And now ... Weirdnix?

[tih@hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)]

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> writes:

> To kick a more relevant thread off, what was the "weirdest" Unix
> system you used & why? Could be an emulation like Eunice, could be the
> hardware e.g NULL was not zero, NUXI byte ordering etc.

That would be the userland Unix from the Norwegian company Norsk Data.
For years, they made excellent mini machines with their own operating
system, SINTRAN.  People kept telling them that that time was passing,
and they needed to get with the times and adopt a standardized OS, like
Unix, but they insisted that there was no need.

When they finally started trying to do that, it was too late.

They made two attempts.  One was a System V port to their hardware, the
other a port to SINTRAN, having Unix run as an application under it.
Neither attempt got any real traction, and today, the company is only a
fond memory.

Oh, and when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he did it
on a Norsk Data computer running SINTRAN.  :)

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay