Re: Need help to reanimate an AT&T AT&T 3B1/7300 UNIX-PC

On 2008-03-29, dold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <dold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
DoN. Nichols <dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
O.K. Did you have any Suns available? I never got a chance to
play with an AIX system, though a neighbor has a couple running. (Yes,
two unix users on a single residential block. :-)

There was only one Sun that I can recall. I remember being fascinated with
how slow it was. Spending so much time doing stupid cute graphics like
expanding windows, it was slower than the Convergent machine with a slower
CPU performing identical tasks.

Hmm ... was this the 2/120 by any chance? Same CPU as the 3B1,
and slower than the MiniFrame.

And perhaps it was running SunTools instead of X11? I never
used SunTools, but I think that it went in for more eye candy than X11
did at the time.

But about a year ago, I was really amazed at how slow the 3B1
was when I fired it up after using Ultra-2s (dual 400 MHz CPUs) and
Ultra-60s (dual 450 MHz CPUs) as my desktop machine. And now those seem
slow with the Sun Blade 1000 with dual 900 MHz CPUs -- and the
possibility of moving up to 1200 MHz CPUs -- all of these are
UltraSPARCs, which are 64-bit machines native -- with the ability to run
32-bit code still, so most things don't need to be re-compiled unless
you really need the faster 64-bit math on math-intensive programs.

were still readable, but their labels were getting difficult to read,
thanks to the gum soaking through the labels.

I have some of those.

(Now the trick would be getting those
images onto 5.25" floppys.

That I can do, or could last time I tried. I think that's why I have that
one floppy drive in the box with the diskettes.

I have some 5.25" floppy drives around, but not as many machines
to run them (other than the 3B1s and the Tektronix 6130) as used to be
the case. Most of my machines will still talk to 3.5" floppies, but not
to 5.25" ones. this is why I was wondering whether there were any
SCSI-interfaced 5.25" floppy drives. :-) I do have a SCSI controller
which will talk to 8" floppys and the 10 MB 8" hard drives by Shugart.
That is part of my first unix box -- a Cosmos CMS/UNX running on an 8
MHz 68000 CPU -- if you *really* want slow. It was slower than it
should have been, too. Not because of GUI graphics (no such in a v7
unix), but rather because the people who ported it had the compiler
treat the 68000 as a PDP-11/LSI-11. If those did not have the
instruction, the compiler did not use it -- with the exception of the
link an unlink instructions to create/destroy stack frames on
entry/exit to/from a function. :-)

In particular, I discovered that when both machines were running
the same simple cracking program (trying to crack a single password --
the root password on the Tektronix 6130) by running crypt(3) on
everything from a combination of the /usr/dict/words file on all of my
different systems. It finally found it -- "gnome". But the 3B1 was
trying two for every one on the v7 COSMOS system -- and the CPU
difference was 10 MHz 68010 vs 8MHz 68000 -- and the differences in the
CPUS should not have made a difference for the kind of programs being
run.

Oh yes -- I also got my first experience in patching a running
kernel on that COSMOS system. It had the TZ offset compiled into the
kernel -- and no sources to re-compile the kernel, which was the
*official* way to change the timezone on a v7 unix. :-)

Oh yes -- and now a token Mac Mini to run the income tax

I have a box of some Mac laptops. I wand to say DuoBook, an old iMac, and
a PowerPC Mac of some sort, sitting in the garage, awaiting some love.

One is quite enough. The Mac Mini is a tinly little brick, and
shares a monitor with three other systems via a switch, and is using a
USB Sun keyboard instead of a genuine Mac keyboard -- with no problems.

I won't let a Windows machine touch the net from my IP block. :-)

I gave that up around the time that the one true Unix was sold to Novell.

Which then got sold to SCO -- who started (unsuccessfully)
sueing everyone in sight. :-)

Right now, I'm mostly using most Solaris 10 (SysVr4 descendant)
and OpenBSD (BSD 4.4 descendant).

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
.

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