserved.  No time like the present to
> fix that.  I was reading Tom's blog
> https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of
> Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while.
>
> I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
> 3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
> Tell me where to go.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
@ 2019-11-04  4:49   ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-04 15:32   ` Adam Thornton
                     ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-04  4:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Gregg Levine; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1304 bytes --]

I have anecdotal evidence UTS and at least one of the AIX VM ports were
used within the Bell telephone companies.  I can pour through my telecom
stuff and try to find it.

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 8:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
> Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which
> had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said.
>
> If you do get a good copy then I'm interested.
>
> The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well.
>
> Adam any comments?
> -----
> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > This stuff is extremely poorly preserved.  No time like the present to
> > fix that.  I was reading Tom's blog
> > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of
> > Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while.
> >
> > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
> > 3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
> > Tell me where to go.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kevin
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1961 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
  2019-11-04  4:49   ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-04 15:32   ` Adam Thornton
  2019-11-05 16:21   ` Ronald Natalie
  2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Adam Thornton @ 2019-11-04 15:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Gregg Levine, The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1491 bytes --]

I would love to give it a shot.  I was thinking about trying to get
Hercules going on a laptop this weekend while I was in Houston but I didn’t
get around to it so I will probably set up a Pi when I get back.  The
v6-1/2 port seems neat.  When and if I have something running I will add
the systems to mvsevm.fsf.net.

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 9:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
> Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which
> had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said.
>
> If you do get a good copy then I'm interested.
>
> The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well.
>
> Adam any comments?
> -----
> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > This stuff is extremely poorly preserved.  No time like the present to
> > fix that.  I was reading Tom's blog
> > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of
> > Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while.
> >
> > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM
> > 3490.  Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card.
> > Tell me where to go.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kevin
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2148 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
  2019-11-04  4:49   ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-04 15:32   ` Adam Thornton
@ 2019-11-05 16:21   ` Ronald Natalie
  2019-11-05 18:04     ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Ronald Natalie @ 2019-11-05 16:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

One of my first jobs I did for the company that I ended up working for decades was a job for IBM FSD to put a second ethernet interface in to “secure XENIX” (a MLS system) to allow the system to be  used for downgrading classified material.    This gave us an in with IBM FSD and this led to us doing work with an IBM on a pair of microchannel i860 coprocessor cards called the Wizard and the W4.   We ported AIX to both of them.    The cards ran inside of another AIX PS/2 system so the TCF was really handy in allowing apps that only had 386 versions to run, the ability to maintain a common file system, and to share peripherals.   Indeed, I think the major reason IBM used the TCF concept is it gave the 370 version of the thing an easy way to interoperate with user’s on the PS/2’s.   3270’s and other terminals designed for the mainframe really weren’t suited for UNIX.

The initial Wizard card had no I/O other than the host PS/2.    It was really more or less an academic experiment (the cards were also buggy).    Two amusing things however came out of that port.   The AIX for the PS/2 had this thing to multiplex the normal VGA display (outside of X) called the “High Function Terminal.”   Our i860 version was less capable so it was denoted the “Low Function Terminal.”     The other was that I hacked the -mm macro package to mimic the style of the IBM manuals so we could write “IBM-ish” documentation.

The W4 card was interesting.   It had 4 i860 processors along with it’s own framebuffer.    One of my employees spent a lot of time of in Owego fixing the memory system (the whole thing was set up with these Xilinx PGAs that were easy to update in the field).     Amusingly, the machine-specific parts of the W4 version of the AIX kernel had more in common with the 370 version than the i386 version.     I spent weeks out at the IBM Palo Alto Science Center doing work on this project.    I had managed to inadvertantly shutdown the main AIX/370 in the cluster (such is a problem when things get too transparent).     Of course, while I had experience using VM/CMS before (both at the University of Maryalnd and at Rutgers), I’d never really much dealt with the operations side of the 370.    But I found my way to a 3270 and typed “ipl aix” with at the command line with extreme optimism, but that was indeed all it took.



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
                     ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2019-11-05 16:21   ` Ronald Natalie
@ 2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 22:11     ` [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: " Charles H Sauer
  3 siblings, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-05 17:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Gregg Levine; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1850 bytes --]

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product
>

I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over the
world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them.  True, the customers
were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were
commercial customers..  For instance, I was told that my current employer
ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2
cluster under iTCF  FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to
migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I
don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different
people, so I'm comfortable repeating it).

I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite
difficult.  IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you
had to know about it and know you to ask to get it.  Charlie may know more,
but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a
separate code base.

As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same except
for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck.  IBM kept the IP
locked up.   We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a couple
of very special systems and access was tightly controlled.   I was not on
that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be contaminated as
I was one of the TNC architects).  But I was allowed to talk with Bruce and
Greg who were the TCF architects.   We did all talk about common issues;
but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after the IBM contract
ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF.


Clem

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3103 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 16:21   ` Ronald Natalie
@ 2019-11-05 18:04     ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 19:22       ` ron
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-05 18:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ronald Natalie; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Veering off topic but I'm familiar with the Wizard
http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/CPU/wizard.html

What was the framebuffer used for/under?

The HFT and LFT terms were carried forth into POWER AIX.  AIX 3.x had
a home grown HFT with virtual terminals and some other semi-graphical
features.  AIX 4.X ported a STREAMs based console I/O stack from OSF
and they called it the LFT because it lost all those features; users
were directed to X11 for advanced terminal handling.

