3B1s and "old school" UNIX, was Re: [HECnet] US Seller with some interesting stuff

[Cory Smelosky]

On 27 Nov 2012, at 00:05, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

On 11/26/2012 02:00 PM, sampsa at mac.com wrote:
He says he's selling an AT&T Unix PC 3B1, only found a monitor and a motherboard that's untested.

It'd be a pretty nifty addition to a collection, I'd love a really old school Unix machine.

I'd not call the 3B1 "old school", but they're lots of fun.   I've had
a bunch of them over the years, including used one as my main desktop
machine for a while in the late 1980s.   I also worked at a store that
sold and serviced them.

If memory serves, the UNIX dialect that they run is SysV release 2.
It's a fairly complete SysV implementation, with a nice, low-overhead
GUI called "UA", for User Agent.   There is no networking, but there's a
(rare) Ethernet card for the machine, which was shipped with an IP stack
written by Wollongong.   The IP stack ran in short spurts between
crashes, but you could use it to get stuff on or off the machine.

I have two 3B1s now.   I like them a lot.

They seem to be very interesting systems.


If you really want "old school UNIX", find a 3B2.   Or REALLY old
school, v7 on a PDP-11.

Or v1 on a PDP-7. :p


                        -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA