[rescue] FWD: Free Unix Machine

[William Enestvedt]

>From the oxdeadbeef list, but amusing even if the system is gone.
-wde
P.S. Have I been trolled? Is this a chestnut?
--
Will Enestvedt
UNIX System Administrator
Johnson & Wales University -- Providence, RI

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From: Ben Mesander <bam at dimensional.com>
Please redistribute as widely as you want to anyone who might be interested.
--Ben

The Soul of an Old Machine
          -or-
UNIX workstation for free
 (also a long winded and
    pointless rant)

In the BSD vs. System V UNIX wars, I was firmly in the camp of UNIX
System V, from AT&T.  I held out for years, but now that I am a BSD
developer by trade, the time has finally come to retire my System V
UNIX box. When I was a system administrator for the US Geological
Survey, I used to run a network of Data General machines running their
System V derivative, DG/UX, so when the opportunity to acquire one of
these machines came up several years later, I took the offer for
nostalgia's sake. However, I now find myself at a point in my life
where nostalgia is much less important than having fewer possessions.

One of the BSD developers who I work with looked at me like I was
insane when I said I had always been a big System V fan and thought
BSD sucked in the late 80's early 90's. For his sake, and for your
amusement, I offer the following 10 reasons that System V is better
than BSD:

1 My first BSD experience was with the world's most overloaded VAX at
  the University of Oklahoma. We were not allowed to use vi because it
  used too much memory. And emacs was right out. Yes, I had to use
  'ed' to write FORTRAN programs. It was about as much fun as using
  cards on the campus IBM 3081. I distinctly remember that a 20-line
  FORTRAN program took 20 minutes to compile one evening. This was not
  a good user experience.

2 My next experience was with the BSD on the Encore Multipanic, er,
  Multimax which replaced the VAX at OU. This system crashed
  incessantly while attempting to page in the paging code in the
  kernel, which never should have been paged out. I had to pay a
  special assessment of $35/semester to fund the purchase of this
  piece of garbage. I gave up using the campus infrastructure of
  nonworking boxes owned by the engineering department running BSD and
  annoying IBM lameframes that could only be spoken to with cards run
  by the university computing services, and used an old TRS-80 model 1
  and a TI 99/4a I got for $50 when TI exited the home computing
  market for the rest of my college career.

3 My friend Richard gave me an account on his Apple Macintosh IIx
  running A/UX, an SVR3 derivative. It actually worked. This would
  count as my first positive UNIX experience. He loaned me a V7 manual
  to read, and gave me a UUCP feed. Thanks, Richard!

4 I got a guest account on an AT&T 3B2, at some AT&T research
  facility. It actually worked too. I wish I still had an att.com
  email address. I can't even remember the machine name.

5 I tried using the NetBSD machines at the Free Software Foundation,
  and they incessantly re-arranged my source code in random 8K chunks
  whenever I saved my files. The System V based HP/UX machines
  actually worked. However, I do have to admit that AMIX SVR4 on the
  Amiga was a total loss.

6 BSD had a dumb little devil logo. AT&T had the Death Star, and the
  frightening and creepy AT&T YOU WILL advertisements on TV, which
  seemed to imply (correctly as it turns out) that in the future, we
  would all be in touch with each other incessantly, 24 hours a day, 7
  days a week, so work could call you while you're vacationing on the
  beach, and everyone's life turns into the same stress-filled hell
  that only first-level helpdesk personnel and telemarketers had
  experienced prior to the internet revolution.

7 Bob Manson liked System V. I think it plays a part in the plot to
  replace all of us with giant mutant squirrels. I have no doubt that
  giant mutant squirrels would do a better job at running this planet.

8 I worked for IBM doing AIX stuff, and AIX was System V-like if for
  no other reason than it was also big, slow, and evil (like me).

9 I will still have 12 working computers when this one is gone. 12 has
  better Feng Shui than 13. Someday, I hope to get down to 1, and
  after that, zero.

10 ksh kicks ass. csh loses.

OK, the rant is over. Here's what you get, if you want it. Note that
I'd prefer to give this to someone local so it could be free. If I
have to ship it, I can ship the manuals and tapes via media mail, but
I'm sure given the weight of the heavy steel cases and such that
shipping would be around $150-200 to US destinations. I'm in Longmont,
Colorado.

1 AViiON 310c w/64M of RAM in good working condition. Has color output
  via 3 BNC connectors as was common with UNIX workstations of this
  era. CPU is a Motorola 88100 RISC. Video is 1280x1024x256 colors.

1 PHU (Peripheral Housing Unit) w/ 320M SCSI disk and 1/4" SCSI tape
  drive.  DG/UX 5.4R3.10 & X11R4 is installed.

1 Data General 19" greyscale monitor (1280x1024x256 shades) w/BNC
  connector.

1 AViiON 300, not working, for parts (power supply, simms, etc.)

2 Data General keyboards.

2 Data Genaral optical mice.

1 Mouse-Trak model M5 trackball for Data General systems (nice space
  saver).  (I wonder how many of these were ever made?)

1 Box with approx 50 lbs of data general manuals, 1/4" tapes, random
  Data General simms, etc.

This is a complete, working system with documentation, software, and spares
sufficient to keep it running. One word of warning - the AViiON 300 series
has a hardware bug that will cause it to lock up if the system clock is set
to 1999 or beyond. Yes, everyone else worried about Y2K, but Data General
had a year 1999 bug. And they wanted a lot of money to fix it if you didn't
have a service contract (and I don't). I keep setting the clock back to 1996
or so every year, and you should too. Re-live the mid-90's for decades to
come!

Yours,
Ben Mesander
<bam at dimensional.com>
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