17 Jul
2023
17 Jul
'23
7:06 p.m.
On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 at 14:56, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 12:42 PM Henry Bent via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Ah, after a little research I see that the TK50 was introduced in mid-1985,
and it was available for the MicroVAX I, so with Ultrix-32m 1.2 being
shipped in 1986 it makes sense that it could have been distributed on a
TK50. I did not previously think that the TK50 had been available that
early.
-Henry
I truly feel for the folks who had to do this at the time, using 38
floppies on a MicroVAX I. The installer does give time estimates for
certain milestones so that you could go and get a coffee or whatever.
"Configuring vmunix, this takes about 30 minutes" is certainly indicative
of the relative speed of the machine at the time. Also there is an
indication that there was a tape distribution but so far that has not
surfaced. I'm not even sure what medium that would have been - RC25?
Doing a VMS install, twice, on a microvax ii is what convinced the powers
that be to get a tk50... and an eagle 400mb drive... or at least put them
over the edge to proposing work that got the upgrade funded... iirc... The
VMS install was on a crazy number of floppies, if you counted all the
layered products and third party packages...
Warner