• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Operatings Systems: reminiscences

alfaniner said:
Several years ago I acquired a couple boxes of these. I use them as bookmarks for larger books. I've been leaving a few in the Little Free Libraries around the neighborhood.


(picture of 80-column punched cards)


I should probably look at selling some batches on eBay as they look to fetch a nice price.
Click to expand...


Reminds me: I had to self-finance 1 year of my Computer Science degree course because I had switched universities and courses (Chemistry at University of Newcastle -> Computer Science at University of Edinburgh), so it took me 5 years instead of 4 to complete.


In order to generate money I would, ahem, "acquire" lots of discarded line printer paper and punched cards from the user access building (this was before interactive terminals were commonly available). I guess it could be called stealing, but I needed some form of income. I filled about 50% of my brother's Ford Transit van (that really is a lot of paper/card), and managed to sell it to a scrap-paper merchant - can't remember for how much, but it was sufficient to finance the whole year (would have been 1976/77 or thereabouts).



And to come back on-topic, those were the years getting a good grounding in an operating system that was light years ahead of all the rest (and certainly way in advance of Unix) - EMAS (Edinburgh Multiple Access SystemWP).


Such features led EMAS supporters to claim that their system was superior to Unix for the first 20 years of the latter's existence.
Click to expand...
 
My first real exposure to UNIX came via SCO XENIX, when I worked technical support at an IBM and Compaq reseller.
 
Mine was BSD Unix on a Vax 11/750 (iirc) 1983. Glasgow Uni Post Grad Diploma in CS using green screens - as post grads we had keys so could grab lab time when we wanted, mainly Pascal. The next terminal I used was in 1984 an IBM 3279 with 3 coloured cathode ray tubes and writing assembler. I had to regularly go through the screen calibration process.
When I joined HBSC in 1999 many of this critical programming team were using 3277s and stuff.
 
Darat said:
My first real exposure to UNIX came via SCO XENIX, when I worked technical support at an IBM and Compaq reseller.
Click to expand...

I think my very first use of UNIX was on a Three Rivers Perq system that ICL was selling for a short while. I went on to work on a System 5 based version on ICL hardware (DRS 300); a modular, A4 sized Intel 386 system that could run either UNIX (DRS/NX) or C-DOS (multi-user DOS). Thereafter, I moved to HP and worked on and supported HP-UX (as well as software running on Linux, AIX and Solaris).

abaddon said:
Anyone recall the Santa Cruz Operation?
Click to expand...

Darat just did. :)
 
My first experience with Unix was AIX on the IBM RS/6000 systems, followed by by HP/UX running on HP 9000 ES systems. I still have three old IBM POWERStation 220 systems and an old HP 9000 E25 computer, but sadly none of them have an OS installed.

There was also AIX for the PS/2 (IBM's Personal System 2, not the Playstation 2!) It was such an oddball system that I rather suspect if you asked IBM about it these days they'd deny they ever sold it.

These days I run almost exclusively Linux, usually systems descended from Red Hat and Fedora. Although I'm reminded of the quip "BSD is for people who love Unix; Linux is for people who hate Windows." Sometimes I think it's more true than I would like it to be. Certainly the BSDs have remained closer to the original Unix systems, such as a rather monolithic startup rc script (someone's sure to correct me if I'm wrong) and the command line system tools.
 
I used to run a cluster of RS6000s running AIX testing various IBM products as well as various Sun and HP. I found it pretty solid. The one dismal part was one product relied on somwg- distributed system object model, which was a nightmare.
 
I tried using Linux once. It worked great, until something went wrong and it stopped working and I had no freaking clue how to get it working again.

Windows has its flaws, but at least I know it. On the other hand, my MacBook Pro has been chugging along for almost ten years with no issues whatsoever.
 
