[geeks] shot in the dark - Coherent manual?

[Bill Bradford]

On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 03:36:23AM -0400, Dave Fischer wrote:
> mrbill at mrbill.net writes:
> >I've got installation media and a serial number, but I'm looking for a copy
> >(scanned, physical, etc) of a manual for MWC (Mark Williams Co.)'s
> >"Coherent" UNIX V7 clone.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system)
> Had one - bought that new back in... 88? 89? Had a lot of fun doing
> graphics work in 64K code + 64K data per process...
> Or are you talking about the 386 version? (Coherent 4.x)

Well, I have the manual for the 286 version, but the media I have is for
the 4.x version.

I spent last night playing with (or trying to) Coherent 4.10.x (the final
version) and SCO Xenix/386 System V 2.3.4.  Unfortunately none of the
current batch of emulators (VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, Parallels, Qemu)
will work - they either don't provide correct floppy drive /IDE emulation,
or blow up/hang when the OSes want to switch into protected mode.

I can run a pre-installed Xenix image that I found (someone made it from an
actual Xenix system on real hardware) but I can't install it from scratch - 
it won't recognize the emulated IDE/SCSI controller and thinks there are no
HDs.

The main problem with Coherent is proper floppy drive emulation.

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas