9 Jun
2025
9 Jun
'25
5:21 p.m.
Hello TUHS people!
Someone recently posted a question about your prized UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
For my part, I have only used UNIX on emulated systems so far but would
like to purchase some hardware. Given that I have little space it would
need to be something small. According to you how does one get into that
specific type of retro computing?
See you around cyberspace,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
[1] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-June/032020.html
9 Jun
9 Jun
5:45 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 13:29, Vicente Collares via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
Hello TUHS people!
For my part, I have only used UNIX on emulated systems so far but would
like to purchase some hardware. Given that I have little space it would
need to be something small. According to you how does one get into that
specific type of retro computing?
How retro, and how little space? Is a pizza box form factor Sun
workstation like, say, a SPARCstation 1 or 2 too new, or too big?
-Henry
6:28 p.m.
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 13:45:37 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How retro, and how little space? Is a pizza box form
factor Sun
workstation like, say, a SPARCstation 1 or 2 too new, or too big?
The pizza box
factor would be ideal since it would fit on top of a desk.
Therefore the SPARCstation 1 or 2 seems reasonably sized to me. The
*biggest* I could accommodate would be something the size of a modern
full tower.
I do not have a strong preference for the era of the system. I'm more
interested in its historical signaficance.
Have a great week,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
6:52 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 14:28, Vicente Collares <vicente(a)collares.ca> wrote:
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 13:45:37 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Something like a SPARCstation 2 or 5 might be ideal since you would be able
to run a variety of operating systems both historic and modern - SunOS 4,
Solaris, NetBSD, probably Linux if you really wanted to, NeXTstep, and I'm
probably forgetting a few more. The historical significance of a system
like that is that they were everywhere - Sun sold a ton of them and they
were used in all sorts of applications, which also makes it a good entry
level machine since they're fairly easy to come by and not terribly
expensive. Parts are usually easy to find and inexpensive if you need
them. You would also have options like using a modern SCSI emulator
instead of a hard disk or connecting to an LCD monitor, but you could also
do the full original workstation setup without too much trouble.
-Henry
How retro, and how little space? Is a pizza box
form factor Sun
workstation like, say, a SPARCstation 1 or 2 too new, or too big?
The pizza box
factor would be ideal since it would fit on top of a desk.
Therefore the SPARCstation 1 or 2 seems reasonably sized to me. The
*biggest* I could accommodate would be something the size of a modern
full tower.
I do not have a strong preference for the era of the system. I'm more
interested in its historical signaficance
7:18 p.m.
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 14:52:54 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Something like a SPARCstation 2 or 5 might be ideal
since you would be able
to run a variety of operating systems both historic and modern - SunOS 4,
Solaris, NetBSD, probably Linux if you really wanted to, NeXTstep, and I'm
probably forgetting a few more. The historical significance of a system
like that is that they were everywhere - Sun sold a ton of them and they
were used in all sorts of applications, which also makes it a good entry
level machine since they're fairly easy to come by and not terribly
expensive. Parts are usually easy to find and inexpensive if you need
them. You would also have options like using a modern SCSI emulator
instead of a hard disk or connecting to an LCD monitor, but you could also
do the full original workstation setup without too much trouble.
-Henry
Do the models you mentioned generally "age" well? Do they usually
require significant repairs to get them running again?
I've always found Sun to be an interesting company and like your
suggestion a lot. I like having the option to connect a hard drive
through a SCSI emulator.
Thanks for answering my questions,
Vicente
7:57 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 15:19, Vicente Collares <vicente(a)collares.ca> wrote:
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 14:52:54 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
They've held up as well as anything else of that age, in my experience. As
far as I'm aware there haven't been any significant problems with those
models over time which is also part of why I recommended them. As long as
you get one that is in reasonably good condition, I would expect it to last
for at least a few more years of light to moderate use. I haven't powered
on my SS2 in a while but the last time I did it was okay; I also have an
SS10 that I have used very heavily over the years and it's been fine, which
is a machine from the same era.
Saying that does make me think - if you're not quite as worried about
running as many OSes as possible and you like the form factor, you might
also consider an SS10 or 20. It will be a little larger investment but a
much higher powered machine, depending on how it's configured.
Al Kossow made a good point - all of these machines are going to be slow by
modern standards. How slow are you willing to put up with? Do you want
something that was a representation of an average workstation at the time,
or do you want to go all out and build a four processor SunOS 4 monster?
Are you more interested in having fast interactive performance, so you
invest in a higher end SBUS graphics card? Lots of options to consider.
