[rescue] Pixar and Sun (was Re: Sun 4/600 firmware found)

[Earl Baugh]

> Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2020 10:47:08 -0500
> From: Nathan Raymond <nraymond at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Sun 4/600 firmware found
>
> > On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:35:53AM -0500, Nathan Raymond wrote:
> > >Fascinating bit of history!
> >
> > Indeed - thanks. There are some other details in this SunWorld article
> > from
> > November 1995:
> > http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-11-1995/swol-11-pixar.html
> >
> > No mention of Ross in that one :)
> >
>
> Nice, that article really fills out some other angles, but I'm really
> curious about this comment:
>
> In a sense, Pixar has come full circle. Back in the LucasFilm days, what is
> > now Pixar wrote the first operating system Sun used. "The very first Suns
> > that were delivered ran a version of Unix that we wrote for them, and for
> > the first year of Sun's existence, this group was their largest
> customer,"
> > Catmull recalls.
> >
>
> Is that true? I've never heard that, and my attempts to corroborate that
> are coming up short. No mention of Pixar here:
>
> https://cse.unl.edu/~witty/class/csce351/howto/history_of_solaris.pdf
>
> - Nate
>

 That sounds incorrect.  Pixar did use Suns from the beginning (and if my
memory is correct, even back to Sun 1 machines)
but the OS initially was a V32 based and moved to a straight Berkely
version after Joy was completely on board.  (The
first Sun 1 boards couldn't support Berkely, but an upgrade came out, HW
wise, which was necessary for Sun OS 1.0)
I know some of this because I have a working Sun 1 (and one of the original
pre Sun OS 1.0) CPU boards as well...

Earl