This is all very enlightening, thank you.  Comments inline...

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 at 05:39, Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au> wrote:
The 1986 press release for the Deskpro 386 mentioned 386 Xenix
was planned for 1987.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-10-fi-13177-story.html

I found https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1987/0902.html which includes the following quote:


"UNIX System V and the 80386 are a perfect technological match," said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, in remarks at AT&T's press conference here. AT&T and Microsoft are developing a new version of UNIX System V for the 80386 chip that will run XENIX System V as well as UNIX System V applications.


This is September 1987, so perhaps Microsoft's abandonment of Xenix was not as early as I had thought.  Though this does imply that the Xenix port was not ready at that point, and perhaps was ultimately abandoned by Microsoft.

 
Intel and AT&T had ISC do a 386 port for SVR3.

"The 386/ix is based on Release 3.0, which was developed by Interactive
Systems Corp. Santa Monica, Calif., under contract to Intel and AT&T.
The code was tested through an extensive beta program managed by Intel
(with more than 60 80386 beta sites)."
Mini-Micro Systems, January 1988, p 45
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_MiniMicroS_59292072/page/44/mode/2up
https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Mini-Micro_Systems/198801.pdf

I'm not familiar with 386/ix so I'll have to let others comment here, though I do note that we're now slipping into 1988.

AT&T sold rebadged Olivetti machines with SVR3 in 1987:
"AT&T 6386 WGS is today's only 80386-based system to take full advantage
of its 32-bit architecture"
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/6386_wgs/6386_WGS_Brochure.pdf

This is fascinating, as it claims "concurrent running of both MS-DOS and true 32-bit UNIX System V programs."  They were also serious about market positioning - the larger model could handle up to 64MB of RAM and two 135MB disks.  I'd appreciate any further details on the exact operating system.
 
ISC work was also used by Microport:
"Microport Runtime System V/386 is based on a version of Unix for the
80386 carried out by Interactive Technologies for AT&T and Intel."
Microport to Ship Version of Unix for 386
InfoWorld, Volume 9, Issue 9, 2 Mar 1987, p 3
https://books.google.com/books?id=1TAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA3

Also interesting; I wonder if the "capability to run multiple MS-DOS applications under Unix" was shipped in a functional form, and what relation it might or might not have had to what was running on the AT&T hardware.

-Henry