-Henry
-Henry
Something like a SPARCstation 2 or 5 might be
ideal since you would be
able
to run a variety of operating systems both
historic and modern - SunOS 4,
Solaris, NetBSD, probably Linux if you really wanted to, NeXTstep, and
I'm
probably forgetting a few more. The historical
significance of a system
like that is that they were everywhere - Sun sold a ton of them and they
were used in all sorts of applications, which also makes it a good entry
level machine since they're fairly easy to come by and not terribly
expensive. Parts are usually easy to find and inexpensive if you need
them. You would also have options like using a modern SCSI emulator
instead of a hard disk or connecting to an LCD monitor, but you could
also
do the full original workstation setup without
too much trouble.
-Henry
Do the models you mentioned generally "age" well? Do they usually
require significant repairs to get them running again?
9:27 p.m.
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:57:56 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Saying that does make me think - if you're not
quite as worried about
running as many OSes as possible and you like the form factor, you might
also consider an SS10 or 20. It will be a little larger investment but a
much higher powered machine, depending on how it's configured.
I would rather go for the more powerful system than the one that
supports the most OSes. So I'm currently leaning more towards the
SPARCstation 10 or 20. I'll give eBay and the like to a look to see what
I can find.
Al Kossow made a good point - all of these machines
are going to be slow by
modern standards. How slow are you willing to put up with? Do you want
something that was a representation of an average workstation at the time,
or do you want to go all out and build a four processor SunOS 4 monster?
I don't mind having a machine that is slow by modern standards. I would
like a system that is representative of the high-end at the time of its
release. I'm not looking to cobble together the most powerful Sun
workstation possible, a Frankenstein's monster of computer parts that
would be unheard of at the time.
Are you more interested in having fast interactive
performance, so you
invest in a higher end SBUS graphics card? Lots of options to consider.
When it
comes to graphics, the system should be able to comfortably run
a window manager and simple programs with GUIs. I'm not looking for
something that can do 3D or advanced graphics.
Thanks for the advice,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
11 Jun
11 Jun
8:19 p.m.
On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 05:27:17PM -0400, Vicente Collares via TUHS wrote:
For that: The above-mentioned Ultra-45 is essentially the end of the line
(1 or 2 (depending on board) 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi CPUs, 8/16G RAM) and
still pretty speedy for being almost 30y (introduced 1995, discontinued
2001) old. Still official and not a FrankenWorkstation.
Haven't tried that yet, but I've got the fastest graphics card officially
available for the Ultra-45 (XVR-2500, a 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm) sitting
in a box next to the machine (currently equipped with the lowly XVR-100).
It's being kept company by a dual SCSI PCIe card and a 10G PCI-X NIC (all
on the officially supported addons list for the Ultra-45) in their own
boxes.
Once I find the round tuits ...
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Hello Henry,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:57:56 -0400
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The first Unix I ever got into contact was SunOS on SPARCstation ELC
machines (diskless, razorsharp monochrome display) that filled one of
our university computing pools. The first paying job was doing web/backend
development as a student job on a Sun Ultra 1 running Solaris. That
somehow left a fondness for SPARC behind ...
A few years ago, a Sun V100 fell into my hands (being decommissioned)
and it's serving me running NetBSD to this day (and later got some
V100 friends as the board has some .. useful properties).
The most priced of the SUN machines here so far is an Ultra-45 (dual
CPU) that I managed to acquire a few months ago - the very last workstation
SUN built with an actual UltraSPARC CPU. It happily runs NetBSD 10.1 here.
Saying that does make me think - if you're
not quite as worried about
running as many OSes as possible and you like the form factor, you might
also consider an SS10 or 20. It will be a little larger investment but a
much higher powered machine, depending on how it's configured.
I would rather go for the more powerful system than the one that supports
the most OSes. So I'm currently leaning more towards the SPARCstation 10 or
20. I'll give eBay and the like to a look to see what I can find. Al Kossow made
a good point - all of these machines are going to be slow by
modern standards. How slow are you willing to put up with? Do you want
something that was a representation of an average workstation at the time,
or do you want to go all out and build a four processor SunOS 4 monster?
I don't mind having a machine that is slow by modern standards. I would like
a system that is representative of the high-end at the time of its release.
I'm not looking to cobble together the most powerful Sun workstation
possible, a Frankenstein's monster of computer parts that would be unheard
of at the time. Are you more
interested in having fast interactive performance, so you
invest in a higher end SBUS graphics card? Lots of options to consider.
When it
comes to graphics, the system should be able to comfortably run a
window manager and simple programs with GUIs. I'm not looking for something
that can do 3D or advanced graphics.
