Over on the GNU config-patches mailing list, Zack Weinberg is looking for help identifying a number of ancient operating systems and vendors.
These are probably all either vendor or OS names from the late 1980s or early 1990s. Can anyone help me fill out the following list of things that ought to appear in testsuite/config-sub.data, if I knew what to put in place of the question marks?
???-pc533 ???-pc533-???
Zack Weinberg
???-sim ???-sim-???
???-ultra ???-ultra-???
???-unicom ???-unicom-???
???-acis ???-???-aos
???-triton ???-???-sysv3
???-oss ???-???-sysv3
???-storm-chaos ???-???-???
One of them has already been identified – “storm-chaos” turns out to have been added to binutils and/or maybe GCC in 2000, and after some digging around, John Marshall found what it’s referring to: chaos, a hobby operating system for x86 written in C. It has a long history, and after a period of inactivity came back in 2015 with a new website. Some new releases followed, with the last one being version 0.3.0 in 2019. It’s been silence since then.
The others are still up for grabs to be discovered. There is some talk that the pc533 one might be a misspelling of pc532, which would refer to the “NS32K-based PC532 board running NetBSD”. This is an incredibly obscure complete system built around the NS32532, of which only around 150 were built in the early ’90s. However, Weinberg is hesitant to accept this theory without more information, since there is already code to handle the pc532, and he wants to be sure before making any changes.
If there is one place on the internet outside of the GNU mailing lists that might be able to help Weinberg, it’s the OSAlert audience. We have so many older people reading OSAlert who have been working or otherwise active in this field for many decades, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these cryptic names make some bells ring for some of you. If one of you does e-mail a reply, be sure to mention this article – organic marketing to help keep us going!
I ran it through Claude AI, this is what it says for the others
“pc533” likely refers to the Intel i860 RISC processor, which was used in some high-performance workstations and servers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The vendor or OS names associated with it are unknown.
“sim” could potentially refer to various simulators or emulators used for software development or testing purposes during that era. However, without more context, it is difficult to determine the specific vendor or OS associated with it.
“ultra” may be related to Sun Microsystems’ UltraSPARC line of processors, which were introduced in the mid-1990s. However, the specific vendor or OS names associated with it are unclear.
“unicom” is likely a reference to a vendor or product name, but I could not find definitive information about its origin or associated system names.
“acis” and “aos” (Advanced Operating System) were operating systems developed by Data General Corporation for their line of minicomputers and servers in the 1980s and 1990s.
“triton” and “sysv3” (System V Release 3) were likely associated with Unix-based systems from various vendors during that era, but without more context, it is difficult to pinpoint the specific vendor or product names.
“oss” could potentially refer to the Open Software Solutions (OSS) distribution of Unix-like operating systems, but the association with “sysv3” is unclear.
Yeah, I had the same feeling for several of these. “Ultra” screams UltraSPARC (though, not sure why it would need it’s own triple)
Everywhere i’ve seen it, ultrasparc was labelled as sun4u or sparcv9.
It definitely has nothing to do with SPARC. The field is the name of a vendor / manufacturer not the architecture field. Even if it was in the architecture field that has never been anything called just ultra.
Back in the olden days I had an Intel “Triton” motherboard for a Pentium 100Mhz. I think it may have had a Triton chipset? Never seen triton and sysv3 paired up, though.
ACIS was an acronym for IBM Academic Information Systems back in the mid-1980s, which was based on BSD. MIT still has an instruction manual online for the version based on BSD 4.3 in 1987: http://web.mit.edu/usrdoc/ibmdoc/frontmatter/04.about/about
Not sure if that’s the correct ACIS, but might be worth looking into.
It was also called “IBM Academic Operating System” in 1988, which would relate to the “aos” acronym: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/pc/rt/aos/Installing_and_Operating_Academic_Operating_System_4.3_Dec88.pdf
OSS could refer to ‘Open System Services’, a Unix layer that runs on of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s ‘NonStop’ servers for banks and stock exchanges: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop_(server_computers)
NonStop has been around since 1976 when it was first marketed by the Tandem Computers company, eventually part of Compaq and later HP. It has a ‘Guardian’ lower level layer of the OS, and then the OSS Unix level layer on top. The Open System Services layer is referred to as “Tandem NonStop Kernel (OSS)” in source code for gawk, for example: https://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/gawk-diffs/2018-03/msg00016.html
Triton SysV3, I’m guess is for the Dolphin Triton UNIX server running SVR3
* guessing
I think you’re right, the Kermit project (networking for Unix platforms) lists the Triton with SystemV revision 3.2 as one of its target platforms: “Dolphin Server Technology Triton 88/17 with Dolphin UNIX System V/88 R3.2” (https://www.kermitproject.org/unix.html).
A funny thing is that there is also a “Dolphin Triton” robotic swimming pool cleaner device that’s popular right now. Probably doesn’t have sysv3 though.
Pretty sure the Transam Triton wasn’t a target either, given it was a z80 machine running CP/M
“ older people”
I am one of those “older people” and if it weren’t for us, none of you would have any OSs or apps or applications, etc., that you are using. So watch your language. (Wink)
Unfortunately if I used one of those systems (I’ve used over 50 distinct OSs throughout my current an __ancient__ life) that I can’t remember what those were part of.
This is why writing proper documentation and comments is important (even if it seems obvious) and “the source code is the documentation” doesn’t cut it.
Commit messages with enough detail is what really matters.