[HN Gopher] IBM Intellistation 185 AIX workstation (2016)
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IBM Intellistation 185 AIX workstation (2016)
Author : hxorr
Score : 82 points
Date : 2025-09-28 05:04 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ibmfiles.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ibmfiles.com)
| hxorr wrote:
| An interesting writeup about one of the last Unix workstations
| from 2006.
| tdeck wrote:
| I definitely didn't expect something called an "AIX
| workstation" to have been released in 2006.
| shellwizard wrote:
| I still have to deal with a handful of UNIX systems at $WORK
| mostly AIX, and I don't really like it much compared to all of
| the Linux boxes that we mostly use. On one hand it seems to be
| rock solid and all of that but on the other it's like driving a
| Ferrari to go to work instead of a more sensitive Toyota. Most of
| them are being replaced by cheaper Linux servers where memory is
| not so pricey and mostly feel the same, albeit some memory
| allocation/caching difference
| gtsnexp wrote:
| Naive question: by your analogy, would a 1990s Ferrari perform
| today as it did back then?
| shellwizard wrote:
| I guess yes, although given today's petrol prices and
| environmental restrictions, it wouldn't be able to drive
| anywhere (at least in the EU)
| madwolf wrote:
| Yes and no. Performancewise, the iconic Ferrari Testarossa
| from 80s/90s does 0-62mph in 5.8sec. That's in the ballpark
| of today's family SUV EV, like the Tesla Model Y (standard
| version, 'Performance' does 3.3sec) or Hyundai Ioniq 5
| (again standard version, performance 'N' does 3.4sec).
|
| But I'm sure the "fun factor" in a Ferrari is much greater
| and of course there's a nostalgia factor as well... it was
| "THE" supercar when I was a kid. I would love to drive one
| today and it would be much cooler than a Tesla Y or Ioniq 5
| :-)
| cogogo wrote:
| The last Testarossa I saw in the wild was around 2010
| parked in Hoxton London. None of the upholstery was
| holding up and it looked like it might not be driveable.
| But it got there somehow.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Also, 80s/90s Ferraris weren't very reliable... :P
| ornornor wrote:
| I don't think this has changed much.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| It's even funnier when you realize all of the V6 Camrys
| built in the last 10 years also have a 0-60 of 5.8
| seconds or less, and with the right tires and some
| suspension tweaks probably handle about as well as an 80s
| Ferrari.
| newsclues wrote:
| Absolute vs relative performance is important to consider
| gtsnexp wrote:
| And normalized performance? :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Linux still has to copy a few Aix tricks, like the way lazy
| linking works.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| From a cursory web search, it sounds like that just loads
| dynamic libraries when their functions are first called? Is
| that really so useful compared to either loading at start or
| dlopen()ing if they're optional?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Is it true that 0x00000000 is a valid memory address on aix?
| I'm sure I read it somewhere but struggled to confirm it..
| pavlov wrote:
| Yes, I believe this was an optimization to allow IBM's
| compiler to do speculative loads before a null check.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Alien Infested uniX indeed :)
| TickleSteve wrote:
| thats true on many systems... nothing special about 0x0 other
| than NULL happens to be defined as 0 in most toolchains an
| some functions use NULL to report an error.
| irusensei wrote:
| I did some work on AIX once. The thing that I remember is that
| I was granted some kind of zone/slice or wathever they call for
| compartmentalization. It didn't even had SSH so I had to use
| telnet.
|
| The guy I was supposed to prepare the system for could only
| install Oracle from some crappy java UI wizard so I had to
| request the sysadmin to install a lot of Linux libraries and
| programs to enable X11 over SSH.
| whatusername wrote:
| From memory there was LPAR "Logical Partitions" - which were
| effectively like a VM. and there was WPAR "Workload
| Partitions" - which had a shared OS and were more like a
| container.
|
| I had some "interesting" experiences getting stuff to work on
| WPAR's.
| tecleandor wrote:
| IIRC, WPARs could be just for one process, or full OS (but
| sharing the resources of one AIX instance, I guess that
| running on an LPAR or directly in the hardware).
|
| But yeah, bit more like a container.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I first learned on an AIX box in college; Cygwin/X gave me
| X11 access and worked perfectly, although I couldn't tell you
| whether that used telnet or ssh. Back then I used telnet a
| lot without any regard for security.
| Rediscover wrote:
| > crappy java UI wizard
|
| Nicely put (oof!). I believe it also enforced a minimal color
| depth, which none of our machines could directly support on
| their own hardware, forcing the use of remote X11 displays.