9 Jun
9 Jun
6:04 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 13:29, Vicente Collares via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
Hello TUHS people!
Someone recently posted a question about your prized UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
To answer this first question, most of my hardware isn't particularly rare
or valuable but is of personal interest to me. Most of it came from the
places where I studied and worked, and so for example I have several
generations of the machine that was occs.cs.oberlin.edu, the CS department
server for Oberlin College. Those are a DECserver 5000, an Alphaserver
1200, and a Sun Fire 280R; unfortunately I don't have the VAX 11/750 or
know what became of it. The CS department did have an Omron LUNA 88K,
which would be interesting and valuable today, but I have no idea what
became of it.
I'm looking forward to the answer from others on this one - what's the most
weird/obscure UNIX hardware you ever used?
-Henry
6:08 p.m.
Henry Bent [2025-06-09 20:04:51]:
I'm looking forward to the answer from others on
this one - what's the
most weird/obscure UNIX hardware you ever used?
An Intergraph (Fairchild Clipper CPU), which I bought at an auction in
the 90s. Didn't really use it for anything.
--
Hilsen Harald
9:37 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025, Henry Bent wrote:
[ ... ]
I'm looking forward to the answer from others on
this one - what's the
most weird/obscure UNIX hardware you ever used?
Many decades ago I evaluated MiniUnix running on a twin-floppy (8") DEC
box (can't remember which). I recall that sync(2) had to be patched to
not keep updating the inode for /dev/tty8 (the console) as otherwise it
would wear a hole in the floppy...
-- Dave
11 Jun
11 Jun
8:30 p.m.
On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 11:36:06AM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
On 6/9/25 10:21 AM, Vicente Collares via TUHS wrote:
SIMH VAX runs on a Raspberry Pi4 class machine (RockPro64) reasonably
well, if a little slow. Compiling stuff there is not an activity for
the impatient ;-)
But that host hardware is reasonably cheap, quiet (no fan) and low
power.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Given that I have little space it would need to
be something small.
The more important question is how slow do you want it to be?
13 Jun
13 Jun
11:02 p.m.
Performance per watt is always an interesting metric that has been largely
left alone. My Ryzen 7 5700G claims to operate within a 65W thermal
envelope, and with modern monitoring I can pretty much keep it there.
Heck, even my i7-7700 can be manually throttled down to keep it within a
certain frequency envelope so that it doesn't cook itself, because I'm not
happy with the thermal solution HP came up with.
-Henry
On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 at 15:01, Alexander Schreiber <als(a)thangorodrim.ch>
wrote:
On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 11:36:06AM -0700, Al Kossow
wrote:
On 6/9/25 10:21 AM, Vicente Collares via TUHS
wrote:
SIMH VAX runs on a Raspberry Pi4 class machine (RockPro64) reasonably
well, if a little slow. Compiling stuff there is not an activity for
the impatient ;-)
But that host hardware is reasonably cheap, quiet (no fan) and low
power.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Given that I have little space it would need to
be something small.
The more important question is how slow do you want it to be? 
9 Jun
9 Jun
9:48 p.m.
On Monday, June 9th, 2025 at 10:21 AM, Vicente Collares via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
Hello TUHS people!
Someone recently posted a question about your prized UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
For my part, I have only used UNIX on emulated systems so far but would
like to purchase some hardware. Given that I have little space it would
need to be something small. According to you how does one get into that
specific type of retro computing?
See you around cyberspace,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
[1] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-June/032020.html
Back when I worked in the lab we had an RS/6000 running some 4.x AIX release hanging
around for data retention reasons. I was able to connect with it via rsh (yep, no
security here...) and could play games like wump and quiz in a terminal on my desktop.
Aside from that, we have some sort of HP boxes running HP-UX driving our high res mass
specs in another lab, have had to remotely tinker with those before. Was glad I had
learned ed by that point, whatever vi was in there struggled with rsh for whatever reason.
Any time I have to get on those I still wind up using ed exclusively.
Finally had the privilege of bumming around on some of the machines maintained by the LCM
at the time, they had some PDPs and 3B2s running various UNIX versions, you could simply
ssh to them.
- Matt G.
10:45 p.m.
On Monday, June 9th, 2025 at 5:48 PM, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Finally had the privilege of bumming around on some of
the machines maintained by the LCM at the time, they had some PDPs and 3B2s running
various UNIX versions, you could simply ssh to them.
