[ale] (OT) Fate of SCO

[Lightner, Jeff]

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




_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
Please consider our environment before printing this e-mail or attachments.
----------------------------------
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
----------------------------------