8 ms·

We seem to be having a lot of "emulators for old Unix boxes exist" posts recently? It's sort of neat, but kinda not news really. Now, I'm off to port Hercules

We seem to be having a lot of "emulators for old Unix boxes exist" posts recently? It's sort of neat, but kinda not news really. Now, I'm off to port Hercules to QNX to make my car an IBM mainframe.

marcodiego 5y ago
Yes, not news but definitely interesting. Some of these old unixes were only available for multi-thousand dollar machines. Current computers are powerful enough to run these systems somewhat comfortably inside emulators or using JIT or dynamic binary translation... If 30 years ago you dreamed on using any of those systems, now you can do it.
- nizmow 5y ago
  On the other hand, the only real reason you’d want to run AIX is because you had to, because you had the hardware and there was no other option.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    I think AIX 5L is what provided RS/6000 owners and developers an offramp to Linux. I enjoy posts like this because they’re true to a “hacker” mindset: Implementing an unconventional approach - either for use or novelty. Thinking outside of the box, while a cliche these days was clearly done here. Who else wakes up and thinks, “I wonder if I could run Aix on an M1?” :)
  - icedchai 5y ago
    I can confirm. I worked at an AIX and Linux shop for about 4 years in the early 2000's. We had a couple of "enterprise" customers who didn't yet trust Linux for their critical applications. It was IBM all the way. Note, that for that era, AIX was a very solid choice. Only other real option was Sun/Solaris, which was dying after the dot-com implosion.
  - neverartful 5y ago
    I worked with AIX on Power5/5+ (mid 2000s) and their hypervisor for LPARs and what they called micro-LPARs at the time was astonishingly good. It provided very nice granularity and control for running multiple LPARs. An LPAR is like a VM, but is closer to bare-metal than what you find in an Intel environment. You had to allocate at least 1/10th of a virtual processor per LPAR. They had something called 'entitled capacity' where you could specify the minimum amount of CPU allocation the LPAR would get even if all LPARs running on the same hardware were running 100% busy at the same time. It all worked exactly as advertised. I was on a small team that did performance monitoring, optimizations, and capacity planning and we watched the metrics very closely for production workloads (running DB2). It was seriously impressive.
    - 656565656565 5y ago
      100% agree they always have worked in my experience too, still have the pleasure of occasional use of POWER7/8. I always recommended POWER/AIX for reliable compute where budget and s/w compatibility allowed.
    - watersb 5y ago
      LPARs -- "Logical Partitions" I know the industry is full of technical jargon, but IBM is its own universe that pre-dates all of it. Are LPARs like virtual machines, or like FreeBSD jails (which are like Docker containers, I think)? I get the impression that LPARs are full virtual machines -- each one could be running a different kernel as well as userland.
      - 656565656565 5y ago
        LPARs are like full VMs on POWER/AIX, they run atop the Power VM hypervisor https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cl-hypervisorcompare-powervm/ https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cl-hypervisorcompare-powe...
      - zenlot 5y ago
        It's more like virtual machines. You had to use PowerVM, which would take care of virtual I/O, memory, cpu and network. You were able to split in micro partitions and do live partition migrations. In those LPARs you could then use WPARs, which was more like FreeBSD Jails and Solaris Zones. You had two options for it: application wpars and system wpars. I've used AIX[with all hw ecosystem] for many years as a main driver in a bank, and it was ahead of everything else in the market. Still brings good memories - loved it.
  - allenrb 5y ago
    As a young nerd, I heard many times more than once “AIX” pronounced “aches”. Deliberately, mind you.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Or just for the fun of it as a hobbyist.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yeah agreed. There was the adafruit one too. Though I'd love to see a PA-RISC emulator for the old HP-UX with VUE. But that's not around unfortunately.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  Seems that 32-bit mode emulation mode of PA-RISC is available, and HP-UX 9 to 11 runs on it: * https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Qemu https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Qemu * https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/running-hp-ux-11-11-on-qemu-system-hppa/ https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/running-hp-ux-11-... There doesn't seem to be enough interest to really make more capabilities a priority beyond hobby-level interest: * https://wiki.qemu.org/Features/HPPA https://wiki.qemu.org/Features/HPPA
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Nice one!! I looked a few years back and it wasn't there. Will try it.
- ch_123 5y ago
  You can run HP-UX 9.0 on top of MAME, and get VUE in an emulated environment. I have tried this myself and can confirm that it works. https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Running_HP-UX_9.0_on_virtual_HP9000/370_with_MAME https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Running_HP-UX_9.0_o...
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Hmm interesting. I haven't used HPUX 9 and am more interested in 10.20 as this was what I used back in the day (on PA-RISC, I think this was no longer supported on Motorola). But I'll try it nevertheless. Thanks!
karmakaze 5y ago
Of those, I found the NeXTSTEP one to be the most interesting. Because the software was the most interesting part of NeXT and you can experience it and see where a lot of current tech came from. InterfaceBuilder at the time was mind-blowing. You can see where XCode autolayout comes from and why many classes are named NS*. I also prefer the NeXTSTEP filebrowser to be the most convenient to use, especially the long operations that don't open windows to say "hey, I'm still doing this over here." Even the menu shortcut labeling was simple, 'p' means menu-p, and 'P' means menu-shift-P, and '^p'/'^P' for ctrl-p/ctrl-shift-p.

We seem to be having a lot of "emulators for old Unix boxes exist" posts recently? It's sort of neat, but kinda not news really. Now, I'm off to port Hercules to QNX to make my car an IBM mainframe.

marcodiego 5y ago

Yes, not news but definitely interesting. Some of these old unixes were only available for multi-thousand dollar machines. Current computers are powerful enough to run these systems somewhat comfortably inside emulators or using JIT or dynamic binary translation... If 30 years ago you dreamed on using any of those systems, now you can do it.

nizmow 5y ago
On the other hand, the only real reason you’d want to run AIX is because you had to, because you had the hardware and there was no other option.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  I think AIX 5L is what provided RS/6000 owners and developers an offramp to Linux. I enjoy posts like this because they’re true to a “hacker” mindset: Implementing an unconventional approach - either for use or novelty. Thinking outside of the box, while a cliche these days was clearly done here. Who else wakes up and thinks, “I wonder if I could run Aix on an M1?” :)
- icedchai 5y ago
  I can confirm. I worked at an AIX and Linux shop for about 4 years in the early 2000's. We had a couple of "enterprise" customers who didn't yet trust Linux for their critical applications. It was IBM all the way. Note, that for that era, AIX was a very solid choice. Only other real option was Sun/Solaris, which was dying after the dot-com implosion.
- neverartful 5y ago
  I worked with AIX on Power5/5+ (mid 2000s) and their hypervisor for LPARs and what they called micro-LPARs at the time was astonishingly good. It provided very nice granularity and control for running multiple LPARs. An LPAR is like a VM, but is closer to bare-metal than what you find in an Intel environment. You had to allocate at least 1/10th of a virtual processor per LPAR. They had something called 'entitled capacity' where you could specify the minimum amount of CPU allocation the LPAR would get even if all LPARs running on the same hardware were running 100% busy at the same time. It all worked exactly as advertised. I was on a small team that did performance monitoring, optimizations, and capacity planning and we watched the metrics very closely for production workloads (running DB2). It was seriously impressive.
  - 656565656565 5y ago
    100% agree they always have worked in my experience too, still have the pleasure of occasional use of POWER7/8. I always recommended POWER/AIX for reliable compute where budget and s/w compatibility allowed.
  - watersb 5y ago
    LPARs -- "Logical Partitions" I know the industry is full of technical jargon, but IBM is its own universe that pre-dates all of it. Are LPARs like virtual machines, or like FreeBSD jails (which are like Docker containers, I think)? I get the impression that LPARs are full virtual machines -- each one could be running a different kernel as well as userland.
    - 656565656565 5y ago
      LPARs are like full VMs on POWER/AIX, they run atop the Power VM hypervisor https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cl-hypervisorcompare-powervm/ https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cl-hypervisorcompare-powe...
    - zenlot 5y ago
      It's more like virtual machines. You had to use PowerVM, which would take care of virtual I/O, memory, cpu and network. You were able to split in micro partitions and do live partition migrations. In those LPARs you could then use WPARs, which was more like FreeBSD Jails and Solaris Zones. You had two options for it: application wpars and system wpars. I've used AIX[with all hw ecosystem] for many years as a main driver in a bank, and it was ahead of everything else in the market. Still brings good memories - loved it.
- allenrb 5y ago
  As a young nerd, I heard many times more than once “AIX” pronounced “aches”. Deliberately, mind you.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Or just for the fun of it as a hobbyist.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Yeah agreed. There was the adafruit one too. Though I'd love to see a PA-RISC emulator for the old HP-UX with VUE. But that's not around unfortunately.

throw0101a 5y ago
Seems that 32-bit mode emulation mode of PA-RISC is available, and HP-UX 9 to 11 runs on it: * https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Qemu https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Qemu * https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/running-hp-ux-11-11-on-qemu-system-hppa/ https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/running-hp-ux-11-... There doesn't seem to be enough interest to really make more capabilities a priority beyond hobby-level interest: * https://wiki.qemu.org/Features/HPPA https://wiki.qemu.org/Features/HPPA
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Nice one!! I looked a few years back and it wasn't there. Will try it.
ch_123 5y ago
You can run HP-UX 9.0 on top of MAME, and get VUE in an emulated environment. I have tried this myself and can confirm that it works. https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Running_HP-UX_9.0_on_virtual_HP9000/370_with_MAME https://parisc.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Running_HP-UX_9.0_o...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Hmm interesting. I haven't used HPUX 9 and am more interested in 10.20 as this was what I used back in the day (on PA-RISC, I think this was no longer supported on Motorola). But I'll try it nevertheless. Thanks!

karmakaze 5y ago

Of those, I found the NeXTSTEP one to be the most interesting. Because the software was the most interesting part of NeXT and you can experience it and see where a lot of current tech came from. InterfaceBuilder at the time was mind-blowing. You can see where XCode autolayout comes from and why many classes are named NS*. I also prefer the NeXTSTEP filebrowser to be the most convenient to use, especially the long operations that don't open windows to say "hey, I'm still doing this over here." Even the menu shortcut labeling was simple, 'p' means menu-p, and 'P' means menu-shift-P, and '^p'/'^P' for ctrl-p/ctrl-shift-p.