Regards,
Kevin

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 9:21 AM Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
> One of my first jobs I did for the company that I ended up working for decades was a job for IBM FSD to put a second ethernet interface in to “secure XENIX” (a MLS system) to allow the system to be  used for downgrading classified material.    This gave us an in with IBM FSD and this led to us doing work with an IBM on a pair of microchannel i860 coprocessor cards called the Wizard and the W4.   We ported AIX to both of them.    The cards ran inside of another AIX PS/2 system so the TCF was really handy in allowing apps that only had 386 versions to run, the ability to maintain a common file system, and to share peripherals.   Indeed, I think the major reason IBM used the TCF concept is it gave the 370 version of the thing an easy way to interoperate with user’s on the PS/2’s.   3270’s and other terminals designed for the mainframe really weren’t suited for UNIX.
>
> The initial Wizard card had no I/O other than the host PS/2.    It was really more or less an academic experiment (the cards were also buggy).    Two amusing things however came out of that port.   The AIX for the PS/2 had this thing to multiplex the normal VGA display (outside of X) called the “High Function Terminal.”   Our i860 version was less capable so it was denoted the “Low Function Terminal.”     The other was that I hacked the -mm macro package to mimic the style of the IBM manuals so we could write “IBM-ish” documentation.
>
> The W4 card was interesting.   It had 4 i860 processors along with it’s own framebuffer.    One of my employees spent a lot of time of in Owego fixing the memory system (the whole thing was set up with these Xilinx PGAs that were easy to update in the field).     Amusingly, the machine-specific parts of the W4 version of the AIX kernel had more in common with the 370 version than the i386 version.     I spent weeks out at the IBM Palo Alto Science Center doing work on this project.    I had managed to inadvertantly shutdown the main AIX/370 in the cluster (such is a problem when things get too transparent).     Of course, while I had experience using VM/CMS before (both at the University of Maryalnd and at Rutgers), I’d never really much dealt with the operations side of the 370.    But I found my way to a 3270 and typed “ipl aix” with at the command line with extreme optimism, but that was indeed all it took.
>
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
@ 2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 18:15       ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
  2019-11-05 22:11     ` [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: " Charles H Sauer
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-05 18:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Clem,

The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/
and can run in virtualbox
https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/

Regards,
Kevin

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 10:30 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
>> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
>> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product
>
>
> I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over the world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them.  True, the customers were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were commercial customers..  For instance, I was told that my current employer ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2 cluster under iTCF  FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different people, so I'm comfortable repeating it).
>
> I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite difficult.  IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you had to know about it and know you to ask to get it.  Charlie may know more, but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a separate code base.
>
> As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same except for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck.  IBM kept the IP locked up.   We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a couple of very special systems and access was tightly controlled.   I was not on that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be contaminated as I was one of the TNC architects).  But I was allowed to talk with Bruce and Greg who were the TCF architects.   We did all talk about common issues; but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after the IBM contract ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF.
>
>
> Clem
>
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 18:15       ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-05 18:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2383 bytes --]

Oh boy another time sync ;-)
Thanks Kevin.
Clem

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:08 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
wrote:

> Clem,
>
> The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/
> and can run in virtualbox
>
> https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/
>
> Regards,
> Kevin
>
> On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 10:30 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
> >> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
> >> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product
> >
> >
> > I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over
> the world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them.  True, the
> customers were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were
> commercial customers..  For instance, I was told that my current employer
> ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2
> cluster under iTCF  FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to
> migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I
> don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different
> people, so I'm comfortable repeating it).
> >
> > I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite
> difficult.  IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you
> had to know about it and know you to ask to get it.  Charlie may know more,
> but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a
> separate code base.
> >
> > As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same
> except for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck.  IBM kept the
> IP locked up.   We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a
> couple of very special systems and access was tightly controlled.   I was
> not on that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be
> contaminated as I was one of the TNC architects).  But I was allowed to
> talk with Bruce and Greg who were the TCF architects.   We did all talk
> about common issues; but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after
> the IBM contract ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF.
> >
> >
> > Clem
> >
> >
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3383 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 18:15       ` Clem Cole
@ 2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
  2019-11-05 19:12         ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 20:10         ` Clem Cole
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Browne @ 2019-11-05 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 774 bytes --]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2019 at 13:08, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com> wrote:

> Clem,
>
> The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/
> and can run in virtualbox
>
> https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/
>

Wow, so the "x86" version of AIX truly existed!

I had long heard rumour of this, and had heard of it from sources I was
inclined to trust not to be making it up.  The dates seem to decently
explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 and withdrawal in March 1995
left but a brief period of time when anyone would have been willing to
acknowledge it as a product.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1397 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
@ 2019-11-05 19:12         ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 19:26           ` SPC
  2019-11-05 20:10         ` Clem Cole
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-05 19:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Christopher Browne; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1577 bytes --]

It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in
some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running
PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot.

I have seen the media kits in person recently.  They comically come with an
“action” key cap for your Model M.  I have a picture of interested.

I don’t think the lack of popularity was any conspiracy.  SCO had much
better ISV and hardware support for PS/2. And if you had a nickel for a
real computer there’s a reason the RS/6000 platform and AIX are still
around today, it’s not bad stuff despite being a bit different and foreign.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 12:03 PM Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Nov 2019 at 13:08, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Clem,
>>
>> The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/
>> and can run in virtualbox
>>
>> https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/
>>
>
> Wow, so the "x86" version of AIX truly existed!
>
> I had long heard rumour of this, and had heard of it from sources I was
> inclined to trust not to be making it up.  The dates seem to decently
> explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 and withdrawal in March 1995
> left but a brief period of time when anyone would have been willing to
> acknowledge it as a product.
>
> --
> When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
> question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2559 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 18:04     ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 19:22       ` ron
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: ron @ 2019-11-05 19:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Kevin Bowling'; +Cc: 'The Eunuchs Hysterical Society'


> Veering off topic but I'm familiar with the Wizard http://ps-
> 2.kev009.com/ohlandl/CPU/wizard.html

Yep, we started with it and HOSTLINK (Intel's software) but we switched it to a two-node AIX cluster (one with the i386 and one with the Wizard).
> 
> What was the framebuffer used for/under?

