4 ms·

SCOXENIX 2.2 FLOPPIES disk images

33 points by basicplus2 8y ago

macdice 8y ago
My first job involved installing SCO (a bit later than Xenix, SCO System V) at customer sites from a huge pile of floppies. You had to pay a few grand extra for the compiler. GCC was a revelation and a life changing discovery just a bit later, and the beginning of the end for SCO. I have fond memories of it though, proper multi-user Unix on a 386/486 otherwise only fit for word processing. Shame its name was later dragged through the mud by intellectual property scavangers, and it's great to see this stuff being liberated.
- beefhash 8y ago
  Speaking of liberation before there's a proper source code release may be quite strong wording. And I doubt that the copyright holder(s) actually endorse this dump; at most a blind eye is turned.
- burfog 8y ago
  I faced it in 1995. You had to pay extra if you wanted TCP/IP. Having already experienced Linux, I found that to be a horrifying jolt. Think about that one. In 1995, SCO was selling a UNIX clone that didn't come with TCP/IP.
  - macdice 8y ago
    Linux was a Unix clone. SCO was selling actual Unix. But yeah that seems crazy now.
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    Interestingly enough Linux already supported iBCS2 by 1995. So a lot of Intel SVR4 (eg. SCO) software could already be run under it by then with varying degrees of success.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  I was pretty happy to ditch Xenix for 386BSD when it came out.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  Somewhat relevant, mainly due to the last bit. I really dislike what SCO/Caldera/whatever did in the mid 2000s, but in 1999 Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 was the OS that introduced me to Linux (it was given with some magazine). To this day i still consider it the most well-put together Linux system i've seen, a single CD containing a desktop environment (KDE1) with applications that felt like they were designed with each other in mind instead of a collection of random applications, almost no redundant applications, development tools for a bunch of languages, documentation for everything - including even tutorials and guides to the system and the tools - available right from the task bar[1], applications for almost every task and all that working fast even on the 200MHz/32MB RAM PC i had at the time. Of course that was largely due to the efforts of the Trolltech/Qt and KDE project which provided a fast and featureful toolkit, desktop environment and excellent documentation (well, more on the Qt side, the KDE docs were good but it had a lot of filler), as well as the TLDP which provided most of the "general" Linux documentation. Still, Caldera (or whoever made it) put everything together (and also decided what to not put in - which is also very important) and made an OS that looked very polished. To this day i have never seen anything like that beyond minimalist purpose build distributions. Most distributions focus on including anything and everything with little thought on integration or even documentation (i really REALLY dislike how Debian and all of its derivatives put documentation in separate packages and especially dislike how for many FSF projects they put it in a separate repository altogether - i know why they do it, but i still dislike it). The closest i know of is Slackware but even that contains a ton of redundant stuff and the main reason i consider it the closest is that the majority of other distributions do not even bother to provide an ISO (or set of ISOs) for "complete" installations (which is kinda natural since almost all distributions nowadays try to contain every software ever made - even RedHat and some derived distributions like CentOS have an "everything" ISO that is really meant for mirrors, not users). [1] (the only weird part is that the Linux user's guide, which you'd expect to be the first thing someone would read, wasn't accessible from any of the buttons and in fact even though it was available and installed, it was only available as a DVI file that wasn't viewable with KDVI and you had to convert it to PS and/or PDF manually - something that was obviously outside the experience level of anyone needing it in the first place :-P)
  - danieldk 8y ago
trexen 8y ago
Oh god, the horror of installing an OS from floppy. God knows how many floppies Novell netware came on but it was a lot.
- danieldk 8y ago
  And OS/2 Warp, I had OS/2 Warp (and 2.1 IIRC) on 3.5" disks first, before buying the CD-ROM version later. Apparently Warp + Bonus pack was 35 disks. In comparison: Windows 95 was only 13 disks [1]. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=...
- avian 8y ago
  Fascinating. A copy of Netware 3.11 on 14 3.5" floppies goes for $699 on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Novell-Netware-3-11-1000-User-Unregistered-Serial-Number-and-Diskettes/123049003402 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Novell-Netware-3-11-1000-User-Unreg...
  - aw3c2 8y ago
    That one did not "go". Someone is trying to get that much money for it.
- Crontab 8y ago
  Yeah. I can remember installing NT 3.1 from floppy and if I recall correctly, it was 22 or 24 floppy disks. Felt like watching paint dry.
projektfu 8y ago
Haven't tested it, but here is the link to the 286 version: https://archive.org/details/xenix_2_2 https://archive.org/details/xenix_2_2
scruffyherder 8y ago
I think this is for the PS/2 as marked by the N1 image having a PS on it... Also I was unable to de-compress 021.SCO_XENIX_OS__BASIC_UTILS_____REL-2.2___MEDIA-35DSDD__TYPE-N86___ID-018.22B.000.16218_VOL-B1___3.5FLOPPY720K.bz2 I'm pretty sure this is the one that was fixed up and documented on http://os2museum.com/wp/ http://os2museum.com/wp/ however that site is currently down.
gattilorenz 8y ago
A much better collection (part of it comes from my private collection, leaked some years ago...): https://archive.org/download/Xenix386Ports https://archive.org/download/Xenix386Ports It contains Pascal, Basic and VP/ix (i.e. the package that lets you run DOS software under Xenix)!

