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PC/IX Images

Anybody have any tips/suggestions for making a 5.25" floppy disk of the 01MAINT.IMD in order to boot this on an XT?

When I run:

C:\...IMDU 01MAINT.IMD

I get:

IMageDisk Utility 1.16
IMD 1.17: 24/05/2008 10:10:06
PCIX Maintenance diskette
Use for install also
0/0 250 kbps DD 9x512
80 tracks (40/40), 720 sectors (359 data, 361 compressed, 0 unavail)


Then my settings in IMD are:

Drive : A
Cylinders : 40
Sides : Two
Double-step : Off
R/W gap : Calculated
Format gap : Calculated
Format fill : E5
Full Analysis : No
Interleave : As read
Retries : 5
500 kbps -> : 500 kbps
300 kbps -> : 300 kbps
250 kbps -> : 250 kbps



When I boot from the 5.25" floppy -- my 5151 display flashes then displays a blinking cursor that can be moved by the keyboard ... typing the "ls" command does something (floppy light starts blinking) ... but nothing on the screen ...
 
I had zero trouble making a bootable disk , my trouble is on the install and reboot.

I dont remember which program I used to make the images , used a Windows 98 pc in DOS mode to do it as I had issues making it in a DOS window in Windows98.
 
I had zero trouble making a bootable disk , my trouble is on the install and reboot.

I dont remember which program I used to make the images , used a Windows 98 pc in DOS mode to do it as I had issues making it in a DOS window in Windows98.

Would you be able to make an image file/copy of your bootable disk?
 
Hi

just wondering if anyone managed to get the PC/IX installed on a real XT class machine in the end, I just tried on an IBM XT and manged to complete the install but got the 'panic blkdev' error on reboot. Its a long install so was hoping for some advice before trying again, do you need to keep it exactly within the specs laid out in a previous post above:

The minimum hardware configuration for the IBM Personal Computer XT consists of:
1 IBM Personal Computer XT System Unit/Keyboard (Model 5160087), which includes the following:

- 1 Dual Sided Diskette Drive;
- 1 10 MB Fixed Disk Drive;
- 1 Asynchronous Communications Support Adapter;
- 128 KB of Memory.

- 2 64 KB Memory Module Kits (Option 1501003), for a total of 256 KB of memory.
- 1 IBM Monochrome Display (Option 5151001) and Adapter (Option 1504900)
OR
-1 IBM Color Display (Option 5153001) and Adapter (Option 1504910); the Color Display is supported in text mode only.

I have an original IBM XT 256-640k motherboard with 640k, the May '86 bios with a generic Hercules mono graphics card and 10MB mfm hard drive on WD1002A-WX1 controller. i don't have the 8087 or asynchronous serial card installed so would this cause the error is it more likely to be down to the graphics card/hard drive controller not being specific enough?

I appreciate there is a emulator with PC/IX installed but wanted to try it out on real hardware so any advice is greatly appreciated.

thanks

Leigh
 
Funny enough Xenix 86 was developed after 286 that is 1.0 version of Xenix was developed by Microsoft for 286 and the ported by SCO to XT.

In fact there were two target platforms for SCO's 8086/88 port of XENIX - one was the PC/XT and the other was a Burroughs machine running BTOS where XENIX actually ran as a task under BTOS (similar to the way in which, today, Linux supports a "user mode" platform aka UML where it runs as a user mode process).

Separately, Altos had their own version of Microsoft XENIX running on the 8086 based Altos 586 which had some MMU type functionality implemented in hardware.
 
If you guys are interested in old IBM Unix-like software, there is also AIX for PS/2 (MicroChannel-based system only?):
AIX for PS/2 v1.3
Not something that I've played with myself. Kudos to Ardent-Blue and the denizens of NG comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware
 
I did install AIX on a generic 486 machine a long time ago, and it ran fine.
Never got X to work, though. The installation took forever.
You have to boot from the correct floppy for it to work, though.

However, I did play with PC/IX for quite a bit longer and took some notes a few years ago. It's basically a System III.

It appears that using a 20 MB disk is possible in PCE (so PC/IX does handle them), but I could not get them to work in PCem unfortunately. However, it is possible to attach a second 10 MB disk (/dev/hd4 is what Linux calls sdb1) and mount it automatically as /home. In order to do so, add the new disk (use the maintenance disk to partition and mkfs), and then add the following to /etc/filesystems:
Code:
/home:
	dev = /dev/hd4
	vol = "IBMPC1"
	mount = automatic
	check = true
	free  = true

In order to enable logins on the first serial port (tty0), add the following to /etc/ports:
Code:
/dev/tty0:
	enabled = true
	term    = vt100

Also, for sane backspace and interrupt behaviour, add the following to /etc/profile:
Code:
if [ "$TERM" != "ibmpc" ]; then
	stty intr "^c"
	stty erase "^?"
fi

The "date" command does not handle dates past 1999, so I wrote a small tool to automatically set the system date and time from the PCE real-time clock: View attachment rtcdate.txt. Just copy the code into the system as rtcdate.c and run "make rtcdate" to compile. Call it from /etc/rc (replacing the existing date and time logic) to set the correct date and time automatically. This should work until 2038, when the epoch overflows.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to compile any vi, and ed certainly is no fun. While it is possible to run "configure" scripts, they eventually run out of environment space. :-(
 
In fact there were two target platforms for SCO's 8086/88 port of XENIX - one was the PC/XT and the other was a Burroughs machine running BTOS where XENIX actually ran as a task under BTOS (similar to the way in which, today, Linux supports a "user mode" platform aka UML where it runs as a user mode process).

thanks for highlighting this, I did not know that Xenix could run as a task on CTOS, there is a reference here: https://www.cbronline.com/news/unsys_unveils_btos_ii/
 
So, I've got an XT with a compatible controller and a 20Mb hard drive and I gave it a go. I was able to boot it up and start the installation but my hard disk has too many bad tracks in the first couple megabytes. In XENIX, I can just move the partition forwards a bit, but PC/IX only recognizes the first 305 cylinders. Definitely only meant to work with 10Mb hard drives.

I've got another hard drive on the way - hopefully it will be relatively error-free.
 
I was involved with PC/IX since its inception and I have a complete set of PC/IX manuals, 'Second Edition', in pristine condition:

o System Manager's Guide
o Programmer's Guide
o Text Processing Guide
o User's Manual (aka 'The Fat Book')

Interested?

Chris.

p.s. As this forum thread appears inactive, I'll leave an email address so that I don't have to keep checking: cas194@gmail.com
I managed to install PC/IX a PC-XT emulator using 86Box.
But now I'm stuck trying to access disks 10 to 19, to install C compiler, assembler and things like that.

I know there is another complete emulator already filled with all these tools, but where is all the fun?

If I could have access to these manuals maybe I can figure out how to install these disks.
They are not mountable, and it looks like they are not a "cpio" or "ar" archive.

Do you still have these manuals? Have you managed to scan them to pdf?

Thanks!
 
I would like to have the manuals as well.

The disks are, if I remember correctly, in "dump" format and you use "restore" to install them.
 
Sorry to boost an old post... I just installed PC/IX 1.0 (WinWorld source) on an IBM PC 5150 with a 10MB hard card, 640K (25K on motherboard) and CGA graphics.. The Core disks (1-9) installed just fine. I was restoring the programming disks (10-13) and I get an error on disk 13 saying it's not in dump format. I'm assuming I have a bad download/unzip somewhere? I'm installing from a GoTek drive and the rest of it has been fine. Disks 13-18 of the WinWorld disks give me errors, disk 19 was fine.

UPDATE: I was able to use the Glitchworks images (http://filedump.glitchwrks.com/software/vintage/ibm/pcix/) and convert from .IMD to .img. This worked for disk 13. However for the remaining disks they either said they restored 0 files or they gave me sector errors. Not sure what to do. Fortunately I did get the programming tools but was hoping for UUCP.
 
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I don't remember having issues with my disk images, but I never installed PC/IX on real hardware.
What I can tell you are the md5sums for my disk images, see below. I do not think PC/IX writes to its installation disks during installation, but I have not verified this (Xenix/286 writes to the N1 disk, so its checksum is useless).

PCjs should be able to install PC/IX, and you can download the disks in IMG format as well.

Code:
$ md5sum *.img
d36b6f97ea5c15b3d579334358a5e718  account.img
3fe3886418a75b459ad34d14d370556a  comms.img
58cb9ec7749b939eee45455818a7392c  core1.img
8c0d58cd081a2e01b157a8afe6415b0e  core2.img
e3b361172a2135275ba06a0b0f10db7a  core3.img
2bc59b3344e7fd0182b5d88589d6c9c6  core4.img
3593c152912ce65a9167e17cd46f91df  core5.img
568eaae91842ddebd40d2682ee5de3e4  core6.img
eeb5f56f127aec54248539768919ce09  core7.img
57d49eba02b41dc80265d91d6d25b687  core8.img
185ca60912676ae2b22a6a4d2a59117a  games.img
cdb2d803fc3b356f08f431612c23b152  maint.img
ef02a8a78bea0e75370f55164c1b5484  prog1.img
26f3ec7cc181f270ccfb29b74ec5183b  prog2.img
6ab29e48e829b4ef0d0720cbfdfd1f34  prog3.img
c0744e9563ec5e77b87811ed63857011  prog4.img
e4e520eea6a0386c7d23c3ddd2ab9d94  sccs.img
779e1b78a1b38ea64675982c7af148c9  special.img
042980841f9832dada3a945144c02234  text.img
 
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