It ran X and was used in our application to run our proprietary image processing software.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 19:12         ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 19:26           ` SPC
  2019-11-05 19:28             ` SPC
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: SPC @ 2019-11-05 19:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 724 bytes --]

El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
escribió:

> It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in
> some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running
> PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot.
>

It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can
be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization
applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and
testing.

And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No
discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000
server with AIX 3.2

Regards
Sergio

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1175 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 19:26           ` SPC
@ 2019-11-05 19:28             ` SPC
  2019-11-05 20:26               ` Kevin Bowling
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: SPC @ 2019-11-05 19:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 885 bytes --]

Uh... "veras algo" means "years ago". My apologies.

El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:26, SPC <spedraja@gmail.com> escribió:

>
>
> El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
> escribió:
>
>> It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in
>> some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running
>> PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot.
>>
>
> It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can
> be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization
> applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and
> testing.
>
> And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No
> discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000
> server with AIX 3.2
>
> Regards
> Sergio
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1606 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
  2019-11-05 19:12         ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 20:10         ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-05 20:42           ` Kevin Bowling
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-05 20:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Christopher Browne; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2276 bytes --]

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com>
wrote:

> The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992
>
The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for
the TV ads IIRC).  Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX
for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which
would be announced as AIX/370.   ISC had done the original 386 port for
Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally
[Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid
three times for the same basic work].

At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg
Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2
- a.k.a. create AIX/386.  How much of the original ISC work was that build
upon, I never knew.

LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for
customers, probably under a special University license.   The formal
introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that
had one or both before that time.   I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for
about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to
AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or today's
MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff).   I've forgotten the dates on that, I
want to say 93/94 time frame.

Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the
AS/400.  When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their
bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM.
Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be
added/amended to as needed.  When the folks from Rochester called asking
about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing
contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done.   Nope
-- different division/different set of lawyers.  Something was said to us
in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.'   I remember our CEO
groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.'  It was then I
realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other.

Clem
ᐧ

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4113 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 19:28             ` SPC
@ 2019-11-05 20:26               ` Kevin Bowling
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-05 20:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: SPC; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1296 bytes --]

Yup I was involved in the salvage and was the first purveyor of these
floppies to the modern internet.  Saying this as it is germane to my
original post in the thread, I have a lot of experience doing this kind of
thing and I need willing connections to the source materials in question.

Regards,
Kevin

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 12:28 PM SPC <spedraja@gmail.com> wrote:

> Uh... "veras algo" means "years ago". My apologies.
>
> El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:26, SPC <spedraja@gmail.com> escribió:
>
>>
>>
>> El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
>> escribió:
>>
>>> It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in
>>> some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running
>>> PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot.
>>>
>>
>> It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can
>> be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization
>> applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and
>> testing.
>>
>> And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No
>> discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000
>> server with AIX 3.2
>>
>> Regards
>> Sergio
>>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2422 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 20:10         ` Clem Cole
@ 2019-11-05 20:42           ` Kevin Bowling
  2019-11-05 21:11             ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Kevin Bowling @ 2019-11-05 20:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3787 bytes --]

Clem,

I am very curious about this UNIX for OS/400 work it sounds either
different or much earlier than what I am familiar with.  I am familiar with
the PASE environment that shipped around OS/400 V4R4 (1999?).  After
AS/400s started running PowerPCish CPUs (there is a bit of history there I
won't dive into) PASE was like WINE for Linux.. same CPU arch, do some
library and linker/loader tricks to hoist a different (AIX 4.3 first)
environment within OS/400s understanding of the universe.  A year or so
later, some very bright group figured to use the OS/400's Single Level
Store as the device model/device virtualization for the CPU virtualization
(LPAR) in later POWER CPUs.  You could run Linux or OS/400 or AIX this
way.  That work was then somewhat inverted, and pHyp was born from the
OS/400's SILC idea of machine dependent code as a light weight firmware
hypervisor in the converging iSeries and pSeries POWER systems.. they
switched the device model/device virtualization to AIX called APV or
PowerVM.

It was nicknamed "Fortress Rochester" for a reason.  They did some very
nice work.  But yeah IBM was running 4 large and extremely different
computing businesses in the 1990s and probably some smaller ones too.  They
were very different but the systems did interoperate pretty well given the
stakes.

Regards,
Kevin

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:10 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992
>>
> The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for
> the TV ads IIRC).  Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX
> for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which
> would be announced as AIX/370.   ISC had done the original 386 port for
> Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally
> [Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid
> three times for the same basic work].
>
> At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg
> Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2
> - a.k.a. create AIX/386.  How much of the original ISC work was that build
> upon, I never knew.
>
> LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for
> customers, probably under a special University license.   The formal
> introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that
> had one or both before that time.   I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for
> about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to
> AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or
> today's MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff).   I've forgotten the dates on
> that, I want to say 93/94 time frame.
>
> Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the
> AS/400.  When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their
> bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM.
> Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be
> added/amended to as needed.  When the folks from Rochester called asking
> about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing
> contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done.   Nope
> -- different division/different set of lawyers.  Something was said to us
> in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.'   I remember our CEO
> groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.'  It was then I
> realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5941 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 20:42           ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 21:11             ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-05 21:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kevin Bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4689 bytes --]

I've long forgotten the name of the work.    I worked on the proposal and
part of the design study, but not the project itself.  I had my hands full
with leading the HP and DEC TNC stuff.  IIRC Joe Hopfield was the lead on
it.     It was not really in the key of WINE.  It was sort of cross
between UWIN and Interix POSIX subsystem that now ships as WSL.  I've
forgotten a lot of the details now, to be honest.  I seem to remember they
used the SLS as part of the scheme, but I think there was a 'process' that
was booted under OS/400 that took serviced UNIX/POSIX processes system
functions.  I'll send a note a couple of LCC alumni and see if I can find
someone that knew more about it.

Clem
ᐧ

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 3:42 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
wrote:

> Clem,
>
> I am very curious about this UNIX for OS/400 work it sounds either
> different or much earlier than what I am familiar with.  I am familiar with
> the PASE environment that shipped around OS/400 V4R4 (1999?).  After
> AS/400s started running PowerPCish CPUs (there is a bit of history there I
> won't dive into) PASE was like WINE for Linux.. same CPU arch, do some
> library and linker/loader tricks to hoist a different (AIX 4.3 first)
> environment within OS/400s understanding of the universe.  A year or so
> later, some very bright group figured to use the OS/400's Single Level
> Store as the device model/device virtualization for the CPU virtualization
> (LPAR) in later POWER CPUs.  You could run Linux or OS/400 or AIX this
> way.  That work was then somewhat inverted, and pHyp was born from the
> OS/400's SILC idea of machine dependent code as a light weight firmware
> hypervisor in the converging iSeries and pSeries POWER systems.. they
> switched the device model/device virtualization to AIX called APV or
> PowerVM.
>
> It was nicknamed "Fortress Rochester" for a reason.  They did some very
> nice work.  But yeah IBM was running 4 large and extremely different
> computing businesses in the 1990s and probably some smaller ones too.  They
> were very different but the systems did interoperate pretty well given the
> stakes.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin
>
> On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:10 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in
>>> 1992
>>>
>> The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for
>> the TV ads IIRC).  Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX
>> for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which
>> would be announced as AIX/370.   ISC had done the original 386 port for
>> Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally
>> [Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid
>> three times for the same basic work].
>>
>> At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg
>> Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2
>> - a.k.a. create AIX/386.  How much of the original ISC work was that build
>> upon, I never knew.
>>
>> LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for
>> customers, probably under a special University license.   The formal
>> introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that
>> had one or both before that time.   I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for
>> about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to
>> AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or
>> today's MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff).   I've forgotten the dates on
>> that, I want to say 93/94 time frame.
>>
>> Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the
>> AS/400.  When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their
>> bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM.
>> Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be
>> added/amended to as needed.  When the folks from Rochester called asking
>> about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing
>> contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done.   Nope
>> -- different division/different set of lawyers.  Something was said to us
>> in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.'   I remember our CEO
>> groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.'  It was then I
>> realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other.
>>
>> Clem
>> ᐧ
>>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7597 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
@ 2019-11-05 22:11     ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-06  0:06       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Charles H Sauer @ 2019-11-05 22:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Clem says today "It was then I realized IBM was N different companies, 
each competing with each other." He's said that to me before and I then 
responded "Actually, it was more like M competing factions within N 
competing companies."

It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of 
so, to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and 
mostly a university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC 
and then RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal 
customers, wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 
370 and PS/2. I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed 
especially effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and 
AIX PS/2 became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before 
they were released.

Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were 
the Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company 
(primarily two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 
faction/company, the Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the 
Austin development lab, several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ...

And in LCC there were the firewalled TCF/TNC entities.

It would be interesting to know more from the TCF folks at LCC. With 
Jerry's passing, if there is to be further clarity on what happened with 
AIX/370, it would probably have to come from Bruce Walker or Greg Thiel. 
I don't think I've had contact with either since I left IBM in 1989.

CHS

On 11/5/2019 11:30 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com 
> <mailto:gregg.drwho8@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for
>     that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One
>     of the people in the community indicated that it was a product

> I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite 
> difficult.  IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and 
> you had to know about it and know you to ask to get it.  Charlie may 
> know more, but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed 
> out was a separate code base.


-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-05 22:11     ` [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: " Charles H Sauer
@ 2019-11-06  0:06       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  2019-11-06  3:36         ` Charles H. Sauer
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2019-11-06  0:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Charles H Sauer; +Cc: tuhs

On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:11:11PM -0600, Charles H Sauer wrote:
> It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of so,
> to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and mostly a
> university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC and then
> RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal customers,
> wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 370 and PS/2.
> I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed especially
> effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and AIX PS/2
> became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before they were
> released.
>
> Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were the
> Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company (primarily
> two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 faction/company, the
> Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the Austin development lab,
> several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ...
> 

There was also AOS (Academic Operating System) which was basically
repackaged BSD 4.x ported to the IBM/RT PC[1].  At MIT's Project
Athena, most people massively preferred it to AIX, but we were force
marched to AIX by 1987 or 1988.  :-/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC#Software

				- Ted


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-06  0:06       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
@ 2019-11-06  3:36         ` Charles H. Sauer
  2019-11-06  7:59           ` [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT " SPC
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Charles H. Sauer @ 2019-11-06  3:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Theodore Y. Ts'o; +Cc: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2589 bytes --]

Yes, but maybe the forced march at Athena was a year or so later, ’88 or ’89?? There was a preceding IBM internal “forced march” involving Bruce Walker from LCC, people from Palo Alto responsible for AOS (two co-authors of https://technologists.com/sauer/Convergence_of_AIX_and_4.3BSD.pdf <https://technologists.com/sauer/Convergence_of_AIX_and_4.3BSD.pdf> plus a couple of others) and AIX people. The work in that 1989 Uniforum paper was done in 1988, targeting AIX 3, as discussed a little more in https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ <https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/>. 

When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on my home RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine.

> On Nov 5, 2019, at 6:06 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:11:11PM -0600, Charles H Sauer wrote:
>> It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of so,
>> to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and mostly a
>> university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC and then
>> RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal customers,
>> wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 370 and PS/2.
>> I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed especially
>> effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and AIX PS/2
>> became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before they were
>> released.
>> 
>> Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were the
>> Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company (primarily
>> two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 faction/company, the
>> Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the Austin development lab,
>> several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ...
>> 
> 
> There was also AOS (Academic Operating System) which was basically
> repackaged BSD 4.x ported to the IBM/RT PC[1].  At MIT's Project
> Athena, most people massively preferred it to AIX, but we were force
> marched to AIX by 1987 or 1988.  :-/
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC#Software
> 
> 				- Ted

--
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com <mailto:sauer@technologists.com>           
fax: +1.512.346.5240         web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ <http://technologists.com/sauer/>
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4852 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-06  3:36         ` Charles H. Sauer
@ 2019-11-06  7:59           ` SPC
  2019-11-06 15:51             ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-21  6:26             ` Al Kossow
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: SPC @ 2019-11-06  7:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Charles H. Sauer; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 471 bytes --]

El mié., 6 nov. 2019 4:37, Charles H. Sauer <sauer@technologists.com>
escribió:

>
> When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on my home
> RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine
>

With permisión, I have one question fron years about this... Is it AOS
stuff saved and available (including source code) un some place on the
Internet?

I would ask too about some kind of emulator of the IBM/RT, but I never find
one.

Regards
Sergio

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1045 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-06  7:59           ` [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT " SPC
@ 2019-11-06 15:51             ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-07 22:40               ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  2019-11-21  6:26             ` Al Kossow
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Charles H Sauer @ 2019-11-06 15:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: SPC; +Cc: TUHS main list

I'm not aware of AOS source anywhere, but plausibly someone from Athena 
or CMU might still have it. If I recall correctly, it came on large tape 
cartridges.

There was some AOS stuff at www.dementia.org/~shadow/ibmrt.html, some 
still present at 
http://web.archive.org/web/20110725231604/http://www.dementia.org/~shadow/ibmrt.html, 
but the ftp stuff seems to be gone.

Also some AOS stuff at https://amaus.net/static/S100/IBM/RTPC/AOS/.

I'm not aware of RT or 6K emulators available. I think there is more 
recent AIX on SIMH 
(https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/running-aix-7-2-tl3sp1-on-x86_64-via-qemu-system-ppc64/), 
but I've not looked at it.

CHS

On 11/6/2019 1:59 AM, SPC wrote:
> 
> 
> El mié., 6 nov. 2019 4:37, Charles H. Sauer <sauer@technologists.com 
> <mailto:sauer@technologists.com>> escribió:
> 
> 
>     When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on
>     my home RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine
> 
> 
> With permisión, I have one question fron years about this... Is it AOS 
> stuff saved and available (including source code) un some place on the 
> Internet?
> 
> I would ask too about some kind of emulator of the IBM/RT, but I never 
> find one.
> 
> Regards
> Sergio
> 

-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-06 15:51             ` Charles H Sauer
@ 2019-11-07 22:40               ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
  2019-11-08  4:39                 ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Grant Taylor via TUHS @ 2019-11-07 22:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 296 bytes --]

On 11/6/19 8:51 AM, Charles H Sauer wrote:
> I think there is more recent AIX on SIMH 

I know someone who has booted and run AIX 7.<something> under SimH.  I 
don't know how different the emulation SimH is doing to allow that to 
run vs an RS/6000.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


[-- Attachment #2: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature --]
[-- Type: application/pkcs7-signature, Size: 4008 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-07 22:40               ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
@ 2019-11-08  4:39                 ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-11-08  4:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, Grant Taylor

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 597 bytes --]

Aix is kind of running on Qemu...  I've run 4.12 although the networking wasn't running, but enough to uuencode stuff through the console. 




Get Outlook for Android







On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 7:41 AM +0900, "Grant Taylor via TUHS" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:










On 11/6/19 8:51 AM, Charles H Sauer wrote:
> I think there is more recent AIX on SIMH 

I know someone who has booted and run AIX 7. under SimH.  I 
don't know how different the emulation SimH is doing to allow that to 
run vs an RS/6000.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die







[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1376 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-06  7:59           ` [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT " SPC
  2019-11-06 15:51             ` Charles H Sauer
@ 2019-11-21  6:26             ` Al Kossow
  2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Al Kossow @ 2019-11-21  6:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs



On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote:
> 
> 
> Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code)
> un some place on the Internet?

It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy
I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is
I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel
and didn't go down to bare metal.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21  6:26             ` Al Kossow
@ 2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
                                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2019-11-21 11:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Al Kossow; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 962 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote:
> >
> >
> > Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code)
> > un some place on the Internet?
>
> It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy
> I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is
> I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel
> and didn't go down to bare metal.
>

No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran on
bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, though
as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing and
distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due to some
obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to Port e.g.
4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because the memory
subsystem was so different.

But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved.

        - Dan C.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1459 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
@ 2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
  2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-21 17:29                 ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-22 20:38                 ` Al Kossow
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Brad Spencer @ 2019-11-21 13:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: tuhs

Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code)
>> > un some place on the Internet?
>>
>> It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy
>> I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is
>> I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel
>> and didn't go down to bare metal.
>>
>
> No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran on
> bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, though
> as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing and
> distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due to some
> obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to Port e.g.
> 4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because the memory
> subsystem was so different.
>
> But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved.
>
>         - Dan C.

For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH
microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well
enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much of
the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall
that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a
specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command perhaps)
to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP
processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think that
some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being
pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly as X
terminal workstations.




