An IBM RT AIX PC Experience
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ธ.ค. 2019
- I had an opportunity to play around with an IBM RT for a few hours and it is now on my short list for coolest vintage computers for sure!
A huge thanks to David for giving me that chance. He got this system a little while back and I've been giving him some Linux/UNIX pointers on using it online. But we both had a much better understanding of it's AIX OS after the time spent on it. It's a different beast than Linux and was really nice to use. Seeing that from that time period just makes me wonder how UNIX managed not to dominate the home computer market. It was better back then! Granted, the RT is most certainly NOT a home PC and would have rivaled the cost of some homes at the time. But it is a look at what could have been.
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A lot of people aren't happy with the shaky camera and I'm actually included in that group. But if you watch to the end of the video you'll hear me say I shot this with my phone. I didn't have a tripod for this, I stacked boxes and stuff to sit my phone on for the static shots so everything wouldn't be all handheld. But when I needed to get multiple angles for one voice line it was best to move the phone because it was an unscripted and unrepeatable video and trying to line up a bunch of shots in post wasn't possible. This was just the best possible thing I could do at the time.
I didn't plan on filming so I didn't take my full camera setup with me. For in the future I'm putting together a small minimal camera setup that I can take that will hopefully let me film things like this and events like VCF better.
Well the obvious solution is to go back with a proper set up :)
Don't know what your phone is, but most can do some kind of software-based stabilization in 1080p mode.
Your unscripted stuff is so well delivered it I could believe you had a script! (Or at least ten takes per line, not the likely one per line here!)
Buy a gimbal please :)
Millennials gonna millennial...
Ayyy David's a cool dude, I hung out with him on my trip to the Computer Reset warehouse a while back!
I'd never seen this IBM model beyond some blurry photos online, just awesome to see it in action here.
Hey!
Yeah David is a really nice guy! I will neither confirm nor deny why I was there to avoid headaches for some people.
This computer is super cool for sure! As a daily linux user it feel really weird to sit down in front of a vintage computer and have it do the same things that I do on my modern system. It was really fun to get a chance to use it and I'm glad I was able to document some of it because there isn't a lot out there and seems like a really solid system from what I was able to learn while using it.
LGR hi LGR love your vids!
@@TechTangents I had a chance to work with a Solaris server years back. UNIX != Linux, but they share a lot in terms of the command line interface...
Thanks for the praise! It was a blast getting to hang out with both of you and talk vintage computer stuff.
When I went to college in 1991, RT PCs were in the Unix computer clusters along with VAXstations, DECstations and some early Sparc Sun models. They were really showing their age and struggled mounting remote filesystems and running multiple X Window apps. Only the VAXstation 2000 system were more avoided. Still, they had the best keyboard when compared with the mushy Sun and DEC ones. The RTs got replaced by RS/6000s a year or two later and those were the new king of the hill with nice 19" or 20" color monitors and a relatively speedy POWER CPU. Good times :)
Those machines (the IBM RS/6000) were the floating point champions a number of years.
They were very fast.
My work uses AIX on their main database servers to this day.
how does youtube look on your VT100?
Wow, this machine is special! It was the very first system to run AIX and also the CPU is the ancestor of RS/6000 which became PowerPC which was used in all kinds of computers for a couple of decades. It deserves special care and consideration.
Yeah, it uses the IBM ROMP processor. A custom RISC cpu before RISC was commonly known outside of ARM, but even that was not very common at the time.
I remember seeing one of these at a friend's house back in 1986 (he was an IBM engineer). I had been astounded at just how much memory it had (don't remember how much, but it was well beyond what you would ever see on a system in someone's house system). 2 or 3 months later he had the tower-case version of it.
Early ones were limited to 4MB, but with the APP it was raised to 16MB.
David looks like a young John Carmack
OMG, im not the only one. I was thinking he looked like he could be Carmack's kid or something.
That was my first thought!
I almost shit myself looking at him. Then again carmack is greying now :C.
Is he in Bill and Ted?
That "tablet" thing from 15:00 is something I know about what segment of the industry it was also used in. My mother used to draw power lines and transformer stations as a living. And she used one of them, back in the 1980's. I have absolutely NO idea on what machines she used for AutoCAD, yet I clearly remember that she used one of those as her work tool. First she drew the the plans on paper, the old school way, and then she drew it on the computer system. After the job was done, she used the local network, to send a backup to the server room. The room had lots of mainframe systems, that used these giant interchangeable platter drives and tape backup systems on giant tape's.
