18 Apr
2014
18 Apr
'14
10:31 a.m.
I seem to recall that there are a number of people on the list who are interested in
Microsoft Xenix.
For anyone who's so inclined, I just posted a short article that includes a reasonably
definitive list of all the platforms and releases of Xenix (up to Microsoft's exit
from the business), the original Xenix announcement, a brief digression about how close we
came to getting Xenix instead of OS/2, and a couple of other related stories:
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html
"Microsoft is pleased to announce there will be no 16-bit software crisis"
Regards,
Rob
11:47 a.m.
Is Xenix 286 R3.4 V1.1 missing from that ? circa 1986
Dave Caroline
What I have
http://www.collection.archivist.info/searchv13.php?searchstr=xenix
On 18/04/2014, Alan Hightower <alan at alanlee.org> wrote:
On 2014-04-18 10:31, Robert Ferguson wrote:
"Microsoft is pleased to announce there will be no 16-bit software
crisis"
Good to know. I was getting a little worried. With this any the 640KB
enough RAM announcement, my mind is at ease on being ready for the
future!
19 Apr
19 Apr
10:03 a.m.
Both the OEMs and SCO used their own numbering systems for releases, so it?s a bit hard to
correlate between the base Microsoft Xenix version and the packaged products.
However, given the dates, I suspect that the one from Intel would be what MS referred to
as Xenix/286 V2.2 (and given the number of disks, it?s probably a relabeled SCO release).
Also, I believe the one from 1985 is a *very* early SCO release, based the same codebase
as IBM PC Xenix 1.0.
If you can show me the boot messages, I can be a bit more confident about the
identifications.
Hope this helps,
Rob
On Apr 18, 2014, at 8:47 AM, Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com> wrote:
Is Xenix 286 R3.4 V1.1 missing from that ? circa 1986
Dave Caroline
What I have
http://www.collection.archivist.info/searchv13.php?searchstr=xenix
On 18/04/2014, Alan Hightower <alan at alanlee.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 2014-04-18 10:31, Robert Ferguson wrote:
>>
>> "Microsoft is pleased to announce there will be no 16-bit software
>> crisis"
>>
>
> Good to know. I was getting a little worried. With this any the 640KB
> enough RAM announcement, my mind is at ease on being ready for the
> future!
>
18 Apr
18 Apr
4:10 p.m.
On 04/18/2014 09:31 AM, Robert Ferguson wrote:
I seem to recall that there are a number of people on
the list who are
interested in Microsoft Xenix.
For anyone who's so inclined, I just posted a short article that
includes a reasonably definitive list of all the platforms and releases
of Xenix (up to Microsoft's exit from the business), the original Xenix
announcement, a brief digression about how close we came to getting
Xenix instead of OS/2, and a couple of other related stories:
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html
Thanks for that. I've got some internal Acorn documentation which shows
that a Xenix port was at the very least under investigation (a partnership
with Logica) for their ns32k hardware, but it's nice to see a separate
mention of it.
I expect it never saw the light of day in any significant form; what I have
suggests they were having huge trouble achieving usable performance with
code running on the ns32k hardware and the 6502 side handling the I/O - the
8-bit link between the two was just too slow for mid-80's needs.
It wasn't too long after that when their ARM-based machines came about, and
then they started dabbling with OSes based on 4.3BSD, the Mach kernel, and
of course GUI-based RISC OS.
cheers
Jules
3748
days inactive
3749
days old
4 comments
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participants (4)
-
alan＠alanlee.org -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
rob＠bitscience.ca