33 points by basicplus2 8y ago

My first job involved installing SCO (a bit later than Xenix, SCO System V) at customer sites from a huge pile of floppies. You had to pay a few grand extra for the compiler. GCC was a revelation and a life changing discovery just a bit later, and the beginning of the end for SCO. I have fond memories of it though, proper multi-user Unix on a 386/486 otherwise only fit for word processing. Shame its name was later dragged through the mud by intellectual property scavangers, and it's great to see this stuff being liberated.

beefhash 8y ago
Speaking of liberation before there's a proper source code release may be quite strong wording. And I doubt that the copyright holder(s) actually endorse this dump; at most a blind eye is turned.
burfog 8y ago
I faced it in 1995. You had to pay extra if you wanted TCP/IP. Having already experienced Linux, I found that to be a horrifying jolt. Think about that one. In 1995, SCO was selling a UNIX clone that didn't come with TCP/IP.
- macdice 8y ago
  Linux was a Unix clone. SCO was selling actual Unix. But yeah that seems crazy now.
- nineteen999 8y ago
  Interestingly enough Linux already supported iBCS2 by 1995. So a lot of Intel SVR4 (eg. SCO) software could already be run under it by then with varying degrees of success.
jacquesm 8y ago
I was pretty happy to ditch Xenix for 386BSD when it came out.
badsectoracula 8y ago
Somewhat relevant, mainly due to the last bit. I really dislike what SCO/Caldera/whatever did in the mid 2000s, but in 1999 Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 was the OS that introduced me to Linux (it was given with some magazine). To this day i still consider it the most well-put together Linux system i've seen, a single CD containing a desktop environment (KDE1) with applications that felt like they were designed with each other in mind instead of a collection of random applications, almost no redundant applications, development tools for a bunch of languages, documentation for everything - including even tutorials and guides to the system and the tools - available right from the task bar[1], applications for almost every task and all that working fast even on the 200MHz/32MB RAM PC i had at the time. Of course that was largely due to the efforts of the Trolltech/Qt and KDE project which provided a fast and featureful toolkit, desktop environment and excellent documentation (well, more on the Qt side, the KDE docs were good but it had a lot of filler), as well as the TLDP which provided most of the "general" Linux documentation. Still, Caldera (or whoever made it) put everything together (and also decided what to not put in - which is also very important) and made an OS that looked very polished. To this day i have never seen anything like that beyond minimalist purpose build distributions. Most distributions focus on including anything and everything with little thought on integration or even documentation (i really REALLY dislike how Debian and all of its derivatives put documentation in separate packages and especially dislike how for many FSF projects they put it in a separate repository altogether - i know why they do it, but i still dislike it). The closest i know of is Slackware but even that contains a ton of redundant stuff and the main reason i consider it the closest is that the majority of other distributions do not even bother to provide an ISO (or set of ISOs) for "complete" installations (which is kinda natural since almost all distributions nowadays try to contain every software ever made - even RedHat and some derived distributions like CentOS have an "everything" ISO that is really meant for mirrors, not users). [1] (the only weird part is that the Linux user's guide, which you'd expect to be the first thing someone would read, wasn't accessible from any of the buttons and in fact even though it was available and installed, it was only available as a DVI file that wasn't viewable with KDVI and you had to convert it to PS and/or PDF manually - something that was obviously outside the experience level of anyone needing it in the first place :-P)
- danieldk 8y ago

trexen 8y ago

Oh god, the horror of installing an OS from floppy. God knows how many floppies Novell netware came on but it was a lot.

danieldk 8y ago
And OS/2 Warp, I had OS/2 Warp (and 2.1 IIRC) on 3.5" disks first, before buying the CD-ROM version later. Apparently Warp + Bonus pack was 35 disks. In comparison: Windows 95 was only 13 disks [1]. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=...
avian 8y ago
Fascinating. A copy of Netware 3.11 on 14 3.5" floppies goes for $699 on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Novell-Netware-3-11-1000-User-Unregistered-Serial-Number-and-Diskettes/123049003402 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Novell-Netware-3-11-1000-User-Unreg...
- aw3c2 8y ago
  That one did not "go". Someone is trying to get that much money for it.
Crontab 8y ago
Yeah. I can remember installing NT 3.1 from floppy and if I recall correctly, it was 22 or 24 floppy disks. Felt like watching paint dry.

projektfu 8y ago

Haven't tested it, but here is the link to the 286 version: https://archive.org/details/xenix_2_2 https://archive.org/details/xenix_2_2

scruffyherder 8y ago

I think this is for the PS/2 as marked by the N1 image having a PS on it... Also I was unable to de-compress 021.SCO_XENIX_OS__BASIC_UTILS_____REL-2.2___MEDIA-35DSDD__TYPE-N86___ID-018.22B.000.16218_VOL-B1___3.5FLOPPY720K.bz2 I'm pretty sure this is the one that was fixed up and documented on http://os2museum.com/wp/ http://os2museum.com/wp/ however that site is currently down.

gattilorenz 8y ago

A much better collection (part of it comes from my private collection, leaked some years ago...): https://archive.org/download/Xenix386Ports https://archive.org/download/Xenix386Ports It contains Pascal, Basic and VP/ix (i.e. the package that lets you run DOS software under Xenix)!