I worked as a grunt at a drafting firm one summer long ago and we had a similar setup with those "pucks" as we called them. In our case they were used to trace portions of paper drawings into the CAD software we used at the time (not AutoCAD).
When I was back at college (1990/91), I administered the mini tower version of this in our lab. I installed AIX from scratch, set up TCP/IP and it had a shedload of serial ports, so I networked out the room and set up all the IBM PCs with terminal software to connect to it. Had it fully set up with x-windows (although no real software to run on it) and c-compiler. In truth, everyone used to log in and use the e-mail client to send crappy poetry and messages to each other. A great machine, completely under-utilised by us - happy days.
Aix is truly awful Unix and nothing would compile including X without a bunch of hacks. Simple automake would show headers which were not even present?? Environmental variables were all over the place. SunOS and later Linux did not have any of these problems
15:16 man I love that 2 digit display that shows the bootprocess. Later RS/6000 machines had a 3 digit display and they were very handy in diagnosing where you were stuck. Or displaying the dreaded "flashing 888".
That "tablet thing" is actually called a digitizer, it was used back in the day for CAD/CAM software (at least that was my experience). My school had a copy of AutoCAD R12 (might have been R11, that was 25 years ago :)) running on a Pentium Pro machine, the interfaces was the digitizer (the whole unit was a digitizer, the tablet part was called a drawing board and the mouse part was called the placard) instead of a mouse. Never got to use one, but my teacher was describing it in class one day. You would apparently board draft (draw on paper) your design, then use the crosshair on the digitizer hand device to enter the drawing into the CAD software. Love the channel, keep up the good work!
More specifically, it's an IBM 5083 11A tablet with the digitizer cursor. You could get them in two different sizes with either that digitizing cursor or an active pen.
This. I am actually amazed that this channel doesn't recognize vintage peripherals! :-) I remember messing with LISP in AutoCAD R10 back then. My dad had a cool dual head set-up (Hercules for text, and a MAB480 board for colour graphics to a big *ss monitor.) That really was awesome to play with as an 8 year old ! :-)
The mouse is far cheaper and so we are nowadays restricted to them.
AutoCAD had different stencils for the board for different usages (ie a water installation deasigner could have a stencil with different types of valves or pipes easily accessible.)
Nowadays you have to send the pointer out to the edge and select a small icon or maybe a floating window.
Mouse... can you say RSI ?
It’s a Unix system! I know this!
Ah ah ah... that's not it!
Unfortunately, it’s AIX, which is not like a typical Unix system.
(Ask me how I know.)
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 I assume it comes from you having to use it... AIX is somewhat notorious for its... *interesting* decisions. Like, for example, mapping the null page!
(I have never used AIX, I've just heard the horror stories. Although I think the RT-PC could actually run AOS, which was apparently basically just BSD...)
Is that IBM AIX 1.00? Apparently WinWorldPC is looking for a copy, so if you have the install media or David has it, you should image it and send it to them.
It is AIX 2.1.
@@davidk8893 Ah, well that is exactly what they have. Might try to see if I can get it running in some kind of emulation for fun, probably qemu.
@@charliebrown1976 I'm not sure how much luck you'll have , as the RT is a proprietary archetecture.
AIX runs on PPC too and that's a system qemu can emulate.
I looked at my boxed set of AIX disks, and figured out that they are in fact AIX 1.00! I have no idea how to image unix disks on a PC though, any tips?
This is a fairly significant machine - you should keep it in good working order. Some noteworthy details:
1. It came with IBMs 801 processor, which was one of the first (if not THE first) production RISC chip. The 801 was even considered for the original IBM PC, but it wasn't done at the time it was required and it was quite expensive to build a system around it
2. You could use standard ISA cards (as shown in the video). That gave you access to a wide range of add-in cards. If, of course, the dreaded AIX could provide a driver
3. It was the first system to feature AIX. Actually AIX 1.0. And it sucked big time.
4. You could run the "Academic Operating System" (AOS) on it - which was just a fancy name for BSD 4.3. And contrary to AIX 1.0, BSD 4.3 was far from sucking - it was arguably the best UNIX implementation out there by a mile.
