5 Jan
2020
5 Jan
'20
12:56 a.m.
On Fri, 2020-01-03 at 12:00 -0600, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
On 1/2/2020 1:35 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
Was this based on the Cygnus PowerPC port, or was it
Apple-
specific?
Sun did a power? PC? port I think paid for by IBM, which would have
run
on both the open Apple servers that briefly existed, and on IBM PPC
systems.
A lot of odd PPC work happened in a group a friend worked for in
Austin
TX, but not sure if they did Netware work there.? There was a lot of
OS2
work there as well, but that's off track a bit more.
thanks
Jim
I was lead tech at a small computer company in Asheville, NC. in those
days. I ran OS/2 from version 2 in the early 90's to Ecomstation in
the early 2000's.
Does Talingent Pink sound familiar? OS/2 was ported to powerPC, and so
was Netware iirc. The field was quite busy with hopeful Microsoft
killers. OS/2 was to be morphed into a cross-platform o/s, to wean
folks from dos/x86..... Then PPC kills the x86 and we all get a decent
os. That was the plan anyway. I never saw OS2 for PPC or Netware for
OS/2, thought I know both to have shipped.
Jeff
Anyone done anything with Netware *for PowerPC*?
Allegedly
there was
some attempt at Apple to put it on what later became the
Network Servers
(the codename was apparently "Wormhole").
I know the people who were
working in it (based on Portable
NetWare)
AFAIK it never shipped. 
5 Jan
5 Jan
1:28 a.m.
On 1/5/2020 12:56 AM, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, 2020-01-03 at 12:00 -0600, cctalk-request at
classiccmp.org wrote:
My friend was on the OS2 PPC team, I think, didn't mention that. Been
too long since
I heard from him to be absolutely sure what was when.
If I had to guess from my memory of what platforms he was on, it was
PPC? OS/2 first,
then he and everyone they didn't can was moved to AIX.
Then the decimated it as they have most US development teams.
thanks
Jim
On 1/2/2020 1:35 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk
wrote:
Sun did a power? PC? port I think paid for by IBM, which would have
run
on both the open Apple servers that briefly existed, and on IBM PPC
systems.
A lot of odd PPC work happened in a group a friend worked for in
Austin
TX, but not sure if they did Netware work there.? There was a lot of
OS2
work there as well, but that's off track a bit more.
thanks
Jim
I was lead tech at a small computer company in Asheville, NC. in those
days. I ran OS/2 from version 2 in the early 90's to Ecomstation in
the early 2000's.
Does Talingent Pink sound familiar? OS/2 was ported to powerPC, and so
was Netware iirc. The field was quite busy with hopeful Microsoft
killers. OS/2 was to be morphed into a cross-platform o/s, to wean
folks from dos/x86..... Then PPC kills the x86 and we all get a decent
os. That was the plan anyway. I never saw OS2 for PPC or Netware for
OS/2, thought I know both to have shipped.
Jeff
>
Anyone done anything with Netware *for PowerPC*? Allegedly
> there was
> some attempt at Apple to put it on what later became the
> Network Servers
> (the codename was apparently "Wormhole").
I know the people who were working in it (based on Portable
NetWare)
AFAIK it never shipped.
Was this based on the Cygnus PowerPC port, or was it
Apple-
specific?
7:02 a.m.
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 09:56, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
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*
On Fri, 2020-01-03 at 12:00 -0600, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
> On 1/2/2020 1:35 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
> > > > Anyone done anything with Netware *for PowerPC*? Allegedly
> > > > there was
> > > > some attempt at Apple to put it on what later became the
> > > > Network Servers
> > > > (the codename was apparently "Wormhole").
> > > I know the people who were working in it (based on Portable
> > > NetWare)
> > > AFAIK it never shipped.
> > Was this based on the Cygnus PowerPC port, or was it Apple-
> > specific?
> >
> Sun did a power? PC? port I think paid for by IBM, which would have
> run
> on both the open Apple servers that briefly existed, and on IBM PPC
> systems.
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.
A lot of odd
PPC work happened in a group a friend worked for in
Austin
TX, but not sure if they did Netware work there.? There was a lot of
OS2
work there as well, but that's off track a bit more.
I was lead tech at a small computer company in Asheville, NC. in those
days. I ran OS/2 from version 2 in the early 90's to Ecomstation in
the early 2000's.
Does Talingent Pink sound familiar? OS/2 was ported to powerPC, and so
was Netware iirc. The field was quite busy with hopeful Microsoft
killers.
True. Few had a good solid plan, though.
OS/2 was to be morphed into a cross-platform o/s, to
wean
folks from dos/x86.....
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.
Then PPC kills the x86 and we all get a decent
os. That was the plan anyway. I never saw OS2 for PPC or Netware for
OS/2, thought I know both to have shipped.
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
11:58 a.m.
On 01/05/2020 07:02, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Just to clarify, the reference to "i810 RISC" should be the i860
("N-10"), their second general-purpose RISC design - versus the 960MX
OS/2 was to be morphed into a cross-platform
o/s,
to wean folks from dos/x86.....
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. from the BiiN project with Siemens in the mid-80s as
their first (?),
which would become the i960 that was popular in embedded
applications.
--S.
12:55 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 20:58, Steven M Jones via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Just to clarify, the reference to "i810 RISC" should be the i860
("N-10"), their second general-purpose RISC design - versus the 960MX
from the BiiN project with Siemens in the mid-80s as their first (?),
which would become the i960 that was popular in embedded applications.
Oops, I do apologise. You're absolutely right and I knew that. I don't
know what I was thinking.
--
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
10:02 a.m.
On Sun, 2020-01-05 at 03:56 -0500, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote:
A lot of odd PPC work happened in a group a friend
worked for
inAustin TX, but not sure if they did Netware work there.? There was
a lot ofOS2 work there as well, but that's off track a bit more.
thanksJim
I was lead tech at a small computer company in Asheville, NC. in
thosedays. I ran OS/2 from version 2 in the early 90's to
Ecomstation inthe early 2000's.
Does Talingent Pink sound familiar? OS/2 was ported to powerPC, and
sowas Netware iirc. The field was quite busy with hopeful
Microsoftkillers. OS/2 was to be morphed into a cross-platform o/s,
to weanfolks from dos/x86..... Then PPC kills the x86 and we all get
a decentos. That was the plan anyway. I never saw OS2 for PPC or
Netware forOS/2, thought I know both to have shipped.
Jeff
Yes, Taligent Pink is very familiar (and I still have the scars to
prove it!).I was part of the IBM team that evaluated Pink. We (IBM)
was mainly looking atit to see how to converge OS's between IBM and
Apple...at least in terms of themicro-kernel. The Pink teams was shall
we say "difficult to work with".
I had been working on the IBM Microkernel (was one of the original 6
people onthat team). It was eventually to form the basis of OS/2 for
PPC. The way thatthe microkernel project was structured was that most
of the "OS" was personalityneutral (e.g. could be used for Unix, OS/2,
DOS, etc) and then there was an OSpersonality that ran on top of the
infrastructure. OS/2 on PPC was supposed tobe the first to ship.
--
TTFN - Guy
12:54 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 19:02, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I had been working on the IBM Microkernel (was one of the original 6
people onthat team). It was eventually to form the basis of OS/2 for
PPC. The way thatthe microkernel project was structured was that most
of the "OS" was personalityneutral (e.g. could be used for Unix, OS/2,
DOS, etc) and then there was an OSpersonality that ran on top of the
infrastructure. OS/2 on PPC was supposed tobe the first to ship.
I think I read that it was based on CMU Mach -- is that right?
It did seem for a while that a lot of things were based on Mach, but
very few seemed to make it to market. NeXTstep and OSF/1, the only
version of which to ship AFAIK was DEC OSF/1 AXP, later Digital UNIX,
later Tru64.
MkLinux didn't get very far, either, did it?
--
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
2:30 p.m.
On Sun, 2020-01-05 at 21:54 +0100, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 19:02, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I had been working on the IBM Microkernel (was one of the original 6
people onthat team). It was eventually to form the basis of OS/2 for
PPC. The way thatthe microkernel project was structured was that
most
of the "OS" was personalityneutral (e.g. could be used for Unix,
OS/2,
DOS, etc) and then there was an OSpersonality that ran on top of the
infrastructure. OS/2 on PPC was supposed tobe the first to ship.
I think I read that it was based on CMU Mach -- is that right?
Yes. We first started with Mach 3.0 build MK58. We did our final
fork at MK68. We made some *significant* changes from what CMU
had (things like changing mach messages from IPC to RPC) and a
whole lot of work in the area of scheduling.
It did seem for a while that a lot of things were
based on Mach, but
very few seemed to make it to market. NeXTstep and OSF/1, the only
version of which to ship AFAIK was DEC OSF/1 AXP, later Digital UNIX,
later Tru64.
Yes, a lot of things were based on Mach. One OS that you're forgetting
is OS X. That is based upon Mach 2.5.
MkLinux didn't get very far, either, did it?
I think that was the original Linux port for PPC.
--
TTFN - Guy
2:41 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 23:30, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
It was, and I think only on Apple hardware. There were a few dev
builds and then it disappeared, IIRC.
[*Checkes*]
Yup, OldWorld-ROM NuBus PowerMacs, and later OldWorld PCI PowerMacs --
but later Linux supported PCI Macs directly.
There were apparently 4 "developer releases", an R1 and an unfinished
R2. Supplanted by Mac OS X, but apparently the Mach work really helped
to get NeXTstep and "Rhapsody" bootstrapped on PowerMacs.
--
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
Yes. We first started with Mach 3.0 build MK58. We did our final
fork at MK68. We made some *significant* changes from what CMU
had (things like changing mach messages from IPC to RPC) and a
whole lot of work in the area of scheduling.
Very interesting. If you are allowed to, you should blog about this
somewhere -- it is historic stuff.
Yes, a lot of things were based on Mach. One OS that
you're forgetting
is OS X. That is based upon Mach 2.5.
Well, firstly, no, I wasn't. I didn't mention OS X, or macOS as it's
called now, because it's based on NeXTstep. It's a later version of
the same OS.
Secondly, AIUI, NeXTstep used Mach 2.5 but one of the changes in Mac
OS X 1.0 is that they moved to Mach 3 and updated the userland from
BSD 4.4-Lite to FreeBSD then-current, hiring Jordan Hubbard to do much
of that work..
MkLinux
didn't get very far, either, did it?
I think that was the original Linux port for PPC.
2:57 p.m.
On Sun, 2020-01-05 at 23:41 +0100, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
No OS X uses Mach 2.5. I worked in the kernel group at Apple for a
number of years and am fairly familiar with the kernel. They may have
pulled a few things from Mach 3.0, but it is still fundamentally
Mach 2.5.
It was, and I think only on Apple hardware. There were a few dev
builds and then it disappeared, IIRC.
[*Checkes*]
Yup, OldWorld-ROM NuBus PowerMacs, and later OldWorld PCI PowerMacs
--
but later Linux supported PCI Macs directly.
There were apparently 4 "developer releases", an R1 and an unfinished
R2. Supplanted by Mac OS X, but apparently the Mach work really
helped
to get NeXTstep and "Rhapsody" bootstrapped on PowerMacs.
--
TTFN - Guy
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 23:30, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yea, unfortunately I've lost most of the historical documentation
starting when we were all packed up to move from Boca Raton, FL to
Austin, TX and then when I left IBM in 1997.
I still have a set of the IBM Microkernel manuals (several 1000 pages
that was all written in Framemaker) and I *may* still have a CD with
the final set of sources on it (but where that might be would be an
interesting question).
Yes. We first started with Mach 3.0 build MK58. We did our final
fork at MK68. We made some *significant* changes from what CMU
had (things like changing mach messages from IPC to RPC) and a
whole lot of work in the area of scheduling.
Very interesting. If you are allowed to, you should blog about this
somewhere -- it is historic stuff. Yes, a lot of things were based on Mach. One OS
that you're
forgetting
is OS X. That is based upon Mach 2.5.
Well, firstly, no, I wasn't. I didn't mention OS X, or macOS as it's
called now, because it's based on NeXTstep. It's a later version of
the same OS.
Secondly, AIUI, NeXTstep used Mach 2.5 but one of the changes in Mac
OS X 1.0 is that they moved to Mach 3 and updated the userland from
BSD 4.4-Lite to FreeBSD then-current, hiring Jordan Hubbard to do
much
of that work.. MkLinux
didn't get very far, either, did it?
I think that was the original Linux port for PPC. 
7 Jan
7 Jan
5 p.m.
s?n 2020-01-05 klockan 21:54 +0100 skrev Liam Proven via cctalk:
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 19:02, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Well in some way or another i got a copy with the book to Sweden.
Ran it from 1999 to 2002 or so (got a SGI challenge S as NetBSD machine
and a pc as a linux machine at that time in 2002 or so.)
Host was a 6100 with the Apple tilt display, i still have the hw, book
and MkLinux cd but the psu in the 6100 became bad....
I had been working on the IBM Microkernel (was
one of the original
6
people onthat team). It was eventually to form the basis of OS/2
for
PPC. The way thatthe microkernel project was structured was that
most
of the "OS" was personalityneutral (e.g. could be used for Unix,
OS/2,
DOS, etc) and then there was an OSpersonality that ran on top of
the
infrastructure. OS/2 on PPC was supposed tobe the first to ship.
I think I read that it was based on CMU Mach -- is that right?
It did seem for a while that a lot of things were based on Mach, but
very few seemed to make it to market. NeXTstep and OSF/1, the only
version of which to ship AFAIK was DEC OSF/1 AXP, later Digital UNIX,
later Tru64.
MkLinux didn't get very far, either, did it?
8 Jan
8 Jan
3:54 a.m.
On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 at 02:00, Stefan Skoglund <stefan.skoglund at agj.net> wrote:
Well in some way or another i got a copy with the book to Sweden.
Ran it from 1999 to 2002 or so (got a SGI challenge S as NetBSD machine
and a pc as a linux machine at that time in 2002 or so.)
Host was a 6100 with the Apple tilt display, i still have the hw, book
and MkLinux cd but the psu in the 6100 became bad....
Wow! I am impressed.
I am interested in both Macs and Linux, and I don't think I ever saw a
running copy anywhere.
--
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
1578
days inactive
1581
days old
11 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
classiccmp＠crash.com -
ggs＠shiresoft.com -
jwsmail＠jwsss.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
stefan.skoglund＠agj.net -
technoid6502＠gmail.com