5 ms·

> OS/2 was very popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking on x86-based systems (x86 Unix wasn't really a thing yet), It was

> OS/2 was very popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking on x86-based systems (x86 Unix wasn't really a thing yet), It was before my time, but according to Wikipedia: "SCO XENIX for the PC XT shipped sometime in 1984" "The first version of OS/2 was released in December 1987"

mongol 5y ago
It was outside of most people's awareness at that time
- nikanj 5y ago
  Outside their budgets, too. OS/2 was relatively cheap
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Xenix was my first UNIX experience, in 1993 at trade school during OS design classes. The teacher would bring a single tower (486 based I think), plug it into monitor and keyboard, and the whole class would take 15 minute slots at it. We would prepare our exercises in MS-DOS, with Turbo C 2.0, using mocks for the UNIX APIs. Then use those 15 minutes to replace the mocks with the real deal, and have a go at it. Failing the exercise, it was back to MS-DOS / Turbo C, while trying to figure out with pen and paper what might have gone wrong. Then people complain nowadays when their build takes longer than 1 second.
    - marcodiego 5y ago
      > Then people complain nowadays when their build takes longer than 1 second. My father wrote in Fortran during the 70's while at the university. He told me that he left the programs (stack of punched cards) with the "computer operator" on Friday and went back to get the "results" on Monday. Sometimes, the result was simply a syntax error message.
atombender 5y ago
For those curious about this, SCO XENIX for PC was $595 back in 1984, but development tools came extra. $1,350 for the whole thing. The later SCO UNIX, released in 1989, pretty much kept that pricing. [1] http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/xenix/SCO_Price_List_Dec84.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/xenix/SCO_Price_List_Dec...
mdip 5y ago
The quote is a little misleading. It was popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking of DOS-based software on x86-based systems. The software that many BBSes ran in the 90s (at least in my area code and the surrounding) was one of (a) Telegard[0] (b) T.A.G. or (c) a Forum hack of some kind[1]. These were all DOS-based and were impossible to get working in a two-node setup under Windows. Desqview and Desqview/X worked relatively well but still meant I had to shut down the BBS when my Dad wanted to use Lotus 123. Everyone I knew that had a multi-node setup ran OS/2 for a while. It was easily pirated, and inexpensive enough for the relatively honest amongst us compared to commercial UNIX offerings but the important reason was that it easily ran my current BBS software. [0] And its many hacks, Renegade being a large one. Ironically, I don't think the original Telegard was multi-node. I ended up re-writing Telegard, myself, and added multi-node support using some of the leaked, I think 2.25, version. [1] Run by the "Elite" :P
- axiolite 5y ago
  > It was popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking of DOS-based software on x86-based systems. Xenix was originally developed by Microsoft. It offered DOS compatibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12661405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12661405

mongol 5y ago

It was outside of most people's awareness at that time

nikanj 5y ago
Outside their budgets, too. OS/2 was relatively cheap
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Xenix was my first UNIX experience, in 1993 at trade school during OS design classes. The teacher would bring a single tower (486 based I think), plug it into monitor and keyboard, and the whole class would take 15 minute slots at it. We would prepare our exercises in MS-DOS, with Turbo C 2.0, using mocks for the UNIX APIs. Then use those 15 minutes to replace the mocks with the real deal, and have a go at it. Failing the exercise, it was back to MS-DOS / Turbo C, while trying to figure out with pen and paper what might have gone wrong. Then people complain nowadays when their build takes longer than 1 second.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    > Then people complain nowadays when their build takes longer than 1 second. My father wrote in Fortran during the 70's while at the university. He told me that he left the programs (stack of punched cards) with the "computer operator" on Friday and went back to get the "results" on Monday. Sometimes, the result was simply a syntax error message.

atombender 5y ago

For those curious about this, SCO XENIX for PC was $595 back in 1984, but development tools came extra. $1,350 for the whole thing. The later SCO UNIX, released in 1989, pretty much kept that pricing. [1] http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/xenix/SCO_Price_List_Dec84.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/xenix/SCO_Price_List_Dec...

mdip 5y ago

The quote is a little misleading. It was popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking of DOS-based software on x86-based systems. The software that many BBSes ran in the 90s (at least in my area code and the surrounding) was one of (a) Telegard[0] (b) T.A.G. or (c) a Forum hack of some kind[1]. These were all DOS-based and were impossible to get working in a two-node setup under Windows. Desqview and Desqview/X worked relatively well but still meant I had to shut down the BBS when my Dad wanted to use Lotus 123. Everyone I knew that had a multi-node setup ran OS/2 for a while. It was easily pirated, and inexpensive enough for the relatively honest amongst us compared to commercial UNIX offerings but the important reason was that it easily ran my current BBS software. [0] And its many hacks, Renegade being a large one. Ironically, I don't think the original Telegard was multi-node. I ended up re-writing Telegard, myself, and added multi-node support using some of the leaked, I think 2.25, version. [1] Run by the "Elite" :P

axiolite 5y ago
> It was popular with multi-line BBSes back in the day for its accessible multitasking of DOS-based software on x86-based systems. Xenix was originally developed by Microsoft. It offered DOS compatibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12661405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12661405