5. You could load the box with memory. In addition to the memory on the CPU board, the two long slots next to it (kind of ISA AT slots, but more in the middle of the mainboard) could hold two additional 4MByte RAM-cards. So if you had *really* big pockets, you could have an insane amount of memory in the box
It wasn't the fastest UNIX system around with somewhat lackluster IO, but it was not bad at all. Would love to play with one today - back in the day, I only saw them on the CeBit computer trade show in Germany, when they were introduced. The University I went to during that time had a testsystem, but I wasn't involved in its evaluation - by that time, I got to play with "the big boxes" we had :)
Attended launch of IBM RT ... and OS/2 the following years.
Many forget that Microsoft was Xenix supporter in this time period.
Great video. I never knew IBM had their own Unix version. Very in depth and detailed video. Thanks!
That type of RAM is called SIPP (Single Inline Pin Package). And my friend had a PS/2 Model 60 whose full-height IBM hard drive sounded identical to the one in this computer, including the hilarious "pin dropping" sound of the heads unparking!
Great video, thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed this journey.
Well this brought back memories. I attended engineering training on these at IBM in about 1988. Our company sold them with 3rd party async cards for 16+ monitors running business software. Spent a couple of days replacing failed HDD for a customer on one occasion - I think minidiscs had to be setup just as per original setup before I could restore from tape backups….This machine was also my WFH choice 😅 in a tiny flat. It generated all our heating requirements.
this was fairly AIX-citing to watch! :P
I like that *Alt + Action Key* shortcut built into this system, have not seen that before. I always just run long jobs in the background in Unix or switch to a subshell. Unix is an amazing thing!
that is so cool!!! gj to you two! this video makes me happy :)
16:55 All the Unixes came with vi. I gritted my teeth and stuck with it for about 15 years as my go-to editor on all the Unixes I came across, until Linux systems took over and I could rely on being able to install Emacs. Then I switched, and never looked back.
if i try to edit anything in notepad, or a similar text editor i get frustrated so quickly. "wait i have to press 3 keys to open a new line above the current one?" i've only been using vim for ~3 years, but i could never go back to any other editor. i even installed it on my amiga. cool thing was my .vimrc copied over without needing any editing!
Wow that's the IBM RT PC 6150, this is the early pre-version of the IBM Power and PowerPC processor from IBM. And if I recall the line of Risv that followed the RT was the RS/6000 that open the door for the IBM POWER & PowerPC RISC processor.
The RT did not have the PowerPC processor, it used the proprietary IBM ROMP processor. They switched to PowerPC later in the RISC line.
Wow, that's a blast from the past! I still work with AIX, btw. Just another Unix, though my last two AIX servers left the house this year. Still waiting for AIX 8...
If you are itching for AIX the latest qemu can boot it!!
I am sorry
there's a IBM terminal age and style appropriate on my local craigslist, and if you're ever in the middle TN area I got some stuff you can have but would be scared to mail
ps that's a digitizer tablet, you would home it, then place something like a blueprint down on it, and using the crosshairs basicly input XY data and what kind of element like lines or curves or whatever to use with drawing or cad programs (you could use it freehand as well but it just works as a XY data "sampler")
This brings back memories, having used an RT PC in the mid 80's myself. Long story long, I moved to the US in '84, and got a part-time job at a CAD company. They got a contract to test some special boards for IBM which were meant to simulate fiber optic networks. They had a test bed set up for them, which was attached to the RT, and all I really had to do was run a set of tests on the boards.
Now, I seem too remember that the RT I used was actually a slick looking tower system, and the monitor was a "paper-white" design with black-on-white text, very cool looking indeed. The only other thing I remember is that the chips I had to install on the boards each cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, which made me rather nervous to handle them lol.
I had the joy of setting up and configuring a network of IBM RT PC's in Sweden while doing research. Running AIX 1.2 and AIX 2.2.? and most machines had 75MB hard drives and one machine had 300MB? drive ... so it could actually run X-Windows. Had the joy of running Mathematica 1.? on one IBM PC RT downstairs and remote accessing it from another IBM PC RT upstairs to send the graphics to a Mac screen. Around 1998/1989.
Never knew about the 'write' command before.
Tried it on the very computer I was watching the video on
and... it worked! Exactly as advertised... on modern Arch Linux!
Was chatting with myself through my phone (ssh client), my file server,
and even my laptop running Fedora.
If only I had friends, would be real fun to have a conversation using original UNIX tech!
That slow ramp-up HDD sound with the distinct clicking brings back so many memories. I miss hard drive sounds on modern SSD computers.
Oh man I want one of these old unix systems really badly
Naked Bourne shell (/bin/sh) doesn't have command history or line editing, which is why your arrow key presses were recorded as their escape sequences.
Very interesting video! I knew ATX, but didn't ever hear of this machine!
