Timeline:
- Mid-1988: SCO 386 Xenix 2.2.3 is released
- 1996 (probably): Someone dumps the 386 Xenix 2.2.3 disks, but enough sectors are missing that the OS is impossible to install
- January 3rd, 2013: OS/2 Museum posts about the damaged Xenix dump
- February 19th, 2017: Michael Casadevall asks about restoring 386 Xenix 2.2.3
- Late February 2017: Michael and Michal successfully restore 386 Xenix 2.2.3
- March 3rd, 2017: Someone posts on Reddit about rediscovered 386 Xenix 2.2 disks
- March 5th, 2017: The same person (almost certainly) uploads the disks on archive.org
- March 6th, 2017: Michael publishes the first of a series of articles about the restoration
- March 9th: Michal publishes an article which mentions the restoration
- March 10th: John Elliott points out the fresh disk dump on archive.org.
Almost 30 years after Xenix 2.2.3 was released, it’s really hard to believe this is a coincidence. But it is, because until March 10th Michael & Michal knew nothing of the dump on archive.org, and the person uploading the dump couldn’t have known about the restoration project because it was first publicly mentioned a day after the new disk images were uploaded to archive.org.
To be clear, the archive.org dump is of Xenix 386PS, that is Xenix for PS/2 systems. The Xenix release being restored is 386AT, that is Xenix for PC/AT compatible 386 systems. So the disks aren’t identical, but they are really close. Before embarking on the restoration project, we of course checked what other Xenix releases were available. 386 Xenix 2.2.x was not… until a few days ago. Incredible.
Incidentally, this confirms that the X disks were in fact shared between multiple releases of Xenix; X1-5 in the 386PS dump identify themselves the same way as the 368AT disks. It’s annoying that the international supplimental isn’t apart of these, I’d *really* like to get a look of what the originals are like.
I contacted the seller to see what he wanted. He’s physically close to me and I won’t mind getting my hands on the originals.