Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Rico Pajarola via cctalk]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 5:57 AM, Zane Healy via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> >> Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93
> at the FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2
> and AIX.  I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.
> >
> > It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which
> I did a lot of work on at the time).
>
> I think you’re right, especially as, IIRC, it was a laptop.
>
In 1993 AIX PS/2 would hardly have been news anymore. Sounds about right
for announcing stuff running on the 601, but it's a bit early for Solaris
2.5.1.

I have 2 PPC machines running Solaris 2.5.1. One is a Motorola PowerStack
E100, the other an early IBM PReP (6015-40P IIRC). The docs also mention
that it runs on the PPC thinkpads (820/850/860).

It's actually quite nice, it feels quite snappy and full featured. The only
oddity is that when you install it, you need to boot some special
openfirmware emulation from floppy disk which can then load the rest from
CD.

I only have the OS, but I heard there's a version of the Sun Workshop
compiler that has PPC support. I'd love to get my hands on that ;)

There's also a version of OS/2 for those machines, but it's hardly more
than a proof of concept.

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[John P. Willis via cctalk]

On Wed, 30 Aug 2017, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:




On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:07 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
wrote:



On 8/30/2017 6:35 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly Sun 
Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any mention 
of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?

Zane

I worked for Sun in the early 90's for the former Interactive Unix group.  They 
were still based here in Los Angeles in the round building over looking the 405 
just south of the 90.  At the time there just a coupe of Summa Corp buildings 
on the last remaining Howard Hughes Summa corp asset there off the 405.  Now 
the Hughes Center shopping center long since sold off to developers.

They were the group inside Sun and did the port from the Solaris 2.4 source to 
PPC open platforms.  The effort I think was underwritten by IBM, but I might be 
wrong.  The entire effort was supported for maybe a year thru just shy of the 
2.5.  I don't know if it was ever released outside the building, much less any 
public release.

This I think was when the Apple effort was underway, I think under Jobs to 
allow the Mac system migrate to such hardware.

IIRC, the whole thing died more or less when Jobs pulled the plug on that, and 
screwed everyone over.  Very sad, as the open boot (Don't recall all the 
details) was pretty nice, and I'd have bought into it had such options been 
available.

I did some testing on that platform in a sealed room of some tools I had 
developed for the x86 testing.  The marketing department requested that my tool 
kit be made available to certify platforms for Solaris HCL listing.  None ever 
happened however.

Had no use for Jobs before, still no use for him to now.

Thanks
jim


Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to Apple 
until ’97.

Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and AIX.  
I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.

Zane





Here's a document giving more details:

http://rabbs.com/uuasc/SOLARIS_PPC

--
JP Willis j...@chivanet.org Voice 575/520-9542 Fax 
575/449-4122
ChivaNet Internet Services, 425 S. Telshor Blvd., Ste. C202, Las Cruces, NM  
88011
Hardware, n.:  The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.   
(Borrowed)
--

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[John P. Willis via cctalk]

On Wed, 30 Aug 2017, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:


I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly Sun 
Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any mention 
of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?

Zane





Solaris supported PPC (IBM's PPC Reference Platform) only in Solaris 
2.5.1. It got stripped out in 2.6. But it was definitely a real thing.

I will check tomorrow to see if my copy of 2.5.1 media includes it.

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

I worked on Solaris when the PPC work was done. Solaris 2.5.1 was the 
release that included PPC support.


Here is a link to the Solaris 2.5.1 release notes, which describe some 
Solaris on PPC details - 
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19695-01/802-5366/802-5366.pdf


alan

On 8/30/17 6:35 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly Sun 
Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any mention 
of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?

Zane

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Cameron Kaiser via cctalk]

> > It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which
> > I did a lot of work on at the time).
> 
> I think you___re right, especially as, IIRC, it was a laptop.

Doesn't rule out the PowerPC, because there were PowerPC ThinkPads.

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- FOOLS! I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL! ASK ME HOW! -- "Girl Genius" 8/29/07 

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Zane Healy via cctalk]

> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:31 PM, Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:14 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to 
>> Apple until ’97.
>> 
>> Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
>> FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and 
>> AIX.  I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.
> 
> It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which I did 
> a lot of work on at the time).

I think you’re right, especially as, IIRC, it was a laptop.