This should read AIX, sorry
Right on... that RT AIX is definitely awesome.
Linux is defintely fun... I've been learning various versions over the past year or so,
Right now I'm watching your video and typing this message through a Dell Inspiron N4010 laptop that's running BionicPup version 8.0 64 bit Puppy Linux.... It's super fast and smooth. :-)
Carry on and thanks for sharing, Tech Tangenys :-)
Shaky camera or not, it was fun! Thanks for the video.
Mannnnnn! I missed one of these on eBay by a few $ a few months back. Came with an AT 5170 too! What a great machine. Must have been pretty useful for the sysadmins back in the day.
Was it a tower machine located in Texas?
@@davidk8893 No, this was an IBM RT sitting on top of an AT, being sold in Melbourne Australia. Seemed like the two were paired with some kind of communication card of some sort (I forget which type)
I watched this video when it fist came out, I'm rewatching it because I find it so interesting that it is culturally significant.
Is been over 30 years. And Unix CLI still worked not much changed. Even newbies Linux CLI user can recognize the commands in the video. That's the charm of unix.
Used to work on a bunch of those back in the day. There was software that ran on them called Insurenet for small insurance companies. Used to put in a Novell server and thin net for the PC network and then run a serial to each computer and put on a copy of Procomm for terminal emulation.
Before there was Bourne Again Shell, there was just Bourne Shell ;-)
And before the Bourne Shell there was the original Shell, just Shell... I loved trying out all the variants like C Shell, Bourne Shell, Korn Shell and so many others long forgotten on the shores of the computer world....
@@edwinmoney619 C shell and korn shell are still used in *BSDs. FreeBSD still ships with C shell on default install while OpenBSD uses korn shell by default.
Before there was bash, there was just bsh. And before there was bsh, there was sh.
Love this machine, now I want one!
Cool! I never even knew such a machine existed!
Excellent. Great informative video...
What fun. I'm doing similar with an IBM AT (yes 286) running XENIX/286. I have two additional terminals (Telnet connections) via a Lantronix (Ethernet to RS-232) connection. Now three users running a UNIX variant on a lowly 286 processor - now that's fun ;)
In later versions of AIX, all you had to remember was "smit" :-)
Ah, smit bring so many memories
SMIT was all you needed! So the IBM guy told us. I was admin for a host of RT's back in the day. SMIT was ok, but to really get some things done, you had to hit the shell. Like all things IBM, SMIT grew into a behemoth with patch issues, etc. I have to say, I don't miss it.
@@parrottm76262 the problem I found with making changes in the shell was that if you later used SMIT, it would not recognize those changes and undo them as it seemed to use an internal database of sorts for its changes. Luckily I only had to admin one IBM R/S 6000 workstation I used so I learned to just SMIT. Fun fact on the R/S 6000, there is a cool sci-fi reference built in when things go wrong...
@@GeoffSeeley smit was an example of the kind of proprietary vendor lock-in I was mentioning elsewhere. On Linux, even though you can have distro-specific front-end tools for doing admin stuff, they still store their info in the standard config files in /etc. This makes it easier to keep track of config changes, backup/restore them, move them between machines etc. Whereas on AIX you have no idea where it keeps the real info, so it becomes hard to do these standard sysadmin tasks.
FYI: In addition to serial I/O this machine supports TCP/IP over 10BASE2 Ethernet adapters. The primary operating system for the RT was AIX version 2. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking support. NFS file sharing is also supported. For the graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 releases of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena widget set.
Unfortunately XWindows was not included with AIX, it must have been an additional purchase. However, if you know of somewhere I get XWindows for the RT, I would greatly appreciate it!
@@davidk8893 I worked with this system at a business, I don't have the software for it, but I am familiar with it. You could try calling IBM and asking nicely. Tell them you are restoring the system as a history project, they might send you the software.
This machine is really well made. I would like to see a video of it running some games.
thanks for this really cool video. i'd rather a shaky cell phone video than no video at all. this thing rules. wonder if you could compile some modern programs on there.
When I was very young, a friend of mine received an old IBM tower machine from a relative that apparently worked as an engineer of some kind. We were very puzzled about it and did not recognized anything that we were used to (from our early Pentiums with Win95). I remember that it had a non-IBM amber CRT display, an keyboard with may additional keys. We could not get it to work. It might been a PS/2 as well but I think we would figured that out.
1:55 Note that on non-Linux systems, the home directory for the root user is “/”, which is the root of the entire file system. Linux introduced the idea of a separate “/root” home directory, which avoids dotfile clutter in the “/” directory, and also reduces the risk of certain kinds of accidents. ;)
The simms have pins soldered on them, which became sipps.
The ROMP is a 32-bit processor and 32-bits to memory, but 16 to I/O.
This is the third version of the processor:
The first was just the ROMP, and the second was the APC, with IBM can memory ( like the PS/2 80. )
The last APC used these SIPS, and the final version in a PS/2 used SIMMS.
The APC was really really weird for number crunching, it had a 287, a NS32037, and a M68882.
Very cool thanks for sharing
It does sort of say the wattage on the back. At 12:11 you show the back and it says V 120 and A 7.5 for 120 volts and 7.5 amps. Since wattage = volts x amps, then that equals 900 watts! As Darth Vader would say: Most Impressive!
Awesome! Old RISC CPUs are super interesting to me. Before everything became ARM. (As much love as I have for Sophie Wilson, her work was awesome, but now things are homogenous).
Interestingly, I know someone who had to remote into an old VAX system for school Unix classes, and that had the same weird behaviour with the up arrow I believe. No idea why, though I have a few suppositions (like typewriter teletype compatibility?), I haven't looked into it at all so I don't want to go on about those. But it makes me wonder if it was something of a standard, or at least something a lot of sysadmins set up in the day for whatever reason.
I'm still sad over how Compaq treated Alpha, and how PPC pretty much disappeared after Apple dropped using it.
@@lee4hmz same. PPC is so woefully supported by modern *nix too, you only have a few options, all with tradeoffs.
Emulation is probably the best bet these days. Simh is great I can have the VAX 11/780 of my dreams that fits in my pocket instead of filling up my house.. Gxemul has support of great dead ends beyond the ultra common MIPS, it's 88010 support is pretty neat!
This video made me geek out so hard, I'll be honest.
@12:12 i think it shows the power rating, it gives V as 120, and A as 7.5 (i think hard to see) which would put the wattage as 900Watts
Came to the comments to say just this. :)
Kind of funny that it also listed it as 0.8 kVA (kilovolt-amps). Whoever used that unit (rather than just VA / volt-amps) was likely accustomed to bigger machines.
The power supply will need to output + and - 12V, because the async adapter needs those voltages for the line drivers.
That or there are voltage generators on the motherboard for those since they are typically very low current.
I'm impressed how those commands still works on modern Linux distributions :D
The standard unix ones do. The IBM ones don't
Nice new channel name, and a happy new year!
I used to have an RT tower machine as a 16yo kid, got it from a relative working at uni. Didn't get it running, I don't think I even had a compatible display..
I dug it. Wouldn't mind seeing more of the same.
Try escape then 3 for F3
Woah, I've not seen one of these, but I have used a similar IBM system in the '90s.
I remember running MS Dos via a terminal way back in the day. MS Dos 2.0 made it easier as it has a specific a command for it.
19:00 multitasking ? that's some next level shit right there XD
That is an odd computer. I absolutely love it.
If you want a similar experience on your old PCs, Microsoft/SCO Xenix was x86 Unix from the period, reminded me a lot of it. Will run on 286 up (the earliest machine i ran it on was a Sperry PC/IT)
Ran and crashed on my 10Mhz XT, but it ran.
I thought the IBM RT was just something i imagined in my childhood
17:54 That’s really interesting way of representing syntax. That is very easy to understand.
Oracle has similar syntax diagrams in their documentation. I've always found IBM documentation to be top-notch though, really unmatched in the open source world unfortunately.
11:42 Not crazy, there were lots of multiuser Unix machines being sold around that time. In 1985 I was running things on an Altos 586 machine which had maybe half a dozen terminals connected to it. I remember also a box from Charles River Data Systems, which had the much superior Motorola-family CPU. ;)
I got a bunch of Manuals for this RT/PC along with AIX 2.1 and software. Also a Baseline Patch (All patch up to the point baseline was release)
Amazing machine for its time
I used to have a couple of RTs. AIX 2.2.1 was the "last" OS for them. I may still have floppy images stashed somewhere... There was also, of course, a version of BSD for them as well, called AOS.
If you are able to find those disk images, I would be very grateful. RT stuff is next to impossible to find nowadays.
David K What’s your email?
I located the files on a Linux system I'd not touched in a long while. Funny story: I could remember the LUKS password for it, but for the life of me could not login. Reset my password via a Live CD image, and am now copying the entire 750GB stash of files off of that drive, the AIX floppy images included.
