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Mark William's Coherent

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cchaven

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2003
Messages
169
Location
Roanoke, VA
Does anyone have the Coherent package from Mark Williams? This was really my first exposure to a UNIX-type system and I've always wanted to find the whole package again. I think I was running it on either a 286 or 386SX machine at the time. About 5 years later I would discover NeXTstep on NeXT hardware.

Thanks
Jeff
 
I grabbed the coherent disk images and they install fine on a virtual machine. Just installed the base system - but will probally try to install the c compilers, etc. Next step is to put it on a CF card and then try it on a Libretto CT and an Omnibook .

Bill
 
Used Oracle Virtual Box V4.1.16 r78094
32 MB system Memory
500 MB IDE Fixed size drive
IDE Controller, PIX3, use host i/o cache
Chipset: PIX3


Bill
 
Seems to work fine, and the C compiler worked fine right out of the box. Or at least I was able to type out a hello.c program in vi, and type "make hello", resulting in a working Hello World. The extra compiler stuff looks to be a gnuC/C++ installation that I don't think is necessary for a toy or collectors item.

The base set comes with a lot of stuff, including n/troff and at least some of the macro packages. Shells are bourne shell and ksh. Nice to have ksh; it "feels right" on a system like this. Compact, not bloated, and plenty of power.

I was not able to find the right incantation to get the updates installed. Tried a couple of times to make install(1) do the right thing, but gave up after messing up a couple of installations. At least Virtual Box allows you to clone a system so after the first time I didn't lose anything important.

One thing I find annoying is that the system seems to fsck the filesystems on every boot. I configured mine with a single 500MB partition and filesystem, and it takes forever to check. Maybe if I do it over I'll try a small root filesystem, and then usr, tmp, and home filesystems and see if it just checks root.

But all in all, it feels like an old Unix system should - kind of like an SVR3.2, or even 2.0 system.

I'll be playing with it some more. Thanks for the pointers to this - I had never run it before.

Tom
 
One thing I find annoying is that the system seems to fsck the filesystems on every boot
Click to expand...

Yep, I notice the same thing - takes forever. I'd be interested in your results on using a smaller root file system. I imagine that this could be disabled somewhere in the startup - but not sure where that would be.

Bill
 
Bill,

Another annoyance I've discovered, is that I don't think there is any way for me to get files on and off the system. I'm running on a MacBook Pro. No serial ports, so can't use kermit. I don't think a USB serial adapter will work. Also can't use shared folders. No networking. Copy/Paste doesn't work from VBox.

Is there a solution? Does VMWare have this limitation?

Tom
 
Tom,

I don't think there is any way for me to get files on and off the system
Click to expand...

I've been creating virtual DOS floppy disks to copy to/from the system. A little bit crude, but does work. Earlied today, I loaded a TAR of JOE text editor, but couldn't get it to compile in the base system. I think it'll require the GCC compiler, so I'll try loading that in and then recompiling JOE. I like JOE, since it uses a wordstar or Turbo editor comand set. I never really liked VI or the other Unit editors.

Bill
 
Hmmm, somewhere along the line that occurred to me, then I forgot. Getting old, I guess :)

What are you using to create the virtual disks? I wonder if I can do the same on my Mac?

Tom
 
What are you using to create the virtual disks?
Click to expand...

I used RAWRITE to create some from real DOS Disks. Then use XP in Virtualbox to read/write to them. The XP in virtual has a shared drive so I can copy file to the shared drive. Virtual XP to copy to DOS Disk image and then use the disk images in Coherent or Xenix.

I crated a new Coherent Virtual with a 32 meg hard drive and it's much faster on the checking root system. After spending a couple of hours, I finally figured out how to install the GCC compiler. Following is the command to use:

install CohGCC /dev/fva0 4

To innstall X11R5, then following:

install CohX /dev/fva0 2



Took me forever to figure out the Package names (CohGCC & CohX).

NOTE: Disks 3 and 4 of GCC are labeled backwards - Disk 3 is actually disk 4 and disk 4 is actually disk 3.

The X11 requires a serial mouse, which I couldn't do with the VirtualBox - so couldn't test.

I have GCC loaded but so far haven't been sucessful in using GCC in Coherent.

I'm coming to conclusion that I like Xenix a lot better - that may be that I'm just more familar with Xenix - having actually used it for several years (many years ago).

Bill
 
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OK, here's what I did:

Copied one of the Coherent install images and loaded it in the A: drive on a DOS 6.22 system I have running under VBox. Formatted the floppy in DOS. I think this would have worked directly in Coherent using the dosformat command. Then I mounted the DOS floppy image in OS X, copied trek.zip to the image, unmounted, mounted in Coherent, and copied the file out.

It was a lot easier than it sounds :)

The old trek sources compiled up with just a little work and seems to run just fine.

I'll see if I can get an old version of joe to compile, or maybe pico. Will let you know how it turns out.

Tom
 
pitlog said:
But all in all, it feels like an old Unix system should - kind of like an SVR3.2, or even 2.0 system.
Click to expand...

It was actually modeled after System 7, so it's even older than that.

I worked at MWC from 1992-1994 in various roles, so I might be able to answer some questions, if you have any.
 
Released Jan this year by the looks and archive.org has it. Someone on another forum mentioned eariler bineries could well be amongst those files.
 
Now that the source and binaries are released, I was wondering how difficult it would be to complete the TCP/IP implementation with Ethernet support? According to various sources, MWC was very close to having it finished before it closed. Any ideas?

Geoff
 
Rumors of the TCP/IP stack being close to finished at the time of MWC's shutdown are greatly exaggerated. I left in 1994 with no mention of it whatsoever. What I DO remember is the choice Bob Swartz had to make when it was clear we were going to lose our business to Linux: Do we make a TCP/IP stack, or do we make a GUI (ie. X-Window)? He chose the GUI. So, Coherent remains the only Unix OS in history that can run on a 386 with 2MB of RAM and still provide a full X-Window environment (in B&W, need more RAM for color). But if you want to do anything useful with it other than software development, well...
 
It's nice to hear what went on there at the time Trixter thanks. Yeah I found some X Windows screne shots. I was going to ask about TCP/IP but I see that question has been answered ;)

I see the manual mentions you need Coherent 4.2 and a minimum of 4megs of ram the run X-Windows. 8megs is required for colour. Also requires a serial mouse as mention earlier http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/doc/coherent/x/pdf/X11.pdf
 
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