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UNIX On Old Apple Hardware

3/7/2010 9:23 AM

By Tom Manos

I will very soon be installing Apple's original Unix product, A/UX, on a Motorola 68040 based Mac, a Quadra 800. I should be receiving the machine this week.

I have absolutely no experience with old Mac equipment, so this should be fun. This is a NuBus Mac with lots of capability, but I have no idea what I might want to stick in it, or even what A/UX will support.

It's got a SCSI bus and an internal SCSI drive, along with a slot for a SCSI CD-ROM, which is not present. I'll need to purchase one before I install A/UX.

It's also got an internal 10Mb AUI ethernet card, to which I'll add an AUI to TP adapter. This machine will be connected to a private network and will communicate with several other old Unix systems.

More when I get the box and start playing with it.

RE: UNIX On Old Apple Hardware

1. 9/20/2010 10:45 PM

By Tom Manos

It's been a while since the original post about the Quadra, so I thought I'd update it with some more recent information...

The machine is running fine, and is an absolute pleasure to use. Maybe more fun than anything else I've got.

Specs: 33MHz M68040 processor, 40MB RAM, 1.5GB SCSI2 drive, SCSI2 CD-ROM, running A/UX 3.1.1.

This is basically a SVR2 kernel with some SVR3 mods, and more upgrades in user space. It has a full TCP/IP stack. It also has a very complete, though very old development system, with C, f77, bs (a dialect of Basic), and many other tools like efl and snobol. It's got a full DWB, including style and diction, and of course n/troff with a Postscript output.

This was really an incredible operating system for its time!

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