cctalk Digest, Vol 64, Issue 3

On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 09:56, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Hang on, this is getting confusing. There was a short-lived project to run OpenSolaris on POWER but that post-dated Apple involvement in PowerPC. I think Sun gave some help. Sun *did* do a full port of OpenStep to Solaris, but while I know people who saw it, I am not sure if it got a full commercial release. Sun also bought a number of NeXTstep software houses, including Lighthouse, but didn't release the code. Sun's half-hearted involvement in NeXTstep is a *particularly* short-sighted move on their part, I feel. It could have given them a big lead. AFAIK, pre Apple merge, there was no native OpenStep for PowerPC or POWER. Oh yes. I saw a demo of Processor-Independent Netware on PowerPC. I don't remember the make of the box but it had a gas-plasma flat-panel screen on the front of the case for the server monitoring screen, which I thought was a nice touch. PIN was never commercially launched, and quite rightly too, IMHO. What limited Netware servers wasn't CPU speed or number of cores or anything. I have read a lot about Netware on OS/2 (on x86). That worked and was released. It was not pushed hard enough: it had _immense_ potential. Windows NT 4 Server killed Netware partly because of the ease of running proper server apps on your fileserver -- notably, things like email servers, little mini web servers, firewalls/proxy servers, groupware, stuff like that. You could use your existing Windows skills and knowledge. Netware could do some of that too but it faced problems: * It needed more Netware skills than a lot of Netware admins had * It could destabilise your rock-solid Netware file/print boxes * An Internet-connected Netware box had to be kept updated and that was hard work * Per-user licensing costs meant it could get expensive fast NT 4 server bypassed a lot of that. You could use ordinary Windows Internet apps, often sold for a flat fee, which meant they didn't have per-user licensing. Nice easy GUI configuration. Stuff like connection sharing, etc. in the box. And people often forgot that Netware ran on top of DOS, and you could still access DOS devices, such as the floppy drive, or the CD-ROM if properly configured in DOS and one that lacked Netware-native drivers. Getting it to run on top of OS/2 wasn't that hard, I read. OS/2 could do the easy GUI setup part, it could in theory run simple Internet apps like mail servers and proxy servers outside Netware's memory space. It supported USB and multiple CPUs in its later editions. Its server edition never got much traction, though. It was a good upgrade for OS/2 -- Netware's super-fast file sharing, Netware's superior network directory support, automatic config and provisioning through the dynamic combination of NDS and Zenworks. And it was a good upgrade for Netware, giving it a a friendly, modern, GUI-driven, multitasking multiprocessor OS underneath. OS/2 + NDS extended the "better DOS than DOS, better Windows than Windows" thing to "a better server for Windows than Windows Server". But I don't think either company realised it. I don't know what it would have changed longer-term -- whether OS/2 could have survived and thrived as a server for Windows boxes. But weirder stuff has happened. That was a big niche for Linux in its first decade and a half -- a server for Windows networks. That's where _all_ my commercial Linux deployments went before I moved away from support/consultancy work. In one instance, as an install-media server for an NT4/Netware 4 LAN. Adding another Netware box would have required a ?1000+ server, as much again on Netware licences, and as much again on RAM to support the big disk needed for multiple CD images. With Caldera OpenLinux it took me an afternoon with an old PC and we were in business. It was actually _cheaper_ than fitting CD-ROMs to all the client machines. IBM could probably have afforded to just buy Novell and make it happen, but it didn't. Instead of a potentially industry-transforming product, extending the reach of both parts... Novell bought SUSE and turned it into an enterprise product, got hostile with me when I asked awkward questions at a press conference on the day of the London Underground bombings, then gave up on Netware, while SUSE became a significant enterprise vendor and ultimately gave me a job. *Shrug* True. Few had a good solid plan, though. True, but what few remember now is that as well as OS/2 1 (80286) and OS./2 2 (80386), there was also OS/2 3 (CPU-independent). It was initially developed for Intel i810 RISC boxes, the N-10 series, so it was renamed OS/2 NT and later Windows NT... and here we are with it running on a billion computers. Workplace OS/2 got a beta but I'm not sure it was ever _sold_. http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Workplace_OS/2:_Just_Good_Old_OS/2%E2%80%A6_F…! https://tedium.co/2019/02/28/ibm-workplace-os-taligent-history/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-warp-powerpc-edition/ I don't think PIN ever actually shipped. https://books.google.cz/books?id=_NtrYKFH2XAC&lpg=PA4&ots=GzscOIFIB… https://books.google.cz/books?id=JB4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA51&ots=8BE3Dy7o… -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053