12 Nov
2005
12 Nov
'05
1:36 p.m.
Still prowling through my junk and I discovered that I'd kept the prototype
of the terminal that I did for the Fortune Systems 68K Unix box.
(Basically a Z80 unit that I don't recall much about--though I've still got
source code somewhere).
At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major Unix names on the
payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason
for this?
Cheers,
Chuck
12 Nov
12 Nov
2:22 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Still prowling through my junk and I discovered that
I'd kept the prototype
of the terminal that I did for the Fortune Systems 68K Unix box.
(Basically a Z80 unit that I don't recall much about--though I've still got
source code somewhere).
At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major Unix names on the
payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason
for this?
I'm somewhat annoyed about that as we were offered one (a Fortune 32:16)
about a year ago and somewhere along the lines wires got crossed and it
was never chased up properly. Unfortunately it was offered via a phone
call, so I don't even have contact details (all email offers of stuff
come via me, so I keep records of those!) in order to give the person a
prod and see if they kept it.
If it was anyone on this list who offered it to us and you still have it
available, shout :)
According to the details I have in the same batch was also a "Sinclair
calculator" (no idea what flavour), an Oric 1, and "large disk drive".
The first two would have been nice to have too. Hopefully they at least
went to good homes rather than the tip!
In a way we don't exactly need any more UNIX hardware - but at the same
time the Fortune box is a less-common CPU and a less common system
altogether, which could have justified it...
cheers
Jules
13 Nov
13 Nov
1:34 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major
Unix names on the
payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason
for this?
Fortune Systems was something of a pioneer in the area of unbundling
things previously considered to be standard parts of Unix, like the C
compiler. They were explicitly building something that wasn't a Unix
hacker's machine, so owners weren't expected to be rebuilding the
kernel or writing software, so the C compiler didn't need to be there.
So the C compiler could be a separate product, and even better it could
be charged for!
They also had a reasonably effective copy-protection scheme.
Uninstalled Fortune software on distribution media was encrypted using
a key known to Fortune and to Fortune's installation program. When
you installed software from the distribution media, the software would
be decrypted and then re-encrypted using a key based on the
motherboard serial number for storage on the hard disk (so you
couldn't just copy the executables from your system to some other
system: installed software only ran on the system on which it had been
installed); and of course the installer marked the distribution medium
as "installed" so you couldn't just go install it again somewhere
else.
The end result of this, 20 years later, is that you may be able to get
a Fortune 32:16, but getting it to do something interesting can be
more of a challenge than it really needed to be, and when you're done
you have a 68000 Unix box, maybe a little bit weirder than everyone
else's.
-Frank McConnell
14 Nov
14 Nov
1:13 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 11/12/2005 at 10:34 PM Frank McConnell wrote:
As I understand it, it was a bit more careful than that. Fortune
offered this as a service -- if you wanted this sort of copy protection
for your software, Fortune could do it for you. But if you didn't,
the binaries coming out of ld were unencrypted and could be copied to
other 32:16s where they would work OK.
The other side of more careful is that if you were running an
encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would
encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way
back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark
game.
-Frank McConnell
They also had a reasonably effective
copy-protection scheme...
From the sound of it, it seems like a customer had to buy ALL of their
software from Fortune. That's pretty sneaky!
3:10 a.m.
On 11/13/2005 at 10:13 PM Frank McConnell wrote:
The other side of more careful is that if you were
running an
encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would
encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way
back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark
game.
All of that seems to be pretty paranoid for the time. How many 68K Unix
systems were around that could even use the stuff? They must have thought
that they'd cover the world in their boxes.
I'm trying to recall--this was before AT&T got really predatory in their
Unix per-user-license pricing wasn't it? Basically, you paid your money
and they sent you a tape that would work on a PDP-11, right?
Cheers,
Chuck
11:11 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 11/13/2005 at 10:13 PM Frank McConnell wrote:
More than you'd think could run it since most used the Unisoft port as
the starting point so if it wasn't hardware specific you'd probably be
lucky. At worst it was a recompile and relink.
The other side of more careful is that if you were
running an
encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would
encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way
back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark
game.
All of that seems to be pretty paranoid for the time. How many 68K Unix
systems were around that could even use the stuff? They must have thought
that they'd cover the world in their boxes.
I'm trying to recall--this was before AT&T got
really predatory in their
Unix per-user-license pricing wasn't it? Basically, you paid your money
and they sent you a tape that would work on a PDP-11, right?
That's a bit earlier. I think System III was out and SysV was pretty
much coming by this time.
Actually, SysV barely ran on a PDP11 and you really needed a Vax to do
anything.
Cheers,
Chuck
Bill
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