The XENIX 386 2.2.3 Mystery

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Michal Necasek

On the Internets, one may find a package labeled as SCO XENIX 386 version 2.2.3 or similar, sometimes mislabeled as version 2.2.2. This is one of the very oldest operating systems designed for 386-based PC compatibles, released around June 1988 (years before 32-bit OS/2 and Windows NT, or Linux and 386BSD for that matter; note that the first release of XENIX 386 probably happened sometime around mid-1987). Based on AT&T’s System V Release 3.2, it’s also one of the hardest operating systems to get running, for several reasons.

XENIX 386 2.2.3

The core operating system (the ‘N’ floppies) is version 2.2.3c, though the rest, i.e. the basic and extended utilities (the ‘B’ and ‘X’ floppies) is version 2.2.2c. That may explain the occasional mislabeling. Continue reading →

Posted in 386, Xenix | 9 Comments

Master Builders of OS/2

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The MS OS/2 videos exhibit has now been completed with the addition of two PDF documents. These are scans of two fat three-ring binders that were handed out to attendees of the Microsoft OS/2 Developer’s Conference in New York City on July 7-9, 1987.

These are 700 pages containing hardcopies of conference slides. More or less all the slides are shown in the videos, but obviously print has a bit better resolution than VHS tape. This should make it easier to follow the videotaped presentations.

Note that the binder covers included the phrase “Master Builders”, which does not appear to be repeated anywhere else in the text.

Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Microsoft, OS/2 | 11 Comments

OS/2 for PowerPC Tidbits

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Michal Necasek

In December 1994, IBM shipped the first beta version of OS/2 for the PowerPC to selected developers. This beta included the PowerPC operating system as well as Intel-based cross-development tools that ran on OS/2 2.11 or Warp.

The operating system naturally required a PowerPC system to run on. In late 1994, there was only a single machine that OS/2 for PowerPC supported: IBM Personal Computer Power Series 440, also known as Model 6015 or Sandalfoot. This system was very similar to the RS/6000 Model 7020 (40P). The difference was that the Power Series used PReP firmware, rather than OpenFirmware.

Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2, PowerPC | 8 Comments

Windows NT BSOD Aclock Port

Posted on November 7, 2012 by tenox

Do you remember the famous Windows NT Blue Screen Of Death? For years it was a source of jokes and bad reputation of Windows reliability. There even was a Blue Screen Saver!

Today we fortunately see much less of it, but it still is there, reminding us that Windows Kernel was developed in a text mode environment. The 1989 NT Design Workbook tells us that in the early days of development there was an ANSI terminal emulator and bunch of command line utilities running in the text mode. Sadly all were removed in the retail version. The only true text mode application left around was autochk. Since the day Aclock was conceived I always wanted to run it on the NT text mode boot screen. In it’s twisted logic it actually makes a perfect sense. Continue reading →

Posted in 386, Development, NT, VGA, Windows, x86 | 10 Comments

Microsoft’s 1987 OS/2 Videos

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The site has been finally expanded to include videos of presentations given at Microsoft OS/2 developer conferences held in 1987, a quarter of a century ago. These videos are of historical interest as they show Microsoft’s product plans as they existed at a time (e.g. Steve Ballmer touting the advantages of OS/2). There is naturally a wealth of technical information as well, although that is less historically significant.

Windows buffs may also find some of the presentation interesting, as they show Windows 2.0 several months before the product became available. The reason why a conference targeted at OS/2 developers showed Windows at all was simple: In mid-1987, the upcoming Windows 2.0 was a prototype of the OS/2 GUI, called the Windows Presentation Manager at the time. While Windows 2.0 was more or less complete, OS/2 Presentation Manager was still more than half a year from the first beta.

In fact the Microsoft OS/2 SDK included copies of Windows 1.x and 2.0 so that developers could start wrapping their heads around the new concepts of GUI programming, and do so more than a year before the OS/2 Presentation Manager shipped. Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

OS/2 1.0 Availability Announced 25 Years Ago

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Michal Necasek

On November 3, 1987 IBM announced a few new products and provided more information on several previously announced packages. One of those was OS/2 1.0 Standard Edition. First announced on April 2, 1987, OS/2 1.0 SE ($325) had been completed and IBM would start shipping it to customers in December 1987, slightly ahead of the original schedule.

The announcements from November 3, 1987 covered OS/2 1.0 and 1.1 SE (letter 287-498), OS/2 1.0 and 1.1 EE (letter 287-499), a slew of development tools such as C/2, Macro Assembler/2, or FORTRAN/2 (letter 287-500), and IBM LAN Sever 1.0 (letter 287-501).

Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

IBM PC XENIX

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Michal Necasek

In 1984, IBM briefly flirted with XENIX, Microsoft’s variant of UNIX licensed from AT&T.  Around 1983-1984, Microsoft and Intel worked on porting XENIX to the 286 processor; Intel shipped XENIX with a number of its development systems in the mid-1980s.

A good description of IBM’s flavor of XENIX may be found in the IBM Personal Computer Seminar Proceedings, Volume 2, Number 9, published in November 1984. The OS/2 Museum recently obtained a copy of this booklet, which is now being made available in PDF format.

Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Microsoft, Xenix | 27 Comments

No comments in source code? Really?

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Michal Necasek

A few weeks ago I came across an interview with an academic software researcher, now working for Microsoft. (Unfortunately the interview was in a non-English print publication, so I can’t link to it.) The interview was quite interesting, far better than I’d expect from a magazine targeted at a wider audience; it certainly wasn’t a trade publication.

Near the end of the interview, I had to stop reading and went “What?? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!” This was where the interviewee said that one distinguishing mark of good code is the lack of (inline) comments. Properly written code, the theory goes, is so clear and simple that it needs no comments.

This was a bit of a shocker for me. I have some software development experience, and in the fields I’ve worked in, lack of comments in code is a clear mark of poorly written, sloppy code. Even suggesting that code should not be commented would be an obvious sign of utter ignorance, perhaps too strange to even take seriously. Continue reading →

Posted in Development | 14 Comments

Why Windows NT from October 1992 refuses to install on modern CPUs

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Attempting to install the October 1992 pre-release on any CPU less than about 20 years old is likely to result in the following error message:

This is similar to the behavior of the official Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5 releases, but harder to work around, and likely to happen even on Pentiums and some 486s. The reason for that is that Microsoft knew too much, but not enough. Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, NT | 15 Comments

Windows Update Fail

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The other day I needed to update a server blade with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it. The system hadn’t been running for a while and now had about 100 updates available. I wasn’t looking forward to this as Windows Update always finds reasons to reboot the system a lot (which takes extra long with server systems), and this blade is a bit special in that it has a rather slow an small flash disk.

In fac the blade has a 16GB (flash) drive and 64GB RAM. This upsets some older OS installers in an amusing way, because they want to create swap space twice as big as the RAM. That just isn’t possible with this sort of hardware…

The first attempt at applying updates took quite a while before spitting out Error 80243004. A repeated attempt fared no better. A quick trip to Google revealed a very unexpected cause: The Windows system tray was confused and this was causing the Windows Update to fail! For all I know, the batch of updates even included a fix for this problem, and the best Microsoft can do is throw some hexadecimal number at me. It’s as if Microsoft were trying to prove that putting a GUI on a server is a really, really bad idea.

Sure enough, changing the tray settings helped (why?!) and the updates could finally be installed. Which of course triggered a few reboots, a few more updates, and finally the Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 became available. There I hit a wall because the system ran out of disk space.

Naturally I attempted to run the Disk Cleanup tool, only to realize that it wasn’t there. Except that’s not quite true either. Google fairly quickly led me to Microsoft’s own website, which explains that by design, the Disk Cleanup tool is not installed with Windows Server 2008, but it is in fact present on the disk and can be run if one just copies two files over to the \Windows directory tree. Why anyone would want to call such schizophrenic craziness “design” is beyond me.

Sadly, even after Disk Cleanup was brought back from limbo, it couldn’t free up enough disk space. At that point I realized that during installation, Windows had created a swap file (pagefile.sys) which was taking up about 25% of disk space (nearly 4GB on a drive a bit smaller than 16GB). Very helpful.

After removing the swap file, there were over 4GB free and I hoped SP1 could finally be applied. But no dice. After more than an hour of trying, Windows Update finally announced that it needed more disk space. How much more is apparently a secret.

So I grabbed an ISO image with SP1, remotely mounted it on the server, and tried to update the system that way. This failed too, but now at least the setup program told me what Windows Update didn’t, i.e. that it needed 8GB of free disk space. And unlike Windows Update, the standalone SP1 installer told me this before chugging away for an hour or two.

There’s no way to free up 8GB on this system (again, the Windows partition has slightly less than 15GB total). So now I’ll flip a coin as to whether I should cut my losses and probably disable the useless pile of junk called Windows Update, or reinstall the system with Server 2008 R2 with SP1.

But it’s not all bad. Windows Update is clearly providing work, possibly even perverse entertainment, for thousands if not millions of system administrators. That’s not a bad thing in today’s economy. Let’s just hope that the powers that be don’t realize that there has to be a better way of doing things…

Posted in Microsoft, Windows | 7 Comments