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PC/IX Images

smplfyi

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
259
Location
Warwickshire
I am excited to be able to report that I have had time to image my 5.25 diskettes of 1984 for IBM's PC/IX

To get everybody interested recall that Interactive Systems was subcontracted by IBM to produce PC/IX and also VM/IX which were IBMs very earliest UNIX offerings.

I don't want to get into any arguments but let's say this formed the foundation for its more modern UNIX offerings.

This product preceeded XENIX and ran on a monochrome PC/XT

Later Interactive brought out 286 and 386 based versions of UNIX. My images are NOT those products!

19 diskettes are uploaded into 2 formats

a) Daniel Valots EMT4WIN format
b) Dave Dunfield IMG imagedisk format

I only have a PC-XT286 (essentially an AT in an XT case) and neither that or Virtual PC of VMware seem to be able to be able to load these images.

So I'm looking for volunteers to make me extremely jealous and try it out on some real XT hardware (without a VGA card I would suppose) or tell me how to get a virtual environment working that plays along with this ancient software.

Here are the EMT images

http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/IBM/PCIX/EMT4WIN images/index.html

Here are the Dunfield images

http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/IBM/PCIX/dunfield images/index.html

There are 19 images in all and to start with you should boot from the 01 maintenance disk, which as I remember back over 20 years will then ask you for the subsequent CORE disks.

I have no documentation so if anybody does then please contact me.

All imaging went well except disk 17 was partially unreadable on IMGagedisk

Finally, if you know me you'll know that I always have a backup! So with more time I will also be creating then uploading a second set of PC/IX images from my backup diskettes, so there will be 2 source sets to play with (in case there is definite damage to any disk image)

regards marcus b
 
I can definitely download these and test them out, probably this weekend though as I have some research to do tonight. I'll be grabbing the ImageDisk images as I don't trust windows disk imaging programs :)
 
I can definitely download these and test them out, probably this weekend though as I have some research to do tonight. I'll be grabbing the ImageDisk images as I don't trust windows disk imaging programs :)
----
FYI, there is a DOS version of EMT (as well as OS/2 and Linux)

m
 
Well, it definitely works; booting the 01 Maintenance disk shows this:

Code:
Standalone Shell
$$

I typed ls and got the following:

Code:
Inode      Modes Links  User Group       Size Name
-----      ----- -----  ---- -----       ---- ----
    2 drwxr-xr-x     4     2     2        176 .
    2 drwxr-xr-x     4     2     2        176 ..
    2 dr--r--r--     1     2     2        176 boot

...etc, in other words, a directory listing with the following files: boot, dd, format, fsck, install, mkfs, and sash (standalone shell).

It is **freaky** seeing unix on my xt.

I'll find a free XT somewhere to install this on (I don't want to overwrite my development 5160's drive). But that will have to wait until the weekend, sorry.
 
Oh I am really jealous now!

Can you post the configuration of the machine which sucessfully booted the 01 maintenance diskette?

For example, I suppose it has a genuine monochrome adapter card driving an old skool pre VGA display?

Regards marcus
 
IBM PC/XT Model 5160 with 640KB RAM and an IBM CGA adapter connected to an IBM 5153 CGA monitor.

If CGA worked, VGA should work. So I don't think the problem is display, I think it's 286. 8088/8086 supported a few things 286 didn't -- for example you can PUSH and POP CS, whereas in 286 and later those opcodes mean something else. So if it doesn't work on 286, that's probably why.
 
Agreed, but Minix was created in 1989 if memory serves. It is interesting to see a product almost as old as DOS that is a functional unix on an 8088.

I have a spare machine ready to load with it, now I just need to come up with 19 spare disks :)
 
Yes whilst I did use Minix from an early age and was often to be seen clutching Andrew Tanenbaum's famous Modern Operating Systems, I would say though that PC/IX was really in a different league.

It was full on UNIX, you know compilers, SCCS, accounting, the works. All running on an 8088. Again, doesn't anybody have the documentation to this or VM/IX? If we could have this scanned and published I think you would agree what an amazing product for the time it really was.

Regards marcus.
 
IBM PC/XT Model 5160 with 640KB RAM and an IBM CGA adapter connected to an IBM 5153 CGA monitor.

If CGA worked, VGA should work. So I don't think the problem is display, I think it's 286. 8088/8086 supported a few things 286 didn't -- for example you can PUSH and POP CS, whereas in 286 and later those opcodes mean something else. So if it doesn't work on 286, that's probably why.

I have SCO Xenix for 8086 XT including development kit etc.

Funny enough Xenix 86 was developed after 286 that is 1.0 version of Xenix was developed by Microsoft for 286 and the ported by SCO to XT.

:)

Regards,
a
 
Thanks, I grabbed the goofy ImageDisk #17 that was bad from the first set.

I regret I haven't installed it yet, but I have a Panasonic Sr. Partner with a 10mb drive not doing anything, so I might do that this week...
 
very, very interesting! nice upload. i am going to download these now, and play with it on one of my XT's tonight. i'm assuming there's a very very small selection of software i'll actually be able to run with this... anything like an IRC client? SMTP server? web server?

i will bust out the ol' 12 inch amber phosphor and put the monochrome card back in for this just for kicks. TTL ftw.
 
very, very interesting! nice upload. i am going to download these now, and play with it on one of my XT's tonight. i'm assuming there's a very very small selection of software i'll actually be able to run with this... anything like an IRC client? SMTP server? web server?

i will bust out the ol' 12 inch amber phosphor and put the monochrome card back in for this just for kicks. TTL ftw.

Actually, it would be good to test with VGA, because if it works in VGA then that proves it needs an 8088/8086 in order to run (probably uses PUSH CS and POP CS, which are invalid on later cpus).

As for an SMTP server, web server, and IRC client, I think the answer is a resounding NO because PC/IX was created before those existed! (Well, IRC and web anyway).

Minix might have functional web/smtp/irc clients and servers though.
 
Actually, it would be good to test with VGA, because if it works in VGA then that proves it needs an 8088/8086 in order to run (probably uses PUSH CS and POP CS, which are invalid on later cpus).

As for an SMTP server, web server, and IRC client, I think the answer is a resounding NO because PC/IX was created before those existed! (Well, IRC and web anyway).

Minix might have functional web/smtp/irc clients and servers though.

wowowow check out all this software that is designed for minix3

EDIT: grrr nevermind, minix3 requires at least a 386.

