18 Jun
2019
18 Jun
'19
8:07 p.m.
Hello all, I have been a student of computer history for years but have
only learned how to use classic machines vicariously through emulation. I
would really like to get my own classic computer but I don't know where to
begin. For one, I am on a very limited income and two I don't have a lot
of space and finally I don't have much knowledge on the finer points of the
older hardware i.e. terminals networking, etc. I would really like a
Vaxstation but I have also considered a '90s workstation such as an SGI
Indy or a SparcStation. I am pretty fluent in both VMS and Unix so any of
those would work. So where do I look besides e-Bay? I see some available
here but none near me. I'm in the Detroit area. Any advice would be
appreciated. I do know that I do now want a Mac or old PC. I would like
something more exotic. (Although it might me neat to own a Rainbow.)
Thanks
Ray
18 Jun
18 Jun
8:53 p.m.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 8:08 PM Ray Jewhurst via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hello all, I have been a student of computer history
for years but have
only learned how to use classic machines vicariously through emulation. I
would really like to get my own classic computer but I don't know where to
begin. For one, I am on a very limited income and two I don't have a lot
of space and finally I don't have much knowledge on the finer points of the
older hardware i.e. terminals networking, etc. I would really like a
Vaxstation but I have also considered a '90s workstation such as an SGI
Indy or a SparcStation. I am pretty fluent in both VMS and Unix so any of
those would work. So where do I look besides e-Bay? I see some available
here but none near me. I'm in the Detroit area. Any advice would be
appreciated. I do know that I do now want a Mac or old PC. I would like
something more exotic. (Although it might me neat to own a Rainbow.)
All the cool kids had DEC Rainbows... though to be honest, maybe I'm biased
since the DEC Rainbow 100B was my first computer and I'm currently on a DEC
Rainbow VENIX boondoggle trying too reconstruct frmo v7 and sys III sources
now available the original Venix 86R source code... :)
Though I'm sure all that other stuff is cool too...
Warner
P.S. I had a VMS Forever bumper sticker on my car for a few years thanks to
an ex-girlfriend that knew me tooo well :)
9:55 p.m.
New subject: VENIX on Rainbow (was Re: Wanting to get my first classic computer)
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 11:53 PM Warner Losh via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 8:08 PM Ray Jewhurst via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
When Rainbows were new I remember being horrified at the cost and how
much of a PITA the RX50 was. I also had no need to run CP/M myself,
so I was never a target customer anyway.
Turn the page and flash forward 35 years and I just got a couple of
Rainbows to use as heavy VT100s and to run CP/M.
Hello all, I have been a student of computer
history for years...
I would like
something more exotic. (Although it might me neat to own a Rainbow.)
All the cool kids had DEC Rainbows... ... I'm currently on a DEC
Rainbow VENIX boondoggle trying too reconstruct frmo v7 and sys III sources
now available the original Venix 86R source code... :)
Interesting. I have VENIX on a Professional 350 (it was one of the
machines I had on display for VCF East). I haven't tried fiddling
with VENIX on a Rainbow, though I did know it existed.
Why the reconstruction? Trying to walk the path or is there some
issue with getting original install disks or getting those disks to
load?
Mostly curious because as a long-time UNIX programmer, I do find some
of the odder UNIX implementations interesting (and certainly more
interesting to me than Yet Another DOS Box).
-ethan
19 Jun
19 Jun
5:47 p.m.
New subject: VENIX on Rainbow (was Re: Wanting to get my first classic computer)
... I'm
currently on a DEC
Rainbow VENIX boondoggle trying too reconstruct frmo v7 and sys III sources
now available the original Venix 86R source code... :)
Interesting. I have VENIX on a Professional 350 (it was one of the
machines I had on display for VCF East). I haven't tried fiddling
with VENIX on a Rainbow, though I did know it existed.
7:09 p.m.
New subject: VENIX on Rainbow (was Re: Wanting to get my first classic computer)
On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:47 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
There is a DECNA, if you can find one. It should work for 2.9BSD or
2.11BSD so it wouldn't be that hard to adapt to Venix, I'd wager.
Outside of that, SLIP/PPP? UUCP?
-ethan
Interesting.
I have VENIX on a Professional 350 (it was one of the
machines I had on display for VCF East). I haven't tried fiddling
with VENIX on a Rainbow, though I did know it existed.
Venix/PRO on a 380 here. I like it. Thinking about ways to make it
primitively networked. 
20 Jun
20 Jun
7:56 a.m.
New subject: VENIX on Rainbow (was Re: Wanting to get my first classic computer)
On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 9:09 PM Ethan Dicks via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:47 PM Cameron Kaiser via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
There is a DECNA, if you can find one. It should work for 2.9BSD or
2.11BSD so it wouldn't be that hard to adapt to Venix, I'd wager.
Outside of that, SLIP/PPP? UUCP?
-ethan
I'm really glad to see this discussion; I have a PDP-11/23+ waiting to be
poked at, but didn't know about the Professional at all; it's interesting
to see that Venix can run on the /23+ as well.
Whether it's a good choice of OS (compared to, say, 2.9BSD) or not I don't
know.
