* Re: [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?)
@ 2019-10-16 3:50 Pat Barron
0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Pat Barron @ 2019-10-16 3:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: tuhs
Possibly the most time consuming install I did was installing Xenix on a
bunch of Intel i310 systems. Xenix was a "secondary" OS for these
systems, the main OS being iRMX. Xenix for these systems was distributed
on 5.25" floppies. Lots and lots of floppies... They came in a 3-ring
binder, many pages of floppies... We also had a couple of i380 systems,
Xenix for those came on 8" floppies... That was time consuming, but it
was just manual labor.
The most unpleasasnt install I can recall was AIX 2.2.1 on the IBM-PC/RT.
Which also was really (under the covers) Interactive UNIX, with some other
stuff mixed in. Not only was this also time-consuming with a binder full
of 5.25" floppies, but my recollection is that there were too many
opportunities to make a tiny little mistake during the install and have to
start all over again.
--Pat.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?)
2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-16 3:20 ` Warner Losh
@ 2019-10-16 8:20 ` Matt Rudge
1 sibling, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Matt Rudge @ 2019-10-16 8:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Arrigo Triulzi; +Cc: TUHS main list
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 840 bytes --]
On Tue, 15 Oct 2019 at 10:55, Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo@alchemistowl.org>
wrote:
>
> On 15 Oct 2019, at 06:27, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> > Clearly you weren't installing Interactive UNIX/386 from floppy, like
> > my first experience. It was like pulling teeth.
>
> Not to mention Xenix/286… the never ending 5”1/4 “HD” floppies… the ones
which somehow were almost readable but not quite… then you started the
install again and a different floppy failed.
>
I can remember having to reinstall Xenix on a Wang PC-002. The floppy disks
had been kept in a folder next to a radiator, and I had to clean the floppy
drive with compressed air before we could start. Surprisingly the reinstall
went smoothly, but very slowly! The real issue was getting the serial
terminal board working again!
Matt
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1020 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?)
2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
@ 2019-10-16 3:20 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-16 8:20 ` Matt Rudge
1 sibling, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2019-10-16 3:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Arrigo Triulzi; +Cc: TUHS main list
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 666 bytes --]
On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 3:03 AM Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo@alchemistowl.org>
wrote:
> On 15 Oct 2019, at 06:27, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> > Clearly you weren't installing Interactive UNIX/386 from floppy, like
> > my first experience. It was like pulling teeth.
>
> Not to mention Xenix/286… the never ending 5”1/4 “HD” floppies… the ones
> which somehow were almost readable but not quite… then you started the
> install again and a different floppy failed.
>
> Was it tar on the raw floppy? I don’t remember to be honest.
>
Venix had a boot disk, and the rest of the disks were tar without
compression...
Warner
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1100 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?)
2019-10-15 4:27 ` [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-16 3:20 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-16 8:20 ` Matt Rudge
0 siblings, 2 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Arrigo Triulzi @ 2019-10-15 9:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey; +Cc: TUHS main list
On 15 Oct 2019, at 06:27, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> Clearly you weren't installing Interactive UNIX/386 from floppy, like
> my first experience. It was like pulling teeth.
Not to mention Xenix/286… the never ending 5”1/4 “HD” floppies… the ones which somehow were almost readable but not quite… then you started the install again and a different floppy failed.
Was it tar on the raw floppy? I don’t remember to be honest.
Arrigo
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?)
2019-10-15 4:06 ` Warner Losh
@ 2019-10-15 4:27 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
0 siblings, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2019-10-15 4:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Warner Losh; +Cc: TUHS main list
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1156 bytes --]
On Monday, 14 October 2019 at 22:06:11 -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> The second was the simplicity of the install...
Clearly you weren't installing Interactive UNIX/386 from floppy, like
my first experience. It was like pulling teeth.
I wasn't alone. A year or two later (about 1994) I was contacted by
the editorial team of iX, a German Unix magazine, asking if I had
managed to install Consensys UNIX System V.4 (maybe from tape by this
time). They were having such difficulties that they ended up with an
article saying effectively "Consensys looks good, and we've heard good
things from other people, but we totally failed to install it".
That was one of the things that I found so refreshing with BSD/386,
also round that time. Part of the issue with the System V variants
was the incessant entry of activation keys for every tiny component,
as well as the lack of overall documentation.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2019-10-16 8:21 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2019-10-16 3:50 [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?) Pat Barron
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-10-15 0:28 [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? Pat Barron
2019-10-15 1:19 ` Andrew Warkentin
2019-10-15 4:06 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-15 4:27 ` [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-16 3:20 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-16 8:20 ` Matt Rudge
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).