> The IBM Microkernel project (which I helped start) was the only way that OS/2 
> ran on PPC.  OS/2 was an OS personality on top of the microkernel and all of 
> its services.  We also had a UNIX running as a personality too.  My memory 
> has faded too much at this point and but I also believe that there was MVM 
> personality to allow DOS/Windows to run too.
> 
> TTFN - Guy

I remember reading about this, around ’95, I’m pretty sure it was in one of the 
Mac magazines.  I was on an Aircraft Carrier at the time, I had both a Pentium 
90 laptop running DOS/Windows, Windows 95, OS/2, and Linux, as well as an Apple 
PowerBook 520c running System 7.5 in my locker.  Needless to say, the idea of a 
single system that could run OS/2, UNIX, and System 7 was very appealing to me. 
 I’m pretty sure you’re right about there being a way to run DOS/Windows.  
Realistically at that time, everyone had a way to run DOS/Windows.

Zane

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk]

> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:59 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/30/2017 7:31 PM, Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk wrote:
>>> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:14 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to 
>>> Apple until ’97.
>>> 
>>> Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at 
>>> the FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 
>>> and AIX.  I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.
>> It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which I 
>> did a lot of work on at the time).
>> 
>> The IBM Microkernel project (which I helped start) was the only way that 
>> OS/2 ran on PPC.  OS/2 was an OS personality on top of the microkernel and 
>> all of its services.  We also had a UNIX running as a personality too.  My 
>> memory has faded too much at this point and but I also believe that there 
>> was MVM personality to allow DOS/Windows to run too.
>> 
>> TTFN - Guy
> Guy, I had a friend working on the OS2 project in Austin.  He worked up to 
> about 18 months before early retirement age, and then had a mad scramble to 
> keep from getting laid off when they killed the project.  He was lucky enough 
> to jump into the AIX group long enough to retire, but not all were that lucky.
> 
> Bill Tims, in case you knew him.  A closet USL Multician

No, I don’t recall him…but then again when the project there were 6 people who 
worked on it for about a year (I was one of the original 6 folks).  Then we 
went away for Thanksgiving one year and when we came back it was labelled an 
“IBM Strategic Project” and about 3 months after being labelled “strategic" we 
had 350 people on the project (the IBM way ‘natch) and more being added every 
month.  I spent most of my time after that running all over creation presenting 
what the project was and how all the pieces fit rather than doing what I was 
supposed to be doing (architecting the system and writing code). 

I still have all of the manuals.  Somewhere I have a set of CDROMs with the 
source (Framemaker) to the docs and the source code to the IBM Microkernel and 
services.  I don’t think I ever had the OS personalities other than potentially 
UNIX.

TTFN - Guy

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 8/30/2017 7:31 PM, Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk wrote:

On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:14 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk  
wrote:



Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to Apple 
until ’97.

Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and AIX.  
I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.

It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which I did a 
lot of work on at the time).

The IBM Microkernel project (which I helped start) was the only way that OS/2 
ran on PPC.  OS/2 was an OS personality on top of the microkernel and all of 
its services.  We also had a UNIX running as a personality too.  My memory has 
faded too much at this point and but I also believe that there was MVM 
personality to allow DOS/Windows to run too.

TTFN - Guy
Guy, I had a friend working on the OS2 project in Austin.  He worked up 
to about 18 months before early retirement age, and then had a mad 
scramble to keep from getting laid off when they killed the project.  He 
was lucky enough to jump into the AIX group long enough to retire, but 
not all were that lucky.


Bill Tims, in case you knew him.  A closet USL Multician

thanks
Jim

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 8/30/2017 7:41 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg via cctalk wrote:

On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:30 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
wrote:

IIRC Jobs killed the effort.  Been a long time ago to recall.  I don't think it 
died before he was involved.

We had the x86 Solaris, and the office was there at least thru Solaris 2.7 
days.  I also know the kernel lint had been done by 2.3 time at least, FWIW, 
which was pretty impressive.  Made you up your game for kernel mode modules.  
My unit had modules to run tests on all available cores and on some 
programmable block of memory to certify that the systems we were running on 
actually activated the cores and they were available to the system.

