[rescue] really old SysVr4

[slawmaster at gmail.com]

On 12/27/07, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm at mendelson.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2007 at 03:49:47PM -0800, John Floren wrote:
> > Well, recently I've become interested in running System V on an old
> > 486 or something, just to get a feel for how things were. The problem
> > is that I don't know where to get the software! Does anyone have some
> > disk images for old-timey x86 Unix? I'm not too knowledgeable in that
> > area, so I'm not sure what all my choices are, so suggestions and
> > comments would be welcome.
>
> You might also want to look at A/UX. It runs on Macintosh 68030 and
> 68040 computers. CD images can be found if you search for it.
>

I have looked at A/UX in the past, and I may try it again if somebody
in the area offers me compatible hardware.

> Finding parts for them is not that difficult. Apple CD-ROM drives
> are common, the machines it runs on all had scsi controllers and
> many had ethernet.
>
> I have over the years, tried to rebuild a 386 UNIX system I had
> and found that getting parts for it was almost impossible.
> Support for SCSI controler, display and ethernet cards was very
> limted. One version I tried only worked with ONE SPECIFIC CD-ROM
> drive, and I only had the CD image.
>
> One flaw was that they only used the first 1024 cylinders on an IDE
> drive, an many of them did not tell you that when it was writing to
> cylinder 1024 it was actually writing to cylinder 0, and overlaying your
> partition map.
>
> I would also look for unusual hardware such as an IBM RS/6000 from
> those days, or an AT&T 3b2. The problem with a 3b2 is finding one
> with a SCSI controller or if you can't, a working MFM drive
> supported by it's UNIX system.
>

I would really like to get a 3b2 system, run Research Unix on it, and
try to locate a Blit terminal to hook up. If anybody in the San
Francisco area has any of this stuff lying around, let me know.

> You might also want to try an early version of Linux or one
> of the PC versions of BSD from the early 1990's.
>

I'm looking for "pure" UNIX, not Linux and preferably not even BSD. I
would really like to run one of the Bell Labs versions, but I may look
into some of the old 386 BSD's around.

> I also had a lot of fun with Coherent on a 286.
>
> Geoff.
> --
> Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
> IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
> Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/
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