# ackpack - Minix ACK port
# antiword-0.35 - a free MS Word document reader
# apache-1.3.37 - The Apache HTTP Server v1.3.37
# apr-0.9.12 - apache portable runtime library (gcc format)
# apr-util-0.9.12 - apache portable runtime utils
# ascii-3.8 - Interactive ASCII name and synonym chart
# atk-1.9.0 - The ATK library.
# audio-1.0.0 - SB16 ISA and ES1371 audio drivers + framework.
# autoconf-2.59 - Autoconf set of automatic configuration tools
# autoconf-2.60 - Autoconf set of automatic configuration tools
# automake-1.9 - gnu automake
# avra-0.7 - Assembler for Atmel AVR microcontrollers
# bash-3.0 - GNU bourne-again shell
# bc-1.06 - Arbitrary-precision calculator
# bchunk-1.2.0 - CD image format conversion from bin/cue to iso/cdr
# bcrypt-1.1 - Cross platform file encryption utility
# binutils-2.16.1 - A collection of GNU binary tools
# bison-2.1 - Parser generator (requires gnu m4 in m4 package)
# bitlbee-1.0.3 - An IRC to other chat networks gateway
# btyacc-3.0 - Backtracking parser generator based on byacc
# catdoc-0.94.2 - view various file types such as ms word in text
# cpio-2.5 - a program to manage archives of files
# CSSC-1.0.1 - SCCS Version Control Software Clone
# ctags-5.5.4 - build tag file indexes of source code definitions
# cvs-1.11.21 - Concurrent versioning system
# dact-0.8.39 - Multi-algorithm compression
# db-4.4.20 - Berkeley DB - Open source developer database
# diffstat-1.39 - Produces graph of changes introduced by a diff file
# diffutils-2.8.1 - GNU diff and friends
# dungeon-2.7.1 - Text adventure dungeon exploration game
# ede-1.1 - Equinox Desktop Environment 1.1 (needs EFLTK)
# efltk-2.0.6 - EFLTK - Extended Fast Light Toolkit 2.0.6
# emacs-21.4 - The EMACS editor
# exim-4.66 - Exim - MTA (overwrites aliases, sendmail, mailq)
# fb - file browser
# flawfinder-1.26 - Automatically finds security flaws in C programs
# flex-2.5.4 - Lexical scanner generator
# flip-1.19 - converts text file between MS-DOS and **IX format
# fltk-1.1.7 - Fast+lightweight gui toolkit
# fltk-2.0.0-5220 - Fast+lightweight gui toolkit
# gawk-3.1.4 - GNU AWK
# gcc-3.4.3 - GNU Compiler Collection v3.4.3
# gcc-4.1.1 - GCC 4.1.1, C and C++ compilers
# gdbm-1.8.3 - GNU dbm, a library of database functions
# gettext-0.14 - GNU multi-language interface library
# ghostscript-8.54-gpl - Programs to render PostScript documents.
# ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11 - fonts for ghostscript
# glib-1.2.10 - GNU programming utility library (v1)
# glib-2.10.0 - GNU programming utility library
# gnu-coreutils-5.2.1 - Port of many basic GNU utilities
# gnupg-1.4.8 - GnuPG - GNU project's complete and free implementation of OpenPGP.
# grep-2.5.1a - gnu grep
# groff-1.19.2 - groff typesetting system
# gv-3.5.8 - graphical frontend for gs
# gzip-1.2.4 - gzip file compressor/decompressor
# gzip-beta-1.3.3 - gzip file compressor/decompressor
# hexcat-0.0.3 - HEX dumping utility
# ImageMagick-6.3.1 - ImageMagick - Convert/Edit/Compose Images
# irssi-0.8.10 - irssi, a nice irc client
# jikes-1.22 - A Java bytecode compiler.
# john-1.7.2 - password cracker
# jpeg-6b - The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software
# jwm-1.7 - JWM is a window manager for X11
# jwm-1.8 - JWM is a window manager for the X11 Window System
# kermit-2.1.1 - terminal emulator
# lcrack-20040914 - password cracker
# less-3.8.5 - A pager like more
# lesstif-0.93.96 - lesstif - A freeware version of Motif.
# libiconv-1.9.1 - iconv() implementation - charset conversions
# libmcrypt-2.5.7 - De-/Encryption library
# libpng-1.2.8 - libpng is the official PNG reference library.
# libungif-4.1.3 - this library for working GIF images
# libxml2-2.6.28 - XML C parser and toolkit
# links-1.00pre19 - advanced text-based www browser
# links-2.1pre26 - advanced text-based www browser with X11 mode
# lpr - port of bsd lpr/lpd.
# lynx2-8-5 - text-based WWW browser
# lzo-1.08 - LZO is a portable lossless data compression library
# lzop-1.01 - fast compression program
# m4-1.4.3 - preprocessor
# make-3.80 - GNU make
# mdf2iso - mdf to iso conversion utility
# MPlayer-1.0rc1 - MPlayer - The Movie Player
# mtools-3.9.7 - ms-dos filesystem compatability tools
# mysql-5.0.41 - MySQL Relational Database 5.0.41 (Client Only)
# nano-1.3.12 - 'compatible but enhanced' Pico clone
# nasm-0.98.38 - flexible assembler, support for many output formats
# nawk - New AWK
# ncftp-3.1.9 - NcFTP, an nice fullscreen ftp client
# ncsa_httpd_1.4
# ncurses-5.5 - new curses library
# neon-0.25.5 - C library for webdav
# nethack-3.4.3-2 - Nethack, the famous dungeon exploration game
# netpbm-10.26.30 - toolkit for manipulation and conversion of images
# nomarch-1.3 - Unpacks .ARC and .ARK MS-DOS archives
# nrg2iso-0.2 - Extracts ISO9660 data from Nero ".nrg" files
# nvi-1.79 - A new vi implementation
# openssh-4.3p2 - openssh implementation of secure shell
# openssl-0.9.8a - library of security algorithms and protocols
# patch-2.5.4 - GNU patch
# pce-0.1.7 - PCE - An IBM PC Emulator - Boots and runs most DOS applications!
# pcre-4.5 - perl compatible regular expressions
# pdksh-5.2.14 - public domain implementation of ksh (korn shell)
# perl-5.8.7 - perl interpreter
# php-5.2.1 - PHP Hypertext PreProcessor 5.2.1
# picasm112c - PIC assembler
# pine-4.64 - Pine email and news system.
# pkg-config-0.20 - pkg-config - package configuration management
# PopTart-0.9.7 - pop client
# prng-3.0.2 - A library for the generation of pseudorandom numbers.
# pscan-1.1 - scans C files for common bugs
# pstotext-1.9 - ps to text converter
# psutils - postscript manipulation utilities
# python-1.5.2 - python interpreter
# python-2.4.3 - python interpreter
# rcs-5.7 - RCS revision control system utilities
# readline-5.1 - The GNU Readline Library
# rman-3.2 - PolyglotMan Reverse compile man pages
# robodoc-4.0.18 - A source code documentation tool
# rsync-2.6.7 - powerful incremental remote synchronization
# screen-4.0.2 - full-screen virtual text window manager
# sed-3.02 - GNU sed
# shhmsg-1.4.1 - Library for displaying messages
# simhv35-2 - a highly portable, multi-system simulator
# sip-0.4 - Secure Internet Pipe - Create a secure networked pipe
# slang-1.4.9 - interactive applications library
# slrn-0.9.8.1 - fullscreen newsreader
# sqlite-3.3.17 - A self-contained, embeddable SQL database engine
# src2tex-2.12 - source program files -> TeX format files
# ssmtp-2.61 - simple smtp client
# subversion-1.4.0 - subversion version control system
# tcl8.4.14 - The TCL scripting language.
# tetex-3.0 - teTeX, a LaTeX distribution
# tetex-src-3.0
# texinfo-4.7 - Texinfo - The GNU Documentation System
# tiff-3.8.2 - LibTIFF - TIFF Library and Utilities
# tk8.4.14 - The TK Toolkit for use with TCL
# unrtf-0.19.3 - converter from RTF to other formats
# unzip-5.52 - for decompressing .zip archives
# vice-1.19 - Emulates C64, C128, VIC20, PET, PLUS4, CBM-II
# vice-1.20 - Emulates C64, C128, VIC20, PET, PLUS4, CBM-II
# vile-9.4 - text editor which is feel-compatible with vi
# vim-6.3 - vi improved
# wdiff-0.5 - Compares two files word by word
# webcpp-0.8.4 - converts source into syntax highlighted HTML
# wget-1.5.3 - utility to retrieve URLs
# whichman-2.4 - search for man-pages that match approximately
# X11R6.8.2 - X Windows R6.8.2
# Xaw3d-1.5 - 3D athena widget set
# xv-3.10a - XV 3.10a - graphics viewer
# zip-2.31 - make .zip archives (compressed files into one)
# zlib-1.2.3 - zlib compression library
# zsh-4.2.6 - The Z shell

