[HN Gopher] A bit of XENIX history
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A bit of XENIX history
Author : fanf2
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-04-07 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (seefigure1.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (seefigure1.com)
| tyingq wrote:
| UnixWorld Volume 2.10 had a cover story "Bill Gates on the Future
| of Xenix".
|
| https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/mode/1up
|
| Note: There is a button to export it as a pdf.
| msla wrote:
| Direct link:
|
| https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/page/n22...
|
| And downloading a PDF is great, but I've always found the in-
| page reader pleasant enough.
| m463 wrote:
| I just remember using xenix, and the trouble we had porting some
| software to run on it.
|
| We were using SCCS, and when we would check in foo.c it would
| become s.foo.c
|
| Then trying to build with make, it wouldn't find some file or
| wouldn't apply a c compile rule and nothing would work.
|
| Turns out xenix had a filename length limitation (I don't recall
| exactly, but maybe 12 or 15 characters?)
|
| So files like longfilename.c would hit the length limitatation
| and when checked into sccs would become s.longfilename. and
| truncate away the filetype. and since it wasn't a c file
| anymore...
|
| But I do remember it was an operating system that might actually
| use protected mode and extra memory of the 286 - without EMS or
| XMS shenanigans that came to the dos world.
|
| A lot of early PC & DOS development was shackled by silly
| limitations. You couldn't write a program that didn't do all
| kinds of checks to make sure you didn't use more than 64k because
| of the real mode segmented memory. Same with filenames, or
| linking+overlays or any number of things.
|
| We take all that stuff for granted now. I write scripts that read
| an entire file into memory, do things and write it back out.
| Those things were a real headache back then.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| DOS programs could run in protected mode by using a DOS
| extender. There were also quasi-standard interfaces that
| enabled programs so written to interoperate with environments
| that might use protected mode for their own operation and run
| DOS programs in VM86 mode. This support could also be extended
| to TSR's (background services) or device drivers.
|
| Of course this was also problematic in that it could make some
| DOS software incompatible with earlier 8086-based hardware.
| ajross wrote:
| > Turns out xenix had a filename length limitation (I don't
| recall exactly, but maybe 12 or 15 characters?)
|
| Fourteen. A Bell Labs Unix directory entry was 16 bytes: a
| 2-byte inode number followed by the file name. You read the
| directory by opening it as a file and reading it as an array of
| these.
|
| It wasn't until 4BSD/SunOS and System V needed multi-filesystem
| support that this was changed and what became the POSIX struct
| dirent replaced it.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I got into Linux just when the ext fs became a thing. Or
| maybe it was ext2 already, but in any case, there were a lot
| of remnants of when it used the Minix filesystem, which as I
| recall was limited to 14 characters as well.
| kazinator wrote:
| This fourteen could be related to the char
| sa_data[14];
|
| in _struct sockaddr_.
| ajross wrote:
| Likely, but the causality goes the other way. Sockets
| arrived in 4.2BSD on Sun and VAX, well after the world's
| attention had moved away from PDP-11 Unix.
| Taniwha wrote:
| s.* files were how SCCS worked, the filename limits were also
| how Unix V7 worked - most people understood this at the time
| and used small names
| tyingq wrote:
| I would guess there was a wave of folks that started using
| the extra room when 4BSD was released, and forgetting their
| peers on Xenix, Unix V7, etc. I remember some popular
| software (rrn or trn maybe?) had a file called environment.sh
| in it that got truncated with SCCS on some unix limited to 14
| chars.
| noefingway wrote:
| Brings back some memories. First UNIX I worked on was, IIRC, was
| System III on a Pixel Machines box. We ported a management tool
| for Dept of Transporation that had been running on an IBM TSO
| system. Deployed 5 of these around the country, setup uucp to
| send data back to home base. Xenix came along a few years later
| and, if memory serves, it's what we ran on some Altos machines.
| Fun times.
| lordleft wrote:
| And now I'm running WSL daily on my Windows Workstation. History
| rhymes with itself
| rbanffy wrote:
| Had Microsoft stayed with Xenix, you wouldn't even need WSL.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Assuming Xenix would catch on the way Windows did, that is.
| simonh wrote:
| It's an interesting alternate universe. Microsoft building a
| graphical shell and easy to use object oriented development
| tools on top of Unix underpinnings to compete with the Mac.
| zwieback wrote:
| And basically for free, all those old OSes were hundreds or
| thousands of dollars in the 80s! I did projects in OS/2 1.x and
| Xenix as well as VMS but not on my own nickel.