I don't think Sun was really interested in pushing the OS on anything other 
than Sparc.  I remember hitting the Sun booth at Interop (IIRC) in 1993 and 
pushing them hard for licensing and pricing for the then new 386 release.  I 
was looking for a campus-wide license (300+ 386 workstations) for a new 
university I was helping spin up.  Over the course of the conference (several 
days) I hit up at least four sales critters at the booth trying to get some 
hard info on licensing and pricing.  Not one of them gave a sweet flying fsck.

So I dumped a couple of $million into SGI Indy workstations and Challenge 
servers, instead.

--lyndon


noone said that Sun had clever salesmen.  The group I was in was 
obviously very interested, as they were still more or less Interactive 
running inside of Sun.


I do know that they didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for the platform on 
the PC due to  the need to support peripherals.  All of that work was 
done by very senior consultants out of our facility, and was not cheap.  
And the system needed a lot of work as it was a server which needed to 
support high performance operation.


Disk controller vendors had spotty records for support.  Adaptec didn't 
give a crap, which was sad as they had a lot of hardware. The work was 
done despite their cooperation, for example.


The Power version as i said was financed outside Sun, so had zero chance 
of success unless that company made it go.  And it did not.


thanks
Jim

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Lyndon Nerenberg via cctalk]

> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:30 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> IIRC Jobs killed the effort.  Been a long time ago to recall.  I don't think 
> it died before he was involved.
> 
> We had the x86 Solaris, and the office was there at least thru Solaris 2.7 
> days.  I also know the kernel lint had been done by 2.3 time at least, FWIW, 
> which was pretty impressive.  Made you up your game for kernel mode modules.  
> My unit had modules to run tests on all available cores and on some 
> programmable block of memory to certify that the systems we were running on 
> actually activated the cores and they were available to the system.

I don't think Sun was really interested in pushing the OS on anything other 
than Sparc.  I remember hitting the Sun booth at Interop (IIRC) in 1993 and 
pushing them hard for licensing and pricing for the then new 386 release.  I 
was looking for a campus-wide license (300+ 386 workstations) for a new 
university I was helping spin up.  Over the course of the conference (several 
days) I hit up at least four sales critters at the booth trying to get some 
hard info on licensing and pricing.  Not one of them gave a sweet flying fsck.

So I dumped a couple of $million into SGI Indy workstations and Challenge 
servers, instead.

--lyndon

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk]

> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:14 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to Apple 
> until ’97.
> 
> Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
> FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and AIX. 
>  I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.

It was more than likely x86 and the AIX would have been AIX PS/2 (which I did a 
lot of work on at the time).

The IBM Microkernel project (which I helped start) was the only way that OS/2 
ran on PPC.  OS/2 was an OS personality on top of the microkernel and all of 
its services.  We also had a UNIX running as a personality too.  My memory has 
faded too much at this point and but I also believe that there was MVM 
personality to allow DOS/Windows to run too.

TTFN - Guy

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 8/30/2017 7:14 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:07 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
wrote:



On 8/30/2017 6:35 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly Sun 
Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any mention 
of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?

Zane

I worked for Sun in the early 90's for the former Interactive Unix group.  They 
were still based here in Los Angeles in the round building over looking the 405 
just south of the 90.  At the time there just a coupe of Summa Corp buildings 
on the last remaining Howard Hughes Summa corp asset there off the 405.  Now 
the Hughes Center shopping center long since sold off to developers.

They were the group inside Sun and did the port from the Solaris 2.4 source to 
PPC open platforms.  The effort I think was underwritten by IBM, but I might be 
wrong.  The entire effort was supported for maybe a year thru just shy of the 
2.5.  I don't know if it was ever released outside the building, much less any 
public release.

This I think was when the Apple effort was underway, I think under Jobs to 
allow the Mac system migrate to such hardware.

IIRC, the whole thing died more or less when Jobs pulled the plug on that, and 
screwed everyone over.  Very sad, as the open boot (Don't recall all the 
details) was pretty nice, and I'd have bought into it had such options been 
available.

I did some testing on that platform in a sealed room of some tools I had 
developed for the x86 testing.  The marketing department requested that my tool 
kit be made available to certify platforms for Solaris HCL listing.  None ever 
happened however.

Had no use for Jobs before, still no use for him to now.

