25 Sep
2013
25 Sep
'13
5:55 p.m.
On Sep 25, 2013, at 5:17 PM, Jonathan Katz <jon at jonworld.com> wrote:
Some posting on another list gave me a hankering for
wanting to try to
get the old AIX for x86/PS2 systems running in a VM.
I have two old Floppy disks (3.5") labelled AIX BOOT and AIX INSTALL
... the BOOT disk boots but doesn't give an option for installing from
the install disk.
The install disk doesn't really seem to boot.
I assume there are more than just these two disks to get the OS
running. Anyone out there have a source?
Damn. That takes me back. ;-) I worked on AIX PS/2 for a number of years
(from before it was a real product until just before IBM stopped active
development on it).
The full set was ~53 diskettes as I recall. I can't remember how many cases
of diskettes I ended up with since each build was delivered as a set of diskettes.
As I also recall we had to do some interesting things because the kernel didn't
fit on a single diskette. You'd boot the first one and then it would pause waiting
for the second one to finish loading in the kernel.
There were some "interesting" features. Mainly because it shared a lot with
AIX/370. You could set up a "cluster" of machines (could be a mix of PS/2s
and 370s). We found the easiest way to install a machine was to have one
running a cluster (of 1) and then booting a new machine and have it join the
cluster. All systems in a cluster keep their file systems in sync, so a new
machine joining the cluster is "out of sync" and is automatically sync'd to
the
cluster (this happened remarkably quickly). You could then break the cluster
and remove the newly installed machine from the cluster and use it standalone
(or use it to create a new cluster).
Last time I had anything to do with it was ~1992/3.
TTFN - Guy