[rescue] My info search on IRIX 1.x

[Ryan Thoryk]

Lately I've been searching all over the place for info on old versions of 
IRIX (mainly because of my obsession for old and mysterious operating 
systems hehe) and today put up a page with all the data I've collected so 
far. I also found a place online that actually has some of these versions 
of IRIX archived.

My doc is here:
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/sgi/irix_versions.html
and it contains all of the links to references and material

I'm mainly wanting to have a more comprehensive history of IRIX put into 
the Unix History timeline thing (since it shows IRIX starting in 1987, and
also has a very undetailed history of MIPS OS/RiscOS/UMIPS).

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My commentary on IRIX 1.x:

1.x
Earlier versions had a separate versioning sceme reflecting a 
models/features mix. They were used on the SGI 1000, 2000 and 3000 lines. 
Some of the 1000's were diskless terminals and thus had no OS.
IRIX 1.x was called (in the following documents) Silicon Graphics System V

Some info here

Version sceme is this:
(Graphics lib version)-(W or T)(2 or 3)(OS release number)
GL refers to the IRIS Graphics Library and was either GL1 or GL2
About the W and T: T means Terminal (by a document) and W means 
Workstation
The "2" refers to machines with 68010 processors, while "3" refers to ones 
with 68020's (the 2000 and 3000 lines respectively)
are for Turbo IRIS 2300 and IRIS 3010 machines. (I'm guessing "1" refers 
to the 68000 cpu used in the first terminal)

GL2-W3.6 - one date days 01/06/88
GL2-W3.5r1
GL2-T3.4
GL2-T3.3.1
GL2-W2.5
GL2-T2.4
GL2-W2.4
GL2-T2.3.1

"W2" and "T2" (68010) run on the IRIS 2000, 2200, 2300, 2400, 2500 
machines
"W3" and "T3" (68020) run on the IRIS 2300T, 2400T, 2500T, 3010, 3020, 
3030, 3110, 3115, 3120, 3130 machines

If you cut off the "GL2-W3." off the top one, it would be "6" or "Release 
6", possibly meaning IRIX 1.6

So the versions of 1.x would be:
1.6
1.5 (fall 1984)
1.4
1.3.1

The workstation guide has vital kernel version information:
Kernel number: System 5 UNIX #135 [Fri May 4 11:15:09 PST 1984]
Release: Beta-1.5
(C) Copyright 1983 - UniSoft Corporation
(C) Copyright 1983 - Silicon Graphics Inc.

>From this page:
"Since its inception in 1982, SGI and its customers have relied on the 
power and stability of IRIX to conduct their critical businesses."

So IRIX 1 had to have been branched off of System III first by UniSoft 
since SGI was founded in late 1981, then IV+ merged in later on (UniSoft 
ported it to the 68k cpu), and later on included BSD 4.2 enhancements 
(don't know about pre-4.2 though).


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Ryan Thoryk
Unix and Network Specialist
ryan at tliquest.net