| vzaliva wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time porting many Unix tools to Xenix 286 for
| internal use. It was a paintful process. Assumptions of 32-bit
| size of integers were common, build tools (make, C compiler)
| differ in subtle ways from common Unix ones, etc.
| jmclnx wrote:
| The version if Xenix 286 we had at work came with a cc that was
| similar to M/S c 5.1. It had the various memory models.
|
| I do not know what your tools were like, but for me it was
| rather easy except for the usually issues with includes and
| Libs (assuming I remember correctly) :)
|
| I wish I could have kept a copy for home use when I left the
| company. I remember it being rather nice
| tyingq wrote:
| You can play with Xenix on 8086 here:
| https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/unix/sco/xenix/086/2...
|
| Click in the window and hit <enter> when you see the word "Boot".
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was my first UNIX experience.
|
| Our OS teacher would bring in a PC tower with it on the days we
| had lab classes, and then each group would take 15m turns at it.
|
| Why only 15m? We were supposed to have already prepared the
| exercises in MS-DOS/Turbo C 2.0, using stubs for the respective
| syscalls.
|
| When ready we would be given a slot to put a floppy in, copy the
| stuff into HOME, disable the stubs and have a go at it.
|
| Like on the card deck days, either it worked, if not or if a
| short VI session couldn't fix the issue, it was time to go back
| into MS-DOS PC and free the computer for the next group.
| lizknope wrote:
| Did you have multiple MS-DOS machines?
|
| My first programming class was in 1991 on a DEC VAX running
| VMS. We had a room with 30 VT100 style terminals so everyone at
| least had their own display and keyboard.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Ooh. This sounds a lot like University of Portsmouth (in the
| UK), as they had 3 DEC VAX minicomputers running VMS
| supporting quite a lot of terminals across campus during the
| early 90s. The terminals were VT220 though. VMS Phone was
| useful for annoying other students.
| lizknope wrote:
| We had a mix of terminal types from VT100 to VT420 I
| believe. Yeah, the phone / talk stuff was great. This was
| in 1991 at my school.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, it was the modern lab on a technical school for
| informatics, a mix of 286 and 386 models from Siemens-
| Nixdorf.
|
| The Xenix PC tower was brought from the teacher's research
| lab, he was usually on a motorbike, but on labs day we would
| bring his car with the tower in it.
|
| By the way, we had two labs, the older one was full of 8086
| and 8088 models, without hard disk, using 8" floppies.
|
| My typing skills exam was done editing a document with edlin.
| lizknope wrote:
| Did the PCs have ethernet? Our campus network had a lot of
| DOS PCs but they ran a bunch of DEC Pathworks stuff to turn
| them into terminals to the VAX. We also had some PCs with a
| DOS telnet client to telnet directly to the Unix machines.
|
| Just wondering why they didn't turn the DOS machines into
| terminals or ethernet / network to connect to the Xenix PC
| tower.
| pjmlp wrote:
| No way, first we are talking about a high school, not
| something with university resources.
|
| Then those were the days of Novell NetWare, and yes one
| of the labs did had a couple of them, not all, connect
| via Novell.
|
| As for the Xenix tower, as mentioned, it did not belong
| to the high school, rather the teacher would bring it
| along with him from his main job, kind of renting it for
| the lab classes.
|
| So nothing that could ever work in a permanent setting.
| williesleg wrote:
| I remember dos/merge, I think Microport had a good
| implementation, let you run DOS crap on Microport Unix, even on a
| dumb terminal.
| mcculley wrote:
| I remember sitting in a RadioShack as a kid poking at Xenix on a
| Model 16 and trying to figure out how to use it. I never made any
| progress as it took a long time to boot whereas the adjacent
| Color Computers and most other TRS-80 models booted instantly
| into BASIC.
| bsharitt wrote:
| I know the model 16 had a 68k, but it just seems bizarre that a
| version of Unix ran on a TRS-80.
| hapless wrote:
| The model 16 was so much bigger and more powerful than the
| original TRS-80 that it included an entire original TRS-80,
| whose only job was to operate the keyboard and serial port.
|
| Seriously 100x as much CPU power
| jandrese wrote:
| It's not so crazy when you consider the specs of the machines
| Unix was developed on. A PDP-11/20 comes with 24k of memory
| (16k 18bit words) and 500k of drive space and was shared
| between an entire department full of people.
|
| The reason Unix exists is because they couldn't afford a
| machine big enough to run Multics.
| dboreham wrote:
| An 11/20 didn't give a great Unix experience though. You
| needed an 11/45 with a 80MB drive to support multiple
| users.
| leejoramo wrote:
| The earlier Model II was the first TSR-80 with Xenix.
| housel wrote:
| No, the Model II had only a 4MHz Z-80. The Model 16 (and
| later the Model 6000) had a 68k-series coprocessor, and
| Xenix ran in that (using the Z-80 for I/O).
| spamizbad wrote:
| Xenix was weirdly one of the first OSes I was ever exposed to. In
| the early 90s I got my hands on a trash-picked TRS-80 Model 12
| that was fully upgraded to a Model 16 - along with a 15MB Hard
| disk that booted Xenix. Its previous owner gave me its root
| password. Technically, this was my first computer. I checked out
| "Understanding Unix A Conceptual Guide" from the library to try
| stuff out and immediately became obsessed with Unix. Sadly it was
| not long for this world and died from a power surge just 3 months
| later :(
|
| A few years later when I we finally got a modern family PC I
| immediately decided to dual-boot Linux.
| coleca wrote:
| Good memories. My first job at age 14 was working on Xenix
| boxes (386es) with a bunch of Wyse terminals connected to
| serial port multiplex cards customizing and configuring
| medical/dental software for local practitioners. Created my
| muscle memory for vi on Xenix as well. It was mind-blowing how
| well it ran on such limited horsepower back in the day.
| chasil wrote:
| I worked for Deere in several phases of traveling around the
| country, installing computer systems for dealerships.
|
| Texas Instruments was the supplier, and the first round of TI
| 1300 series were 386s.
|
| https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/texas_instruments_adds_lo...
|
| This series was upgraded to the TI 1500 class on Motorola 68000
| nu-bus, running a real UNIX port.
|
| I installed terminals, ran RS232 lines, and did basic admin
| work (mostly enabling ttys). The app software was mostly
| written in COBOL, and Ryan McFarland was the compiler at home
| base; using built-in ISAM (no formal database, AFAIK).
|
| I was putting these into dealerships with dirt floors. It was
| an interesting time in my youth.
|
| Edit: the "GOSUB STARTGAME" on their intro cover fills me with
| confidence in their port of the development tools.
| mzs wrote:
| So XENIX WAS ported to the Victor 9000!
| h2odragon wrote:
| We were a Victor _dealer_ and couldn 't get a demo copy. They
| went all in on full PC compatibility anyway, so it din't really
| matter. I just sold my last Victor keyboard this summer...
| mkovach wrote:
| When I worked at Radio Shack in the late 90s, the entire POS was
| running as a main Xenix server and the terminals connecting to
| it. Backups were done on tape. Updates would come in over night
| and usually required a reboot at the worst times.
|
| Fun times was one they sent a tape to do major upgrades.
| saul_goodman wrote:
| Ha, yea good memories... well sort of. I only worked there for
| a few months but my manager wouldn't let me near the Xenix main
| terminal in the back as he knew I was a little familiar and
| didn't want me messing with it. He assured me that Tandy had
| the tape backup drive custom made for them, lol. Still, he was
| a nice guy.
|
| I remember discovering that we could generate reports of all
| clearance items in the store, led me to tracking down stuff I
| had no idea was hiding in there like ISA slots and various
| other parts already antiquated by the late 90's.
| justanother wrote:
| As a 13 year old longhaired wardialer in a not-so-privileged
| neighborhood in regular contact with a group of same, Xenix was
| something we commonly encountered. High schools tended to
| mistrust, rather than encourage computer enthusiasts, and the
| nearest public library only had a couple elementary books on
| Unix. I recall feeling like the richest man in the world when a
| friend got his first job as a night watchman and told me not to
| ask any questions about where this complete set of Xenix manuals
| came from. Good ole Xenix on other people's computers became
| where I honed my shell-scripting abilities at a time when
| documentation just wasn't so easy to come by.
| trynton wrote:
| Bill Gates on the future of Xenix :]
|
| https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/01/08/bill-gates-on-...