Another NT 4.0 post, or how I managed to trash a PC by setting the wrong file permissions: This was some time in the late '90's, IIRC. My work computer had been recently upgraded from Windows 95 to NT 4.0. I think it was a new computer, but it may have been just an OS upgrade. Anyway, unlike Windows 95, and other early "consumer" versions of Windows, NT 4.0 actually had file permissions. I was familiar with the concept of file permissions from UNIX. NT 4.0 Workstation by default had mostly wide open file permissions. As I recall, damn near evertying except a few system directories allowed any user to do anything they wanted. I had admin rights on the PC and decided I was going to tighten up those permissions so that only my accounts were able to write most of the files. However, in the process of doing this, I removed the SYSTEM "user" from the permissions of C:\, the root folder of the boot drive. The result of this was that the first time I rebooted, it immediately bluescreened. Service desk ended up reformatting/reinstalling (or reimaging. I'm not sure if they were doing it that way at the time). Fortunately, the thing had been set up with 2 partitions, a C: drive that was the boot drive, and a much larger D: drive. Most data files I had stored locally were on the D: partition, so they were able to initially just reformat C: and reinstall Windows so I could recover those files before they did the complete reformat. It was the only time I was ever "that guy" who wrecks his PC because he knows just enough to be dangerous (well, not the hardware, but functionally wrecked). I don't know if it's still possible to render more recent versions of Windows unbootable by setting the wrong file permissions, as I've never wanted to risk it. I suppose I could try it on a VM or junker PC if I really wanted to know badly enough to make the effort, but I'm not quite that curious.
 
Last edited:
arthwollipot said:
I tried using Linux once. It worked great, until something went wrong and it stopped working and I had no freaking clue how to get it working again.

Windows has its flaws, but at least I know it. On the other hand, my MacBook Pro has been chugging along for almost ten years with no issues whatsoever.
Click to expand...

If you know what you are doing, you can fix damn near anything on a Linux or UNIX system if you can get a shell (command prompt) and a text editor working. Not that those fixes are necessarily obvious or easy, but the GUI for Linux is not as deeply embedded in the OS as it is for Windows, and most of the configuration lives in text files. In fact, it is not unusual for admins to not even bother to installing a GUI on servers.
 
eerok said:
Some years back there was a stink among geeks that MS had ripped off the BSD TP/IP stack for NT. Someone found some clear identification of BSD in a debug dump IIRC. This was never really contested, and of course this explains why the net on NT worked reasonably well.

It wouldn't surprise me if much of the working code in MS products has been stolen from Unix.
Click to expand...
It would me. NT is based more on VAX VMS than Unix.

As for the Windows TCP stack being based on BSD Sockets: I thought it was well known that that was the case. I think Microsoft licensed it perfectly legally.
 
Wudang said:
Mine was BSD Unix on a Vax 11/750 (iirc) 1983. Glasgow Uni Post Grad Diploma in CS using green screens - as post grads we had keys so could grab lab time when we wanted, mainly Pascal. The next terminal I used was in 1984 an IBM 3279 with 3 coloured cathode ray tubes and writing assembler. I had to regularly go through the screen calibration process.
When I joined HBSC in 1999 many of this critical programming team were using 3277s and stuff.
Click to expand...
Bsd 4.2 on the University of York CS department VAX 11/750 With 6mb RAM. I had a friend whose first year project never bothered to free any of its heap space. You knew when the scheduler decided it was time her process got to run because everybody else’s terminal sessions froze while it swapped in her address space.
 
Brainster said:
Nobody else had the harrowing experience of trying to learn Commodore DOS? Eventually I gave it up and just used it as a games machine (for which it was excellent).
Click to expand...
Why would anybody do that? MS-BASIC v2.0 was THE operating system for the C64. Once you learned all of the POKE commands, you had all you needed.
 
arthwollipot said:
I tried using Linux once. It worked great, until something went wrong and it stopped working and I had no freaking clue how to get it working again.
Click to expand...
"Linux is user friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are." :D

Do you know how many years ago that was? Linux has come a long way since 2010.

My main complaint these days is proprietary software in general. A friend of mine invested money and time in learning how to use Corel Draw and Photoshop. But the update treadmill on those products is expensive. She was all right until her increasingly creaky install of Windows XP finally gave out. I set her up with a Windows 10 system. Now if she wants to use either program again she has to buy all new versions. It's at least $650 for Draw and I don't know how much for Photoshop. And Adobe's moved to a rental model: you have to pay every year to be able to use it.

My friend? She's over 60 and is on disability. She simply cannot afford to buy the new versions. The old ones don't work on Windows 7 (I know; I got a copy of Windows 7 tried to install them.)

I'm going to recommend she learn Inkscape , which apparently is a decent alternative to Draw and works on Windows. And there are lots of open source photo enhancing programs for Windows out there, which is all she was using Photoshop for.
 
Wudang said:
Anyone else amazed at how often the same ideas are reinvented? I lost track of how many times I’ve told people “yeah it’s called a concentrator network”.
Click to expand...
Dumb terminals, sorry ChromeOS machines are quite popular these days....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom