<div>I got my 286 in late 83, didn't get a HD for it and install unix until maybe 85 or 6. I paid money for Microport (not to be confused with Micropro, which had OS9, a unix work-alike for real time, not to be confused with OS2...) which licensed System V (and Im' thinking
SVr3.4, I must have the books somewhere). It was less than half the price of Xenix, but Xenix was available.</div>
<div>It was around 92 that I switched to linux when I got my 486. Up to that time I had made do with a 386 daughter-card for my 286, which was what brought my memory all the way up to 1536K, woo hoo; I had been 512 + 256 + 128 = 896, I think, by populating up the motherboard (which came with 512, the original IBM AT) and an expansion/extension card (I dont remember which was which now).
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The distro was a box full of many > 3 floppies, Slackware? that seemed better than downloading over my phone line, which was maybe 1200 baud then? I mean, bps :-)</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Tony?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Peter<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/9/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Will</b> <<a href="mailto:mwill@penguincomputing.com">mwill@penguincomputing.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">I used minix on 286 briefly until I found out about the 3-floppy MCC linux distribution that included gcc around 1992 ;-)</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">I never got to play with amoeba since both Minix and Amoeba where not free at the time linux came out - did you? </font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/amoeba.html" target="_blank">http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/amoeba.html
</a> shows an 80 node amoeba cluster </font></span><font face="Arial"><font color="#0000ff"><font size="2">b<span>ased on sparc and seems to be free now.</span></font></font></font><br> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Michael</font></span></div>
<div lang="en-us" dir="ltr" align="left">
<hr>
<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org" target="_blank">beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org</a> [mailto:<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org" target="_blank">
beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Peter St. John<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, April 09, 2007 2:54 PM<br><b>To:</b> Tony Travis<br><b>Cc:</b> Beowulf Mailing List<span class="q"><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!!
<br></span></font><br> </div>
<div><span class="e" id="q_111d8659de56e9e8_3">
<div></div>
<div>Tony,</div>
<div>I should have said, ** I ** wouldn't have reasonably expected unix to run on an 8088 at the time (System V booted with 512K on a 286 but "vi temp" hung so I had to expand memory). At the time I was unaware of any versions besides Berkeley and AT&T. Now of course even IBM can boot linux on a wrist-watch (but the power supply is ungainly). At the time 8-bit word seemed inadequate; I could not find a way to buy quantity one 3B2 from Ma, so motorolla (
e.g. Fortune 32:16 nice box in '83 made me want a unix workstation for home) and intel 286 seemed like only options I could find. But I didn't know about usenet back then.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>When was Minix ported to 8088? Some people kept PDP11s running for a pretty long time :-)</div>
<div>Peter<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/9/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tony Travis</b> <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk" target="_blank">ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk</a>> wrote:
</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Peter St. John wrote:<br>> Well, I could run unix with all 1536K, but not MS/PCDOS 3.2. So call it<br>> a software issue of failing to work around the hardware issue. Obviously
<br>> the hardware was not a show-stopper.<br>><br>> But it was the 286 I did this on, not the earlier 8088, which I don't<br>> think could reasonably have been expected to run unix; but the original<br>> comment regarded the 80286.
<br><br>Hello, Peter.<br><br>People have very short memories! Minix runs fine on an 8088:<br><br> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.neonbox.org/minix_laptop/index.html" target="_blank">
http://www.neonbox.org/minix_laptop/index.html</a><br><br>I replaced a pdp11/34 running Unix version 7 with an 8086 running Minix! <br><br>Hmm... I wonder if anyone remembers Amoeba?<br><br> Tony.<br>--<br>Dr. A.J.Travis
, | mailto:<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk" target="_blank">ajt@rri.sari.ac.uk</a><br>Rowett Research Institute, | <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt" target="_blank">
http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt</a><br>Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, | phone:+44 (0)1224 712751<br>Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK. | fax:+44 (0)1224 716687<br>_______________________________________________
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