-- 
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
@ 2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 16:16                     ` Chet Ramey
  2019-11-21 16:43                     ` greg travis
  2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2019-11-21 14:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Brad Spencer; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2716 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org> wrote:

> For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH
> microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well
> enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much of
> the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall
> that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a
> specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command perhaps)
> to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP
> processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think that
> some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being
> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly as X
> terminal workstations.
>

"High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the
system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. I don't recall
a pcc-derived compiler, but apparently such a thing did exist and some
documentation says that High C was installed as `hc`, so my memory may be
off. This old post describes RT compilers:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt/u7DUwY5U9kQ/uVqLP9FhqMEJ

Hi-C was sort of an odd compiler. I gather IBM outsourced the development
of it to some third party (MetaWare) which was founded by very religious
people, and I have a vague memory of some of the documentation or perhaps
even error messages making biblical references.

The kernel had to be built with High C, if I recall correctly, though GCC
worked OK for producing userspace binaries. I don't recall what the bug
was, but it was eventually found and fixed. Perhaps it had to do with
incomplete register saves on function entry interacting poorly with
interrupts or something.

Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime.
Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk
constrained. They were also very slow. Anyway, I have some vague
recollection that at some point the bug in the compiler was fixed so that
GCC could produce a working kernel; nascent NetBSD and OpenBSD ports were
planned, but I don't think they ever went anywhere.
https://www.openbsd.org/romp.html exists, though I don't know that the
NetBSD people ever got beyond the talking stage. The OpenBSD-romp mailing
list had some interesting information, but I can't find archives anymore.

Oh well. The RT was an interesting footnote in the history of computing,
but it seems that, as a workstation, it was too little too late by the time
it actually hit the market. Had they released it a few years earlier?
Perhaps they could have cornered the market.

        - Dan C.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3423 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
@ 2019-11-21 16:16                     ` Chet Ramey
  2019-11-21 20:53                       ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 16:43                     ` greg travis
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Chet Ramey @ 2019-11-21 16:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross, Brad Spencer; +Cc: TUHS main list

On 11/21/19 9:19 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org 
> <mailto:brad@anduin.eldar.org>> wrote:
> 
>     For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH
>     microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well
>     enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much of
>     the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall
>     that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a
>     specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command perhaps)
>     to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP
>     processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think that
>     some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being
>     pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly as X
>     terminal workstations.
> 
> 
> "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the 
> system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`.

"High C", and it was installed as cc and hc.


> Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime. 
> Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk 
> constrained. They were also very slow.

I had one running in my basement into the late 90s, with my own self-
maintained kernel. I did a considerable portion of the bash-2.0
development on that box, and my wife wrote all of her doctoral thesis on
it (using a troff macro package I wrote to do APA style formatting). It 
didn't make the cut when I moved from that house. Why did I have it?
Because it was free, and it did what I needed.


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 16:16                     ` Chet Ramey
@ 2019-11-21 16:43                     ` greg travis
  2019-11-21 19:41                       ` arnold
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: greg travis @ 2019-11-21 16:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3085 bytes --]

You're quite right about the religious error messages. I used MetaWare High
C under DOS briefly, comparing it to Turbo C and Watcom. (Watcom won.) It
had extensions to C, such as a coroutine-ish 'yield' keyword.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:20 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org>
> wrote:
>
>> For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH
>> microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well
>> enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much of
>> the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall
>> that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a
>> specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command perhaps)
>> to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP
>> processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think that
>> some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being
>> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly as X
>> terminal workstations.
>>
>
> "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the
> system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. I don't recall
> a pcc-derived compiler, but apparently such a thing did exist and some
> documentation says that High C was installed as `hc`, so my memory may be
> off. This old post describes RT compilers:
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt/u7DUwY5U9kQ/uVqLP9FhqMEJ
>
> Hi-C was sort of an odd compiler. I gather IBM outsourced the development
> of it to some third party (MetaWare) which was founded by very religious
> people, and I have a vague memory of some of the documentation or perhaps
> even error messages making biblical references.
>
> The kernel had to be built with High C, if I recall correctly, though GCC
> worked OK for producing userspace binaries. I don't recall what the bug
> was, but it was eventually found and fixed. Perhaps it had to do with
> incomplete register saves on function entry interacting poorly with
> interrupts or something.
>
> Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime.
> Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk
> constrained. They were also very slow. Anyway, I have some vague
> recollection that at some point the bug in the compiler was fixed so that
> GCC could produce a working kernel; nascent NetBSD and OpenBSD ports were
> planned, but I don't think they ever went anywhere.
> https://www.openbsd.org/romp.html exists, though I don't know that the
> NetBSD people ever got beyond the talking stage. The OpenBSD-romp mailing
> list had some interesting information, but I can't find archives anymore.
>
> Oh well. The RT was an interesting footnote in the history of computing,
> but it seems that, as a workstation, it was too little too late by the time
> it actually hit the market. Had they released it a few years earlier?
> Perhaps they could have cornered the market.
>
>         - Dan C.
>
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4041 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
@ 2019-11-21 17:29                 ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-22 20:38                 ` Al Kossow
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Charles H Sauer @ 2019-11-21 17:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs



On 11/21/2019 5:58 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org 
> <mailto:aek@bitsavers.org>> wrote:

>     It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy
>     I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is
>     I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel
>     and didn't go down to bare metal.
> 
> 
> No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran 
> on bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, 
> though as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing 
> and distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due 
> to some obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to 
> Port e.g. 4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because 
> the memory subsystem was so different.
> 
> But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved.

There may well have been AFS for AIX and thus the confusion about 
hypervisor (AIX VRM).