yes, i am drooling too and this time it's not from a hangover!
 
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what we really need for XTs is a full pentium 4 emulator. THEN we could run Vista on it, and use a hard drive as virtual memory since the XT's RAM is limited.
 
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Yeah, but just think mow many 360KB floppies you'd need to install it. Unless you plan on getting a DVD drive to run in an XT, too :p

Then again, you could always do a network install, if Vista supports it...
 
So on a positive note I am proud to be able to say that I've had time to image my second copy of PC/IX in both EMT4WIN and Dave Dunfield IMD imagedisk formats

Here is the link

http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/IBM/PCIX/index.html

Luckily this activity was performed before my meeting with another disasterous set of Wabash Diskettes . All diskettes were not created equal.

Did you try the baking-in-the-oven trick on those floppies?

I don;t think it's just Wabash - I have had to throw out all kinds of disks, because you could almost SEE the oxide coming off the media! Maxell, memorex, elephant, Sony, the list goes on and on...


T
 
Yes whilst I did use Minix from an early age and was often to be seen clutching Andrew Tanenbaum's famous Modern Operating Systems, I would say though that PC/IX was really in a different league.

It was full on UNIX, you know compilers, SCCS, accounting, the works. All running on an 8088. Again, doesn't anybody have the documentation to this or VM/IX? If we could have this scanned and published I think you would agree what an amazing product for the time it really was.

Regards marcus.

I was involved with PC/IX since its inception and I have a complete set of PC/IX manuals, 'Second Edition', in pristine condition:

o System Manager's Guide
o Programmer's Guide
o Text Processing Guide
o User's Manual (aka 'The Fat Book')

Interested?

Chris.

p.s. As this forum thread appears inactive, I'll leave an email address so that I don't have to keep checking: cas194@gmail.com
 
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Sorry to dig up an old thread but I'd love to try this on my 5150 and my 10 MHz clone. It seems the links are down however, perhaps someone could point me to an updated link?
 
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