Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

This web page has some details about XENIX prior to 1985:
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html

In particular this chart is intriguing:
http://seefigure1.com/images/xenix/xenix-timeline.jpg

I’d love to have XENIX from the 1980-1985 era in the TUHS archive, as it documents the tail end of the Unix on 16 bits era. It would have been great if MS had released that as part of the Unix-at-50 events.

Paul

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Ronald Natalie]

One of my first contracts with IBM was to add (get this) a SECOND network interface to secure-XENIX, an MLS version of the software.
I believe it was being used as a “downgrade” audit station to allow data to be moved form one secure network to another.    I believe the
original work was done by Jakob Recktor (probably butchering the spelling of his name).

That contract led to a few follow ons with IBM to port AIX to i860 based machines.    I still have my old IBM badge kicking around somewhere.

[TUHS] Unix/World Magazines

[Warren Toomey]

All, I've uploaded 13 Unix/World magazines from 1984-85 to archive.org.
They are at:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28Unix%20World%29

Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] What happened with XENIX? (was Re: Unix/World Magazines)

[reed]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, Warren Toomey wrote:

> All, I've uploaded 13 Unix/World magazines from 1984-85 to archive.org.

Thanks!

November 1985 issue has an article by Bill Gates.

Gates wrote that they were optimistic to achieve 400,000 XENIX 
installations -- their critical mass -- within 18 months.

"... IBM has announced XENIX as the multi-user operating sysytem for the 
IBM PC-AT."

"Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980], 
the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."

What happened with XENIX?  I know it had some success (I used at least 
one retired system with it), but nothing near the other offerings on the 
PC family.

Re: [TUHS] What happened with XENIX?

[Michael Kjörling]

On 7 Jan 2020 16:22 -0600, from reed@reedmedia.net:
> "Significantly, at the time the XENIX project was started [mid 1980], 
> the IBM Personal Computer had not been announced."

Perhaps even more significantly in this case, but possibly not
publicly known at the time, IBM's Project Chess, which resulted in the
IBM PC, apparently began in July 1980. (The promise was to develop an
initial prototype in 30 days, and a working personal computer in a
year; the initial demo was in August, the first internal demo in
January 1981, and product release was in August 1981.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer#Project_Chess

So by "mid 1980", what would eventually lead up to the IBM PC was at
most _just barely_ getting started.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael@kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”