2 Apr
2021
2 Apr
'21
6:39 p.m.
The first version of AIX for the IBM RT PC was developed by INTERACTIVE
Systems Corp.
under contract to IBM. The second version of AIX was developed by Locus
Computing.
Some brief history can be found here:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX#IBM_RT_PC
Heinz
On 4/2/2021 9:03 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 11:54 PM Wesley Parish <wobblygong(a)gmail.com
<mailto:wobblygong@gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't think anybody was even thinking of porting any of
the *BSD to IBM mainframes till much later, am I right?
No. BSD was very much on IBM's radar in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Long before Linus released Linux into the wild in 1990 for the >>386<<
much less any other ISA, IBM had been shipping as a product AIX/370
(and AIX/PS2 for the 386); which we developed at Locus for them. The
user-space was mostly System V, the kernel was based on BSD (4.1
originally) pluis a great deal of customization, including of course
the Locus OS work, which IBM called TCF - the transparent computing
facility. It was very cool you could cluster 370s and PS/2 and from
>any<< node run a program of either ISA.
It has been well discussed
in this forum, previously.
A for AIX/370 a quick history which Charlie can fill in more from the
IBM side, was that in the last 60s and early 70s, IBM had a strange
hold on the education/research market with the S/360; but lost it
because of the lack of timesharing to DEC and PDP-10 based systems as
IBM was more and more focused on the commercial sector where there was
much more money to be made. But ... there was a drive in the IBM
educational/research team to be able to reenter that market and Locus
was hired to develop AIX/370 (and later PS2) as it was felt that UNIX
was considered an important offering for those customers. After it
was released as a product, it turned out purchasing AIX/370 was
exceedingly difficult (for a number of reasons), although it was
extremely well received by those that ran it, but getting it was
difficult. In fact, I have been told by folks that there at the time,
that using TCF was an important feature here at Intel for the success
of the simulation for the 486 and Pentium.
Again, Charlie can tell you the history but IBM also developed AIX for
the RS/6000 which was the same OS (only different) from IBM Austin(no
TCF, but supported DS which was cool in its own right). Locus was
actually contracted to develop a UNIX subsystem for the AS/400 also,
but I'm not sure if that ever shipped. I had left Locus and hadgoneto
DEC by then.