
A bit of XENIX history - luu
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html
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cstross
Hmm. I joined SCO in early 1991, and one of my first jobs in techpubs was
working on documenting compatability between SCO-branded Xenix and SCO's
release of SVR3.2 UNIX -- which was able to run binaries compiled for SCO
Xenix (unsurprisingly) but offered a bunch of extras. AIUI SCO had been doing
a lot of development of Xenix from 1986/87 onwards, when Microsoft made the
strategic decision to focus on OS/2 and the successor to DOS. Taking on Xenix
was what enabled SCO to grow to a $200M/year turnover multinational in about 5
years; and failing to understand the implications of Linux was probably what
killed SCO (or rather, when they _finally_ got it, they split the company and
sold the UNIX IP to Caldera, who renamed themselves SCO and attempted to sue
the universe) -- the rest is history.

~~~
chollida1
> Hmm. I joined SCO in early 1991

Meta question, and I'll try to ask it delicately:)

I know that you worked for SCO along time ago and its a different company than
the one who started the lawsuit, but have you every had anyone refuse to hire
you, or even joke about it, because you worked at SCO/had the name SCO on your
resume?

With the SCO lawsuit a few years back there was an awful lot of vitriol from
some people about how they'd never hire someone with SCO on their resume. I'd
be curious to know if anyone ever did get black listed due to working at
SCO/Caldera.

~~~
jfischer
Ha! Charlie left the software industry and moved to bigger and better things
([http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/faq.html](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/faq.html)). He does have some good stories about his days at
SCO on his website (e.g. [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/06/how_i_go...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/06/how_i_got_here_in_the_end_part_3.html)).

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ja27
XENIX was my first _nix. Back around 1985 my high school had a Tandy TRS80
with the 68000 processor and 6-12 terminals. They used it to replace a
Burroughs mini for the COBOL class. I just barely missed punching cards for
the Burroughs and instead learned vi and stupid tricks like writing to other
users ' ttys. I still torment my Microsoftie friends when I remind them that
they're the ones that got me started on _nix, long before Linux or OSX came
around.

~~~
eschaton
The TRS-80 Model II/16 or just the Model 16?

It shouldn't surprise you that there was also a version of 68000 Xenix for the
Lisa.

~~~
ja27
Not sure. I'm also one of the few that used A/UX on the 68k Macs.

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ChuckMcM
I was Intel at the time and when the first pieces of the 80386 came back from
the fab functional Intel was scrambling for ways to test it (I was in Systems
Validation). We tried running Xenix on it and discovered various places where
Microsoft's kernel team had 'cheated' by using reserved bits in various places
which just happened to work on the 286. Needless to say it caused quite a
commotion :-)

~~~
yuhong
Remember the 32-bit multiply bug?

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johnpur
Wow, the infamous "merged product"... In '89 I joined MS to run the "LM/X"
product, where we extended the Unix networking model to support the SMB
protocols. A very interesting time where MS worked with HP to get the kernel
and networking changes into the mainline code base while at the same time AT&T
was doing their own version. Sun was pushing their implementation of PC NFS,
and many interesting "standards" meetings were held. If I remember correctly,
the PC networking protocols showed in in XPG4 (X/Open Portability Guide) in
1992.

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zatkin
I wonder what would have happened if Xenix _was_ the successor to DOS. We
would probably be living in a completely different computing world today.

~~~
bluedino
Hardware was too expensive. By the time RAM/HD/CPU prices became low enough to
store and run a UNIX OS, something else would have came along and taken it's
place.

You could run DOS on a $999 computer, and you could run Windows on a $1999
computer. It took a $4999 computer to run UNIX. That's basically what kept
home users on such futile operating systems. That's also what kept Windows NT
off peoples desktops until 2000 or so.

~~~
ams6110
I disagree. I remember running Minix on a no-name 8088 machine with 640K of
RAM and no hard drive at all. Unix was developed on machines with far less
resources than that. It is not a particularly heavy-weight OS.

~~~
bluedino
Sure, Minix would run on a low-end system, but to have taken the place of
Microsoft Windows as the successor to DOS you would have needed a GUI like X
which Minix did not have.

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CurtHagenlocher
> Xenix should be the 16-bit “successor” to DOS

Shouldn't this be "32-bit"? MS-DOS itself was always 16-bit.

~~~
hapless
At the time, DOS and the original (8088) IBM PC primarily competed with 8-bit
micros: 8080 systems running CP/M and the 6502-based Apple II.

In that context, they were probably talking about the upcoming generation of
microcomputers, based around bigger chips: 80286, 68k, etc

~~~
akira2501
The 8080 had a 16bit address bus, though; which is what I always assumed was
meant by referring to a machine by it's "bit count."

~~~
ANTSANTS
By that logic, the 6502 is a 16-bit CPU, because it (and just about every
other CPU we call 8-bit) has a 16-bit address bus.

The 68000 has a 16-bit data bus and ALU, a 24-bit address bus, and 32-bit
registers, but is usually considered a 16-bit CPU. I guess for older CPUs, the
data bus and the ALU size are the determining factors.

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emersonrsantos
We had the the SCO Xenix 2.3.4 running the billing system for the water and
sewerage company on my hometown (about 100k homes) till the 2000s. The
software was written in SGBD (FoxPro-like DB).

It was up and running till 1997 on a i386 with 16MB RAM and 1gb SCSI serving
dozens of users in various locations via VT100. No TCP/IP stack running, it
was not supported by our hardware.

I bet lots of companies still has this kind of setup, at least I saw a
retailer doing the same setup but running MF Cobol instead of SGBD.

~~~
stevekemp
I worked for a company, around 2002, that offered a managed billing platform
for small mobile-phone operators.

That platform was largely built around microfocus COBOL.

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repost
That was a blast for from the past - I spent 1986-91 designing serial cards
and writing drivers for Xenix systems at Specialix. We had 32 terminals
running on 386 Xenix systems, tell that to the kids of today with their Ghz
CPU's and fancy VM's and they won't believe you.