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting how the "common history" of the IBM PC is often
| "The 8086 came into existence and then later the 386 was
| released" as if they somehow were only separated by a few years.
| anyfoo wrote:
| While we are talking about that, I actually have a PC running
| on an 80186 (rather uncommon, as it has peripherals built in
| that are not IBM PC compatible), running a XENIX descendant:
| SINIX.
|
| It's a Siemens PC-D and it was a marvelous machine. Again, not
| fully compatible with IBM PCs, but often for good reason. The
| 640k barrier was not a thing on a PC-D for example. And it has
| its own MMU made of discrete logic chips for real process
| separation on SINIX!
| bombcar wrote:
| The HP Palmtop ran a 186 chip - not sure if it used any of
| the 186 specific instructions.
| rjsw wrote:
| The extra instructions were mostly fine, the NEC V20/V30
| implemented them too, the 186 had built-in peripheral
| functions like timers and the interrupt controller that
| were different to those in a PC.
|
| You couldn't use the array bound check instruction as it
| used the interrupt used by the PC BIOS for Print Screen.
| jandrese wrote:
| That is a hilarious limitation. I can just see someone
| building a test program to try it out and wondering why
| his printer is suddenly spitting out screenshots.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I was going to say "that's now how it works", but
| actually, thinking about it... I think that's exactly
| what would happen, heh?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I've been trying to hunt down one of these machines for
| years. Does yours have the Collage GUI?
| anyfoo wrote:
| I have at least two, actually. Hopefully additionally the
| one that I originally used in the 80s (the other two are
| much more recent acquisitions) still exists in my parent's
| basement somewhere.
|
| The machines are all in Europe and I'm currently in the US.
| Where are you based? I might be willing to part with one of
| the three machines, but only after I've gotten an extensive
| look at it (and it will likely be a significant while
| before that, especially with not being able to travel right
| now and all).
|
| What's the Collage GUI?
|
| EDIT: The GUIs I'm aware of are Digital Research GEM and
| Windows, I think up to Windows 2.11 or something.
| Obviously, that's for DOS. If there was a GUI for SINIX,
| I'd be extremely interested? I noticed that the SINIX 1.2
| kernel added graphics support.
| ch_123 wrote:
| What you are saying is true, but it's also worth keeping in
| mind that the 8086 was already three years old by the time the
| first IBM showed up, and the 286 was launched only a few months
| after the IBM PC.
|
| That was part of the reason why the 286 ended up with the
| "braindead chip" reputation - it was designed before the IBM PC
| and DOS showed up, and thus the inability to easily switch
| between real and protected mode was not seen as a big problem
| at the time it was designed.
| glhaynes wrote:
| Oh, wow, I'd never put the timeline together like that. Yes,
| that makes the 286 make much more sense!
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly - the winning OS was MS-DOS and successors and so the
| 8086 went to the 80386 because nothing "famous" really used
| the 286 capabilities (Windows 286 aside).
| creeble wrote:
| And OS/2.
| Narishma wrote:
| I think what people tend to miss is that it took a very
| long time for that to happen. It took until the early 90s
| for the 386 to get cheap enough to start outselling the
| 286. Even after Intel dropped it, AMD and Harris kept
| releasing versions that were faster and cheaper than the
| low-end 386es.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, my 386SX 20Mhz with hopping 2MB and a 40MB HDD was
| about 1 500 euros in 1990, when the minimum wage was
| around 300 euros.
|
| It was bought via credit and if I make the inflation
| calculation for today's money it would be a big pile of
| notes.
| anthk wrote:
| And that would be obsolete by 1994.
| asveikau wrote:
| I had heard of Xenix over the years, but I hadn't realized they
| essentially upstreamed to the x86 port of SysV and continued to
| receive royalties for it, which it says very briefly at the end
| of this article.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I think that it was v7, I remember that it was SCO who did the
| SystemV 286 port (I know this because SCO brought the company
| in that I worked for when they got stuck working on the MMU,
| .... and then screwed us over .... long before the whole Linux
| legal kerfuffle).
|
| I'm also skeptical of the comment at the end about MS getting
| paid for all x86 Unixes, I'm sure that was true for anything
| labelled "Xenix" probably not true for 286 and later SysV ports
| which were done outside of MS
| twoodfin wrote:
| I wonder if that decades-old agreement had any impact on the
| process of open-sourcing the SysV-based Solaris.
| mprovost wrote:
| I remember finding Microsoft copyright statements in some
| programs on a Solaris 7 box in 2000 (my memory says /bin/true
| but some googling reveals it was probably /usr/bin/clear). Some
| of these programs were implemented as shell scripts and had
| copyrights from SysV, some of which had come from Xenix.
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