Some of the LCM physical and simulated systems ended up at the ICM/SDF. Some of the
hardware To ssh into them, see connection details at https://sdf.org/?ssh . The menu of
systems you can login to right now looks like this:
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
-+- SDF Vintage Systems REMOTE ACCESS -+-
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
[a] multics Multics MR12.8 Honeywell 6180
[b] toad-2 TOPS-20 7(110131)-1 XKL TOAD-2
[c] twenex TOPS-20 7(63327)-6 XKL TOAD-2
[d] sc40 TOPS-20 MARS 7(21733) SC Group SC40
[e] sc40 TOPS-10 MARS 7.05 SC Group SC40
[f] lc ITS ver 1648 PDP-10 KS10
[g] ka1050 TOPS-10 6.03a sim KA10 1050
[h] kl2065 TOPS-10 7.04 sim KL10 2065
[i] rosenkrantz OpenVMS 7.3 VAX 4000-96
[j] tss8 TSS/8 PDP-8/e
[k] ibm4361 VM/SP5 Hercules 4361
[l] ibm7094 CTSS i7094
[m] cdc6500 NOS 1.3 DTCyber CDC-6500
[n] sigma9 Honeywell CP-V sim XDS
[z] bitzone NetBSD BBS AMD64
[1] Proceed to the UNIX Systems sub-menu
[2] Information about Vintage Systems at SDF.ORG
(main) Your choice? (q to quit):
Most (all?) of those systems have guest access. You can get your own account on some of
them. I believe the accounts from some of the LCM systems are still present on the SDF
systems. Info on the ICM is at https://icm.museum/ and SDF at https://sdf.org/ .
-- Ron Pool
10:48 p.m.
My most prized UNIX computer is the original LF/Technologies CUBIX from
1987. It's an 11" cube with a built-in UPS (weighs a ton), an 80286 CPU,
several serial ports, and runs System V release 2. This box was part of
the original Stargate project, broadcasting Usenet over Satellite to
Cable TV.
I also have a UNIX PC 7300 and a couple SparcStation 1+ and a 10, along
with a pair of 13w3 monitors. And an Ann Arbor Ambassador terminal in
twisted mode.
These are currently in my virtual museum at https://stargatemuseum.org/.
It is my hope that someday they will go in a physical museum.
Thanks,
/Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am)
Award Winning Author
maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com>
On 6/9/25 10:21, Vicente Collares via TUHS wrote:
Hello TUHS people!
Someone recently posted a question about your prized UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
For my part, I have only used UNIX on emulated systems so far but
would like to purchase some hardware. Given that I have little space
it would need to be something small. According to you how does one get
into that specific type of retro computing?
See you around cyberspace,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
[1] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-June/032020.html
10 Jun
10 Jun
7:21 a.m.
On 09/06/2025 19:21, Vicente Collares via TUHS wrote:
Someone recently posted a question about your prized
UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
Penet.fi was a 3B2 back in the day, but it has gone to the great
recycling scrapyard by now. I still have the basic 386 PC that
was anon.poenet.fi (using BSD UNIX).
The most horrible one I remember was the Zilog Z8000 system that
was the UUCP and USENET (EUnet) backbone for Finland for a while.
It ran a Zilog implementation of System III. Unfortunately they,
just like everybody else, noticed the discrepancy between the
TTY termio interface implementation and documentation, but unlike
everybody else, they fixed the code, not the documentation.
The Zilog TTY driver, in raw mode, would not wait for a certain
number of bytes and a certain time before returning, but would
return after a certain number of bytes *or* a timeout.
My horror story is of running the Helsinki-Amsterdam (penet-mcvax)
backbone connection on UUCP over X.25. If mcvax was slow, the tty
driver would occasionally time out -- and return with 0 bytes,
(that UUCP of course took as "line dropped"), and that transfer of
a news or email batch would have to re-start - while paying for
traffic per data packet. Bills got pretty expensive pretty fast.
Julf
11 Jun
11 Jun
6:27 a.m.
New subject: X.25 stacks on Unix (was: Do you have any historical UNIX computers?)
On Tuesday, 10 June 2025 at 9:21:55 +0200, Johan Helsingius wrote:
My horror story is of running the Helsinki-Amsterdam (penet-mcvax)
backbone connection on UUCP over X.25...
Was this X.25 on the Z8000? How good was the implementation in
itself? My recollection was that we wanted to sell our LXN (see my
other post) to Finland simply because it had a native X.25 stack. And
yes, to my recollection it worked well.
Greg
--
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5
days inactive
9
days old
19 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Al Kossow -
Alexander Schreiber -
amp1ron＠gmail.com -
Dave Horsfall -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Harald Arnesen -
Henry Bent -
Johan Helsingius -
Mary Ann Horton -
segaloco -
Vicente Collares