-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
  2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
@ 2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-21 17:36                     ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 18:11                     ` Brad Spencer
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Charles H Sauer @ 2019-11-21 17:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs



On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote:

> ... I remember it being
> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  

I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license 
on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I 
think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I 
remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time.

I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use 
NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP.

Charlie
-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
@ 2019-11-21 17:36                     ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 18:11                     ` Brad Spencer
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2019-11-21 17:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Charles H Sauer; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 718 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 12:34 PM Charles H Sauer <sauer@technologists.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote:
>
> > ... I remember it being
> > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.
>
> I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license
> on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I
> think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I
> remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time.
>
> I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use
> NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP.
>

AOS definitely had NIS/YP. I remember it quite distinctly.

        - Dan C.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1188 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
  2019-11-21 17:36                     ` Dan Cross
@ 2019-11-21 18:11                     ` Brad Spencer
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Brad Spencer @ 2019-11-21 18:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Charles H Sauer; +Cc: tuhs

Charles H Sauer <sauer@technologists.com> writes:

> On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote:
>
>> ... I remember it being
>> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  
>
> I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license 
> on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I 
> think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I 
> remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time.
>
> I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use 
> NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP.
>
> Charlie


I was referring to the Mt. Xinu Mach based 4.3BSD OS that replaced AIX
on the RTs I was using.  Aside from the 4.3BSD part, it didn't have AIX
involved... and it didn't have YP/NIS.



-- 
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 16:43                     ` greg travis
@ 2019-11-21 19:41                       ` arnold
  2019-11-21 20:21                         ` Jon Steinhart
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2019-11-21 19:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: greg.m.travis, crossd; +Cc: tuhs

greg travis <greg.m.travis@gmail.com> wrote:

> You're quite right about the religious error messages.

The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. I remember flipping through some
of the early manuals and there are a number of references to needing
divine help if things go badly wrong, praying for divine guidance,
and so on. :-)  (Yes, I know that was mainly cultural. Still, it
was striking, at least to me.)

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 19:41                       ` arnold
@ 2019-11-21 20:21                         ` Jon Steinhart
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2019-11-21 20:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

arnold@skeeve.com writes:
> greg travis <greg.m.travis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You're quite right about the religious error messages.
>
> The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. I remember flipping through some
> of the early manuals and there are a number of references to needing
> divine help if things go badly wrong, praying for divine guidance,
> and so on. :-)  (Yes, I know that was mainly cultural. Still, it
> was striking, at least to me.)
>
> Arnold

I believe that you're talking about the "gerts" command and if you ever had
to use it, you'd know that the divine guidance part was accurate.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 16:16                     ` Chet Ramey
@ 2019-11-21 20:53                       ` Dan Cross
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2019-11-21 20:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Chester Ramey; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2720 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:16 AM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:

> On 11/21/19 9:19 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org
> > <mailto:brad@anduin.eldar.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu,
> MACH
> >     microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well
> >     enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much
> of
> >     the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to
> recall
> >     that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a
> >     specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command
> perhaps)
> >     to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP
> >     processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think
> that
> >     some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being
> >     pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly
> as X
> >     terminal workstations.
> >
> >
> > "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the
> > system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`.
>
> "High C", and it was installed as cc and hc.
>

Yeah, that matches my (vague) recollection as well.

> Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime.
> > Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk
> > constrained. They were also very slow.
>
> I had one running in my basement into the late 90s, with my own self-
> maintained kernel. I did a considerable portion of the bash-2.0
> development on that box, and my wife wrote all of her doctoral thesis on
> it (using a troff macro package I wrote to do APA style formatting). It
> didn't make the cut when I moved from that house. Why did I have it?
> Because it was free, and it did what I needed.
>

We kept a couple of them running through the mid- to late-90s as well. By
that time, however, it seemed like Linux and the BSDs on PCs had greatly
eclipsed whatever was possible performance or software-wise on the aging
RTs, which were also starting to fail in odd ways. But until that point,
they were free and ran Unix, and for a long time that was kind of a special
thing. We ended up replacing a 6150 with a 486 running FreeBSD and life was
pretty good, though.

The spiritual descendent of that (those) machine(s) now runs OpenBSD on a
VPS somewhere. A while back, I found some old NIS data files (in ndbm
format, of course) that we'd preserved from some ancient backup; I was able
to get the ndbm library from an old BSD distribution and compile it and
extract the data, which was kind of fun.

        - Dan C.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3612 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
  2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
  2019-11-21 17:29                 ` Charles H Sauer
@ 2019-11-22 20:38                 ` Al Kossow
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Al Kossow @ 2019-11-22 20:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: TUHS main list



On 11/21/19 3:58 AM, Dan Cross wrote:

> But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved.

Sorry, got it mixed up in my mind with aix
I had remembered bits of the kernel were missing, but I forgot why.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-23  4:40   ` Gregg Levine
@ 2019-11-23 12:51     ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-23 12:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Gregg Levine; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2631 bytes --]

No I don't remember Many details on this one as I did not do it.  As I said
I think it was a Burness message in the graphics subsystem, but I cannot
swear to it.     I just remember the time frame and what happened.  Roger
Gourd's reaction was priceless when Mr Potatohead called us on it.  It was
one of the times I really learned to respect Roger.

That said, Ill see what I can find by asking around.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 11:41 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello!
> Clem by chance do you remember what the error message response was? It
> would be interesting to see what phrases were used. For example, on
> the IBM side of things, a fellow Adam and I both know, coded an entire
> application so that everything it said and did would be in Klingonese.
> No I do not remember which one it was, and what have you, I only
> remember it surfacing during his talk at the IBM offices here in town,
> during the early years of running Tux on the IBM S/390 systems.
>
> I also find it strange that sometimes even Google is thinking in that
> language.
> -----
> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 3:09 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>     > From: Arnold Robbins
> >>
> >>     > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too.
> >>
> >> And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin,
> >> courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site
> once,
> >> whereupon hilarity ensued.
> >
> > One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story.   We
> were chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging
> Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem).  But we could not get
> the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system
> recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases
> and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it.
> >
> > I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess??
> put out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a
> bunch of information.  Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we
> got the needed data, as they reported the error.  But it was a high
> visibility customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call.
>  Fossil (our boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he
> defended us to the President.   We found the bug ;-)
>
-- 
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3418 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 20:08 ` Clem Cole
@ 2019-11-23  4:40   ` Gregg Levine
  2019-11-23 12:51     ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Gregg Levine @ 2019-11-23  4:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

Hello!
Clem by chance do you remember what the error message response was? It
would be interesting to see what phrases were used. For example, on
the IBM side of things, a fellow Adam and I both know, coded an entire
application so that everything it said and did would be in Klingonese.
No I do not remember which one it was, and what have you, I only
remember it surfacing during his talk at the IBM offices here in town,
during the early years of running Tux on the IBM S/390 systems.

I also find it strange that sometimes even Google is thinking in that language.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 3:09 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>>
>>     > From: Arnold Robbins
>>
>>     > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too.
>>
>> And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin,
>> courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site once,
>> whereupon hilarity ensued.
>
> One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story.   We were chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem).  But we could not get the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it.
>
> I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess?? put out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a bunch of information.  Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we got the needed data, as they reported the error.  But it was a high visibility customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call.   Fossil (our boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he defended us to the President.   We found the bug ;-)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
  2019-11-21 19:53 Noel Chiappa
@ 2019-11-21 20:08 ` Clem Cole
  2019-11-23  4:40   ` Gregg Levine
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2019-11-21 20:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Noel Chiappa; +Cc: TUHS main list

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1250 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Arnold Robbins
>
>     > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too.
>
> And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin,
> courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site
> once,
> whereupon hilarity ensued.
>
One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story.   We were
chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging
Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem).  But we could not get
the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system
recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases
and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it.

I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess?? put
out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a bunch
of information.  Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we got the
needed data, as they reported the error.  But it was a high visibility
customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call.   Fossil (our
boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he defended us to the
President.   We found the bug ;-)

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2051 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
@ 2019-11-21 19:53 Noel Chiappa
  2019-11-21 20:08 ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 49+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2019-11-21 19:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Arnold Robbins

    > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too.

And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin,
courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site once,
whereupon hilarity ensued.

	  Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
@ 2019-11-06 20:31 Pat Barron
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Pat Barron @ 2019-11-06 20:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Also, I'm still in touch with shadow, I can ask if there's a mirror of 
that IBM RT page still around.

--Pat.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA
@ 2019-11-06 20:28 Pat Barron
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Pat Barron @ 2019-11-06 20:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

I may still have AOS 4.3 tape images still around somewhere.  I will have 
to search around and see if I still have them.  Though even if I do, I'm 
not sure if the license would permit me to make them available - if I 
recall correctly, this wasn't an actual LPP, but there may be some IBM 
license on this over and above the Berkeley license.  Yes, it did come on 
tape cartridges.

--Pat.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2019-11-23 12:52 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 49+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2019-11-03 21:05 [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Kevin Bowling
2019-11-03 23:29 ` Dennis Boone
2019-11-04  0:06   ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-04  1:29   ` Dennis Boone
2019-11-04  1:58     ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-04  3:39 ` Gregg Levine
2019-11-04  4:49   ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-04 15:32   ` Adam Thornton
2019-11-05 16:21   ` Ronald Natalie
2019-11-05 18:04     ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-05 19:22       ` ron
2019-11-05 17:30   ` Clem Cole
2019-11-05 18:07     ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-05 18:15       ` Clem Cole
2019-11-05 19:03       ` Christopher Browne
2019-11-05 19:12         ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-05 19:26           ` SPC
2019-11-05 19:28             ` SPC
2019-11-05 20:26               ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-05 20:10         ` Clem Cole
2019-11-05 20:42           ` Kevin Bowling
2019-11-05 21:11             ` Clem Cole
2019-11-05 22:11     ` [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: " Charles H Sauer
2019-11-06  0:06       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-11-06  3:36         ` Charles H. Sauer
2019-11-06  7:59           ` [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT " SPC
2019-11-06 15:51             ` Charles H Sauer
2019-11-07 22:40               ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-11-08  4:39                 ` Jason Stevens
2019-11-21  6:26             ` Al Kossow
2019-11-21 11:58               ` Dan Cross
2019-11-21 13:07                 ` Brad Spencer
2019-11-21 14:19                   ` Dan Cross
2019-11-21 16:16                     ` Chet Ramey
2019-11-21 20:53                       ` Dan Cross
2019-11-21 16:43                     ` greg travis
2019-11-21 19:41                       ` arnold
2019-11-21 20:21                         ` Jon Steinhart
2019-11-21 17:33                   ` Charles H Sauer
2019-11-21 17:36                     ` Dan Cross
2019-11-21 18:11                     ` Brad Spencer
2019-11-21 17:29                 ` Charles H Sauer
2019-11-22 20:38                 ` Al Kossow
2019-11-06 20:28 Pat Barron
2019-11-06 20:31 Pat Barron
2019-11-21 19:53 Noel Chiappa
2019-11-21 20:08 ` Clem Cole
2019-11-23  4:40   ` Gregg Levine
2019-11-23 12:51     ` Clem Cole

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).