[ale] (OT) Fate of SCO

[Tom Freeman]

Memory fails me often, but as I recall, Microsoft wrote Xenix originally, 
which ran on (among others) the Z800(??) from Radio Shack. The product 
line was spun off to what became the Santa Cruse Operation (or some such), 
which was sold and resold until it ran into the piranahs that killed it.

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Lightner, Jeff wrote:

> I had a manual for 386 based AIX but never actually saw the 386 based
> AIX so never knew where the manual came from - I assumed one of my
> predecessors had been tasked with looking at it.  I did run a couple of
> sites on AIX on the RS6000 machines and really didn't care for it.  (The
> port monitor stuff played havoc with our serial interfaces to other
> systems.)
>
> 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.)
>
> 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
> connectivity one used "cu" for interactive sessions and "uucp" for file
> transfers over the modems.   I actually got a copy of SCO's TCP/IP long
> before I ever had a need for it.   Interestingly the sites we finally
> used TCP/IP for still had modems - the TCP/IP was used to allow us to
> connect over the customers' existing satellite based Token Ring network.
> I truly hated telnet back then because it was slow as molasses compared
> to cu over 2400 baud modems.   1/4 second doesn't sound like a long time
> but when every transaction has that latency due to making satellite
> round trips it can be excruciating in an interactive session.   I still
> have a copy of that TCP/IP software and the SCO UNIX SVR 3.2 v 4.2.
> That was where SCO had backported SVR4 stuff into their SVR 3.2 stuff.
> It sounds like you were using SCO versions later than that.
>
> -----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
>
>
>
>
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