Installing A/UX 1.1 like it's the 90s

Installing A/UX 1.1 like it's the 90s(thomasw.dev)

35 points by zdw 5 hours ago | 13 comments

> To start off the install, we begin with the “System setup and README” disk. We need to partition the disk, and then do something counter-intuitive: install System 6 on a Mac partition. This is because there’s a Mac application that kicks off the A/UX boot process: SASH; the A/UX standalone shell. This ‘pre-boot environment’ allows for launching an A/UX kernel and also some disk and recovery operations.

Funny how that rhythms with having a macOS install next to Asahi Linux. The more things change:)

Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

bluedino 1 hour ago | |

> Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

Windows 95 was about that size, and Office was closer to 50?

At my very first job I remember installing stuff that way...ugh

kjs3 45 minutes ago | |

Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

We installed it from a QIC tape when it wasn't delivered on a SCSI hard drive. Not sure if that option was generally available tho; we were doing kernel development.

ramijames 1 hour ago | |

If I remember correctly, there's an interesting historical reason for this: a lot of the original functionality that we'd today consider "part of the OS" was actually in ROM on hardware in really old Macs. Mouse functionality, basic windowing, etc. This meant that to get A/UX running you first had to bootstrap into a light version of Mac OS and then boot into A/UX.

yjftsjthsd-h 58 minutes ago | | |

The Toolbox ROMs, right? I can see the utility of using that (I mean, beyond that you might need to use it to boot), but why couldn't A/UX call those APIs itself? I can easily see where bootstrapping through Mac OS would be easier, but I can't immediately see why it would be particularly necessary.

FireBeyond 14 minutes ago | | |

Yeah, that was similar to Amiga and the Kickstart concept, initially on floppy, then as a separate ROM module. Going from AmigaOS 1.3 to 2.0 with the applicable Kickstart ROM gave you a whole new UI layer.

classichasclass 1 hour ago | |

A/UX 1.0 came on a pre-written 80MB disk, which indeed would have been a lot easier.

yjftsjthsd-h 1 hour ago | | |

Oh, that's even better:) I assumed the mentioned tape was the preferred way to get it, but a no-op install is faster/easier yet!

TacticalCoder 53 minutes ago | |

> Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

I still have a legit copy of Word on 10 floppies.

It was bad. And when you'd copy so many floppies, typically one would fail and you'd only notice when installing. We weren't very advanced back then (at least I wasn't): no fancy an 11th "parity" disk that'll fix any other one that'd fail. At least not for me.

The data CD-ROM was a very welcome addition to the world back then.

anthk 18 minutes ago |

I wonder if Nethack 3.4.3 or Slashem 0.8 could build on a recent version of A/UX...

latchkey 1 hour ago |

there will always be a special place in my heart for a/ux. i ported a lot of open source software to it. ran a bbs, cu-seeme server, gopherd, httpd, and many other early internet services on it. this really gave me an early taste for what the internet would become.