Thanks
jim

Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to Apple 
until ’97.

Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and AIX.  
I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.

Zane
IIRC Jobs killed the effort.  Been a long time ago to recall.  I don't 
think it died before he was involved.


We had the x86 Solaris, and the office was there at least thru Solaris 
2.7 days.  I also know the kernel lint had been done by 2.3 time at 
least, FWIW, which was pretty impressive.  Made you up your game for 
kernel mode modules.  My unit had modules to run tests on all available 
cores and on some programmable block of memory to certify that the 
systems we were running on actually activated the cores and they were 
available to the system.


thanks
Jim

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[Zane Healy via cctalk]

> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:07 PM, jim stephens via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/30/2017 6:35 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
>> I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
>> Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
>> Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.
>> 
>> The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
>> were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly 
>> Sun Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any 
>> mention of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?
>> 
>> Zane
> I worked for Sun in the early 90's for the former Interactive Unix group.  
> They were still based here in Los Angeles in the round building over looking 
> the 405 just south of the 90.  At the time there just a coupe of Summa Corp 
> buildings on the last remaining Howard Hughes Summa corp asset there off the 
> 405.  Now the Hughes Center shopping center long since sold off to developers.
> 
> They were the group inside Sun and did the port from the Solaris 2.4 source 
> to PPC open platforms.  The effort I think was underwritten by IBM, but I 
> might be wrong.  The entire effort was supported for maybe a year thru just 
> shy of the 2.5.  I don't know if it was ever released outside the building, 
> much less any public release.
> 
> This I think was when the Apple effort was underway, I think under Jobs to 
> allow the Mac system migrate to such hardware.
> 
> IIRC, the whole thing died more or less when Jobs pulled the plug on that, 
> and screwed everyone over.  Very sad, as the open boot (Don't recall all the 
> details) was pretty nice, and I'd have bought into it had such options been 
> available.
> 
> I did some testing on that platform in a sealed room of some tools I had 
> developed for the x86 testing.  The marketing department requested that my 
> tool kit be made available to certify platforms for Solaris HCL listing.  
> None ever happened however.
> 
> Had no use for Jobs before, still no use for him to now.
> 
> Thanks
> jim

Steve Jobs would have been at NeXT at that time, he didn’t come back to Apple 
until ’97.

Nearly 25 years later, my memory is pretty vague, however, around ’93 at the 
FOSE trade show in Washington DC, IBM had a system running both OS/2 and AIX.  
I want to say it was PPC, but it may have been x86.

Zane

Re: Solaris on PPC?

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 8/30/2017 6:35 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I was looking up some data, and as a result was flipping through a copy of 
Computerworld from ’93.  In doing so, I was marveling at the amount of 
Diversity we had in the Computer World at the time, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I found a advertisement for the PPC 601 chip.  In it they 
were advertising it running the Macintosh OS, OS/2, AIX, and interestingly Sun 
Solaris.  I was aware of the first three, but I don’t ever remember any mention 
of Solaris running on PPC.  Did that ever get off the ground?

Zane
I worked for Sun in the early 90's for the former Interactive Unix 
group.  They were still based here in Los Angeles in the round building 
over looking the 405 just south of the 90.  At the time there just a 
coupe of Summa Corp buildings on the last remaining Howard Hughes Summa 
corp asset there off the 405.  Now the Hughes Center shopping center 
long since sold off to developers.


They were the group inside Sun and did the port from the Solaris 2.4 
source to PPC open platforms.  The effort I think was underwritten by 
IBM, but I might be wrong.  The entire effort was supported for maybe a 
year thru just shy of the 2.5.  I don't know if it was ever released 
outside the building, much less any public release.


This I think was when the Apple effort was underway, I think under Jobs 
to allow the Mac system migrate to such hardware.


IIRC, the whole thing died more or less when Jobs pulled the plug on 
that, and screwed everyone over.  Very sad, as the open boot (Don't 
recall all the details) was pretty nice, and I'd have bought into it had 
such options been available.


I did some testing on that platform in a sealed room of some tools I had 
developed for the x86 testing.  The marketing department requested that 
my tool kit be made available to certify platforms for Solaris HCL 
listing.  None ever happened however.


Had no use for Jobs before, still no use for him to now.

Thanks
jim