[ale] (OT) Fate of SCO

[Ken Cochran]

> Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:14:05 -0400
> From: "Lightner, Jeff" <jlightner at water.com>
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] (OT) Fate of SCO
> 
[...]
> 
> Xenix was another SCO Product and we had about 12 sites running that on
> 286 machine.   Many of the tools one used in UNIX didn't exist for it.
> Those sites were actually backed up on 5 1/4" floppies.   (I think Xenix
> either originated at MS or for a while they had a version but never used
> that.)

Actually (IIRC), Xenix was itself originally/initially
a *Microsoft* product (and ran on 8086/80186 hardware),
and I "think" it might have even pre-dated MS-DOS itself.
Apparently they wanted to have "Unix" but escape the AT&T
trademark/license/royalty.  I remember (partially) supporting
& subsequently replacing a Tandy 6000 and a number of Altos
systems (all running Xenix) with i386 systems, running SCO
Xenix, in the early 90s.

SCO was "born(?)" around that time (as a MS spinoff?) and MS
spun off Xenix to them (or something like that).  Someone else
here and/or Wikipedia, etc., might have more accurate history
of those times.

Microport and Interactive Systems (who later were acquired or
changed to SunSoft) figure into that mix too...

-kc

> While it is true that early SCO UNIX didn't come with TCP/IP or
> X-Windows it is also true that back in the early days most people didn't
> have network cards so couldn't have used it anyway.   This was true of
> many UNIX flavors (including AT&T) at the time.  It was far more common
> to have "dumb" serial based terminas and modems.  For remote
[...]
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> Chris Fowler
> Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2011 3:48 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] (OT) Fate of SCO
> 
> On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 11:00 -0400, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> > Really sad.  
> > 
> > In its day I made my living on SCO UNIX and rather liked it.   I
> > disagree with the comment about it only being used for cash registers.
> > We had over 2000 sites that were running it as their central systems.
> > One thing I liked about SCO then was that they were hardware agnostic
> > (other than requiring x86 based stuff).   Most other UNIX flavors at the
> > time required you to run on their hardware.
> 
> Ditto here.  I primarily supported SCO on Compaq equipment.   I learned
> SCO via immersion.   Every one else ran DOS or Windows but I ran SCO OS5
> on my desktop.  This made communication difficult since back then there
> was no OO or Office for SCO.  Even mail programs were not very good.  I
> used telnet and remote X to run many Linux programs on my SCO desktop.  
> 
> I also supported a lot of AIX but was not lucky enough to have my own
> PowerPC desktop.
> 
> We also supported a lot of Xenix which I believe then was referred to as
> "Poor Man's UNIX".
> 
> The benefit to the SCO offerings where, just as Jeff said, no
> proprietary hardware.  I would say however that you did have to follow
> their supported hardware booklet.  Most Compaq platforms were supported.
> 
> I still remember being giddy when I installed my first SCO system from
> CD!!  No 1/4" tapes, no floppies.  If anyone is interested I may still
> have tapes in my attic.  Maybe even disks.  I may even have some
> licenses.
> 
> The one thing I did learn from SCO was that the commercial UNIX world
> then was different than Linux.  Many of the packages we use in Linux and
> consider "standard" were optional and required licenses in SCO.  This
> included a development environment and even TCP/IP!!!!!  I also have a
> few Skunkware CDs in my attic.  
> 
> I bought my first SUN license via their educational discount.  Still
> cost me $100.
> 
> I had a mini HP network in my house.  Ran a G30 as a server and had 4
> 7XX workstations in a spare room.  Each had nice 21" tube monitors.  All
> running HP-UX 10.XX  I have some of that software in my attic too.
> 
> Chris
> _______________________________________________