[pups] Interesting PDP/Xenix History

[m_d@pacbell.net (Michael Davidson)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCO's contribution was in three main areas:

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