Gregory's ServerYour operating system was delivered on floppy disks.
My operating system was delivered on tape.
We are not the same. #IRIX
 69 comments
@flexion and is the command to tell it to boot from that as hideous as the ones to tell SGIs to boot from CD? @hippiegunnut TBF, it was not as simple as "A:\install.exe" 😆 but it was worth the additional effort @flexion Oh sure. I came to SGIs after administering mainly Suns (plus a mixture of oddities). The Suns could do "boot cdrom" with the SGIs you had to do something like "boot -f dksc (1,1,8)sash64" and then you had to do some other incantation involving stand/fx which was different depending on scsi ID, and CPU and I had to look up every time. Oh you also needed the *right* cdrom drive and most of them didn't support the sector size needed (I still have a SCSI Plextor somewhere just in case). @flexion Once the OS was installed it was lovely. ISTR new ones came installed and they were reliable enough that you basically only ever needed to reinstall them for something dire like a HD failure so it wasn't a major pain - I just remember the "WTF!?" moment at the commands needed the first time I did it. @hippiegunnut yes absolutely. rather complicated boot/bootp commands, stand/fx depends on CPU arch and also the installer itself needed a "howto" to complete. Steep learning curve until you figured it out.     @flexion  @collectifission there's no size specified on this tape and I can no longer read it due to HW issues, but most tapes that came with that machine were between 150MB to 250MB. IRIX 3.3.2 installation media extracted needs ~230 MB.  @flexion Just for grins, I looked up STOLL & SIRIX and was happy to see they're still putting out software. Not surprising since apparently they build knitting machines. I was a little worried when I saw they were advertising a "crypto tool" but no, it's exactly what you think it is, a knitting pattern encrypter https://www.stoll.com/en/products-and-solutions/software/crypto-tool/    @flexion Ohhh… flashbacks to my days doing HP-UX admin! I wish I had kept a tape or two…  @flexion my os was delivered on punch cards and I had to toggle switches to load the boot loader; every time I used it; up hill both ways. I assume you know why a hard drive is called a "winchester" ? which is a bit of esoteric lore taught to me by my elders @failedLyndonLaRouchite oh, the "30-30" model! my first hard drive was 20 MB in an IBM XT, but that was decades later.  @flexion Mine came on paper tape with a manually entered IPL. You ain’t lived kids 😂 @flexion I might still have that machine kicking around somewhere. I don't miss those days at all.  @MrsMouse @flexion I recognize that box set. Its a core memory for me. I used to install OpenServer and UnixWare for our clients at my first tech job in 1997. Usually it was OpenServer + Advanced File and Print services. It was $$$$ (priced per AFP user IIRC)! I got my boss to try out Linux + Samba and we started selling that too as we could charge less to our clients and they'd get _more_ (unlimited users) than what you got with the SCO solution. @miah @flexion @MrsMouse @flexion Nice! I actually interviewed for Redhat around 2000, at their San Francisco office. I got the offer, but they weren't sure if they wanted to place me in SF (they were closing the office) or NC. I ended up taking a job from the people who likely printed that CD... Turbolinux aka Pacific HiTech. It didn't last though, they laid us all off within a few months. I didn't actually end up working for RH until a few years ago, but I was in the wrong department and left soon. @MrsMouse @flexion I was really disappointed in our release. There were things that just simply didn't work and were clearly untested _in the installer_. Like.. IIRC you couldn't do a FTP install even though it was offered, it would error. I filed so many bugs but like I said, we were laid off soon after. There was a Japanese company also doing Turbolinux for Japan and that distro was 1000x better than ours. @MrsMouse @flexion I think the TurobLinux US distribution had nobodies attention since it was a _bad_ fork of Redhat ~4 (I know a lot of us put love into it, but it was bad). At the office we had some folks from the Japan Turbolinux visit and show us their distro and we were all in total awe of how amazing it was compared to what we were working on.  @MrsMouse @miah @flexion Best gear I can recall was a RamBus-era Pentium 4 system with a wrecked case. Best-for-the-lulz was probably https://jima.us/wang/ 😇  @flexion @lisamelton My first Unix OS (SunOS 3.4) was delivered on 1600 bpi 9-track tape. Yes, I am old.  @flexion Long time ago I installed HP/UX 7 from some QIC DC tape (6150?) to a hp9000 model 320.  @flexion  @flexion It's not a real operating system unless it came on ROUND tapes 😁 ✅ BSD 4.2 (1986)  |
@flexion my operating system was delivered on a big bed with my wife