I've not idea if they've suffered any bitrot over the years, as I have no check sums for them. The files date back to 1996!
I've successfully recovered a whole bunch of stuff. :)
@@jasondowns2778 sorry I took so long to respond, but how should I send you my e-mail? I probably don't really want to post it here, as that's a good way to get put on spam lists.
@9:00 you'll probably find that your termcap isn't setup correctly.. check the TERM environment variable. LOVED AIX. I still run SCO Xenix/Openserver on virtualbox :D
A beautiful machine.
I believe Concurrent CP/M can also do the multi user serial terminal setup, and run on a regular AT/XT as well! Dont think the feature ever found its way onto MS/PC DOS. I dont know how much a DEC term cost back then but im sure cheaper than a new AT/XT!
Used to do some light sysadmin stuff on AIX machines and some HP-UX too
Multi-tasking, multi-user UNIX on the desktop in 1986? awesome.
Would love to see one of the later PS/2's running AIX/386.
Yes, I would too! On the PS/2 the RT was a processor sub system on a MC card, the PS/2 booted first, then it booted into the RT/PC. That was for AIX 3, just before the RS/6000s.
From where did you buy old computers
You make nice videos
Keep it up..
good video and gears! but almost got sea sick now! omg
That's a pretty cool computer.
I wonder if this can be hooked up to a terminal multiplexer like a IBM 3299-2 so you could hook a bunch of terminals in one go,
_RT_ was the inspiration/prototype for the _RS/6000_
Nice. Very interesting.
6:05 dang son hold that card by it's edges it's as rare as a blue steak
I don't know much about old IBM unix computers but the keyboard sounds nice
The same company that made that keyboard still makes and sells those wonderful bouncy clicky keyboards from old IBM computers: Unicomp. I'm typing on a USB version now.
That keyboard is louder than elephant toenails being clipped.
Wow. Never knew about the RT.
It would be really cool if you were able to get your hands on a Tandy Model 16 from 1983 which can run Xenix. How cool would that be hooked up to your Tandy terminal.
Certainly doable. I ran that as my first *nix setup. I sort-of think you might need a hard disk to install (Microsoft! - it says so) Xenix on the Model 16.
Even rarer/cooler would probably be the Acorn Unix machines running RISC iX, the R series of Archimedes based machines.
Ever tried "cat catfood" on a UNIX system? You get an amusing message that you sadly don't get with Linux.
And no, it's not an intentional message; it's just stupidly amusing.
Does Solaris have this Easter egg by chance?
I've never used Solaris, so I don't know.
its missing in macOS too :(
# cat catfood
UX:cat: ERROR: Cannot open catfood: No such file or directory
#
I guess UnixWare had all the fun beaten out of it.
that floppy drive on the RT looks correct to me - it is a ye data 1.2mb drive - same one my AT came with.
All those short commands? Serial-connected terminals (originally mostly teletypes) were the norm for connecting to UNIX systems. These date back to the late 60's, and frequently had a connection speed of 100 or even 75 BAUD, which could be as slow as 9 characters per second. 300 BAUD was a fast serial connection in those days. It was very important to be text-space efficient, so most commands are one or two letters, and default to returning minimal information unless you tell it to give you more, usually with lots of levels of information that can be returned so you don't waste limited communication bandwidth on info you don't care about.
that explains the short outputs from some commands
Isn't smit available for stuff like creating new users in this version of AIX? Also, back in the day new user could often be hacked directly into /etc/passwd. Would also be nice to know if it supports virtual consoles. (Usually Alt+F1-9)
very cool!
remember.... smitty is your friend.
I think this version predates the SMIT.
7:54 Did the Bourne shell have a history feature by that point? Or was it only csh?
(E.g. “!!” to re-execute the last command.)
Aix had a broken shell. Bash won't compile as aix is missing sooo many things a modern Linux distro has that gnu c needs. Borne shell for six doesn't support history if you can find it and I believe only BSD Unix back then and SunOS ran csh at all
Serial terminals are awesome, what with how they can be easily used to create multiple workstations sharing the same processor with so little in the way at the client ends. PXE/RDP clients just can't match the experience.
Just curious, can you use a USB to Serial interface and connect it to a serial terminal and use it with a modern Linux computer. Seems like a cool way of making a serial terminal modern. Maybe even using a raspberry pi or something
Sure you can. No problem at all. That's the beauty of serial RS232-communication.