Installing A/UX 1.1 like it's the 90s(thomasw.dev)
32 pointsby zdw5 hours ago2 comments
  • yjftsjthsd-h2 hours ago
    > To start off the install, we begin with the “System setup and README” disk. We need to partition the disk, and then do something counter-intuitive: install System 6 on a Mac partition. This is because there’s a Mac application that kicks off the A/UX boot process: SASH; the A/UX standalone shell. This ‘pre-boot environment’ allows for launching an A/UX kernel and also some disk and recovery operations.

    Funny how that rhythms with having a macOS install next to Asahi Linux. The more things change:)

    Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

    • kjs39 minutes ago
      Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

      We installed it from a QIC tape when it wasn't delivered on a SCSI hard drive. Not sure if that option was generally available tho; we were doing kernel development.

    • bluedino35 minutes ago
      > Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

      Windows 95 was about that size, and Office was closer to 50?

      At my very first job I remember installing stuff that way...ugh

    • ramijames32 minutes ago
      If I remember correctly, there's an interesting historical reason for this: a lot of the original functionality that we'd today consider "part of the OS" was actually in ROM on hardware in really old Macs. Mouse functionality, basic windowing, etc. This meant that to get A/UX running you first had to bootstrap into a light version of Mac OS and then boot into A/UX.
      • yjftsjthsd-h22 minutes ago
        The Toolbox ROMs, right? I can see the utility of using that (I mean, beyond that you might need to use it to boot), but why couldn't A/UX call those APIs itself? I can easily see where bootstrapping through Mac OS would be easier, but I can't immediately see why it would be particularly necessary.
        • kjs33 minutes ago
          It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure A/UX didn't use any of the toolbox roms and had it's own drivers (we had the source). A/UX booted from a MacOS partition because the Mac bootloader only understood booting MacOS (and it wasn't writeable with new boot code), so you booted to MacOS, then started SASH, which loaded Unix.
          • classichasclassa minute ago
            That's exactly the reason. NetBSD uses its own booter for the same purpose, for example.
    • classichasclassan hour ago
      A/UX 1.0 came on a pre-written 80MB disk, which indeed would have been a lot easier.
      • yjftsjthsd-h27 minutes ago
        Oh, that's even better:) I assumed the mentioned tape was the preferred way to get it, but a no-op install is faster/easier yet!
    • TacticalCoder17 minutes ago
      > Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

      I still have a legit copy of Word on 10 floppies.

      It was bad. And when you'd copy so many floppies, typically one would fail and you'd only notice when installing. We weren't very advanced back then (at least I wasn't): no fancy an 11th "parity" disk that'll fix any other one that'd fail. At least not for me.

      The data CD-ROM was a very welcome addition to the world back then.

  • latchkeyan hour ago
    there will always be a special place in my heart for a/ux. i ported a lot of open source software to it. ran a bbs, cu-seeme server, gopherd, httpd, and many other early internet services on it. this really gave me an early taste for what the internet would become.