--
Eric Christopherson
Interesting. I have VENIX on a Professional 350 (it was one of the
machines I had on display for VCF East). I haven't tried fiddling
with VENIX on a Rainbow, though I did know it existed.
Venix/PRO on a 380 here. I like it. Thinking about ways to make it
primitively networked. 
9 a.m.
New subject: VENIX on Rainbow (was Re: Wanting to get my first classic computer)
On 6/20/19 7:56 AM, Eric Christopherson via cctalk wrote:
Venix can run on the /23+ as well.
Whether it's a good choice of OS (compared to, say, 2.9BSD) or not I don't
know.
I used Venix on 23s back in the day. It's V7, the file system is a little fragile
and has all of the limitations that go along with that version of Unix. Its big
selling point was the fact that you could BUY it. End-user Unix licensing didn't
happen until companies like Onyx and Fortune Systems came along.
10:23 a.m.
New subject: UNIX/VENIX on PDP-11 (was Re: VENIX on Rainbow)
On Thu, Jun 20, 2019 at 9:57 AM Eric Christopherson
<echristopherson at gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 9:09 PM Ethan Dicks via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Venix/Pro has a driver for the Pro RD50 disk controller. This is not
an MSCP controller, it's its own thing and fairly low-level (the
driver has to know details about how drives work, not a pile of data
blocks). One could probably write an MSCP driver for a Qbus machine
but you'd probably want a source kit to get the Venix side of things.
There _are_ versions of UNIX that will run on the 11/23. Your biggest
challenge is using nothing newer than 2.9BSD (because the KDF11 lacks
Split I&D) and finding a combination of disk controllers and OS
support that match up (there are patches for 2.9BSD that back-port an
MSCP driver for the RQDX3 but I haven't personally played with them -
my 2.9BSD work was on Unibus, on an 11/24 with either RL11/RL02 or
RK611/RK07 drives).
If you have an RLV11 or RLV12 and 1-2 RL02 drives, that's a good
starting point for UNIX on an 11/23. If all you have for disk is
something on an RQDX3, you might be limited to patched 2.9BSD.
On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 8:47 PM Cameron Kaiser
via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > Interesting. I have VENIX on a Professional 350 (it was one of the
> > machines I had on display for VCF East). I haven't tried fiddling
> > with VENIX on a Rainbow, though I did know it existed.
>
> Venix/PRO on a 380 here. I like it. Thinking about ways to make it
> primitively networked.
I'm really glad to see this discussion; I have a PDP-11/23+ waiting to be poked at,
but didn't know about the Professional at all; it's interesting to see that Venix
can run on the /23+ as well. Whether it's a good choice of OS (compared to,
say, 2.9BSD) or not I don't know.
The version on my machine (Venix/PRO v1) is largely a port of UNIX v7.
I think Venix/PRO v2 for the Pro 380 is something different (and
newer) under the hood, to support Split I&D for example. Not sure
about MSCP or network drivers there though.
It was definitely interesting writing code on my Venix box at VCF East
- turns out it has a minor Y2K problem. Internal date representation
is seconds-since-the-epoch, of course, but the date command itself
only allows 2-digit year. You can set the time to 23:59:00 31-Dec-99
and let it roll over then repeat each year until you get to the
current one... which could be done by a shell script, of course, or,
what I did was to write a simple program to accept the current time in
seconds and feed that to stime. Nearly all my experience is with
later (post-1984) versions of UNIX so I had a bit of learning to do
(or is that learning to forget?) to get things working there but I
did. I wish I'd packed my 1975 pocket flip-guide, but at least I had
all the original paper Venix/Pro docs (also up on Bitsavers).
-ethan
-ethan
21 Jun
21 Jun
2:06 a.m.
I still have a rainbow or two and a lot of extra parts. If anyone is
interested, please contact me off list.\
Thanks, Paul
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 10:54 PM Warner Losh via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 8:08 PM Ray Jewhurst via
cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hello all, I have been a student of computer
history for years but have
only learned how to use classic machines vicariously through emulation.
I
would really like to get my own classic computer
but I don't know where
to
begin. For one, I am on a very limited income
and two I don't have a lot
of space and finally I don't have much knowledge on the finer points of
the
older hardware i.e. terminals networking, etc. I
would really like a
Vaxstation but I have also considered a '90s workstation such as an SGI
Indy or a SparcStation. I am pretty fluent in both VMS and Unix so any
of
those would work. So where do I look besides
e-Bay? I see some
available
here but none near me. I'm in the Detroit
area. Any advice would be
appreciated. I do know that I do now want a Mac or old PC. I would like
something more exotic. (Although it might me neat to own a Rainbow.)
All the cool kids had DEC Rainbows... though to be honest, maybe I'm biased
since the DEC Rainbow 100B was my first computer and I'm currently on a DEC
Rainbow VENIX boondoggle trying too reconstruct frmo v7 and sys III sources
now available the original Venix 86R source code... :)
Though I'm sure all that other stuff is cool too...
Warner
P.S. I had a VMS Forever bumper sticker on my car for a few years thanks to
an ex-girlfriend that knew me tooo well :)
1792
days inactive
1794
days old
9 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
echristopherson＠gmail.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
ethan＠757.org -
imp＠bsdimp.com -
raywjewhurst＠gmail.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
useddec＠gmail.com