| avhception wrote:
| Sounds painful. Why is there no CLI installer? Fortunately,
| I never had to deal with Oracle.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Yes we first had a world of telnet and networks that allowed
| anyone who pierced them with a transceiver to be part of it
| (thicknet). It was a simpler/kinder/less malicious world than
| todays.
|
| X Windows ran great on AIX before Linux was a thing. IBM was
| involved with its's inception (Project Athena).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5
| blackhaz wrote:
| Can somebody provide an example why would someone prefer such a
| workstation over a Windows workstation back then? I.e., which
| specific programs/applications demanded it?
| iberator wrote:
| It's in the article. CAD workstations (Katia etc).
|
| Also AIX was a safer and better certified system back then
| (think DoD stuff).
| m000 wrote:
| It's sprayed all over TFA: CAD
|
| Mind that this was early Windows XP era. The Windows
| "workstation" would probably have something like a RIVA TNT
| with 16MB of graphics memory. Meanwhile the Intellistation had
| way more powerful options (e.g. 128MB on a single card, or
| exotic 4 cards x 16MB configurations).
|
| But even if you could beef your PC hardware to similar specs,
| the CAD software was probably just not there (yet). Not to
| mention that pre-SP2 Windows XP were pretty terrible on their
| own.
| nizmow wrote:
| A TNT was from the late 90s. In 2006 512MB consumer GPUs were
| common.
| fidotron wrote:
| nVidia had Quadro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro
| Generally the same GPUs, but with different memory
| configurations and firmwares.
|
| The ATi equivalent was FireGL.
| claudex wrote:
| From the link:
|
| > At that point Windows XP 32-bit was the most commonly used
| variant, and while you could run XP 64-bit (and IBM did have
| native support for it on the IntelliStation 9228), XP 64-bit
| had so many problems so most users were stuck with 3.9 GB of
| RAM. Therefore if we were to assume that UNIX and said UNIX
| hardware offered way more memory, it starts to make sense
| vmh1928 wrote:
| Silicon Graphics was still viable in 2006, mostly used for
| engineering (and maybe video production) graphics. Sun and IBM
| also competed in this space. SGI went bust in 2009 due to
| competitive pressures from Windows/x86 workstations. 2006 was
| probably the last hurrah for this type of workstation.
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| One of the main reasons the AIX workstation machines continued
| to be used even after the Windows NT workstation era began was
| the CAD software CATIA V4 from Dassault Systemes.
|
| CATIA V5 was the first version to support Windows NT. However,
| it was a complete rewrite, resulting in a very different UI and
| workflows. Even the file formats were largely incompatible with
| V4, so the automotive industry and their suppliers stayed with
| CATIA V4 for many years after the release of V5. And the only
| way to run CATIA V4 was on a UNIX workstation.
| hulitu wrote:
| > why would someone prefer such a workstation over a Windows
| workstation back then?
|
| Windows was slow, with limited memory, a crappy scheduler and
| almost no professional SW written for it. Its security was also
| (until Win XP) nonexistent.
| fidotron wrote:
| > HP's HP-UX hardware being an exception since they just sloppily
| hacked in standard ATI cards / which means you wouldn't get the
| extra benefits of running a GXT6500 on AIX as you would with a
| FireGL X3 on HP-UX. HP probably had the lowest share of the UNIX
| CAD market so they probably felt little need to invest much R&D:
| not to mention HP can't make a proper enterprise workstation or
| server ANYWAYS.
|
| As the kids say: LOL.
| hulitu wrote:
| > HP probably had the lowest share of the UNIX CAD market
|
| Probably not. Apollo was a CAD vendor. Almost all CAD
| workstations where i worked 2002-2006 were HP-UX
| cramcgrab wrote:
| Aah, the PowerPC architecture! Very nice! Remember working on the
| ibm P5 series, really nice machines with both hot swap and cold
| swap components, color coded for convenience. Great operating
| system, aix was solidly integrated into the architecture. Lpars
| and soft partitions, really flexible. And available too, we
| rarely rebooted the whole machine, in fact can probably count on
| one hand the number of times we rebooted it
| bear8642 wrote:
| Yep, the office has a p9 box and normally the only times it's
| needed rebooted is after a power cut.
|
| Very solid boxes!
| temp0826 wrote:
| Very cool, we had a couple of these (along with a couple HP-UX
| and SGI boxes, amongst a sea of Sun workstations) at my first gig
| as a Unix administrator. It was such a treat to see the diversity
| of the proprietary *nix world when Linux was taking over (this
| was the late 00's when their fates were clearly written at a
| megacorp that kept them around mostly for contractual
| obligations).
| t1234s wrote:
| Anyone still using those giant trackballs for everyday work?
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(page generated 2025-09-28 23:01 UTC)