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Help with Xenix

Hey Echoes,
good news on the xenix box front - with a bit of encouragement from Allen, I successfully (touch wood) cleaned the heads of my floppy drive, and so I now have a fall back plan for moving files between my computers... hopefully I can thus install a version of kermit (there seem to be many) and solve my file transfer files forever, and forget about my ignominious failure to get to grips with uucp : )
 
lol I'm happy for you, thas helps so much.

As for the version, this one (the latest) is fine:
ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/kermit/bin/cku209.sco234c

Since it's 1.40 MB it won't fit in a floppy, but you can:
1) gzip it on the xp machine (aa linux machine will do it, otherwise you need gzip for windows which you can find here) and decompress in the xenix box (you need the gzip binary for xenix, which I can mail to you because I don't find it anymore in google)

2) download an older and much lighter version of kermit and use that to transfer the new kermit to xenix. This is worse, stupid and you still don't have gzip which will help you compress files before sending them from xenix to xp. But I used this solution since I didn't have gzip at the time, and it worked :p

You probably need the gnu tar binary too, which is better and easyer than the sco one. I have it too, just drop a line.
 
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Echoes said:
I'm setting up a site for those who want to land on the world of Xenix. It seems that finding software and docs for this OS is not as easy as it could be, and I'm trying to do my best to solve this annoying problem.
So, do you want to help me sending what you have?
That's what I need for my site:
  • dd copies of installation disks for every version of xenix still present (Xenix for the PDP-11 won't be easy to find, so probably we should say it's lost)
  • dd copies of software/drivers disks
  • PDF copies of the manuals
  • Guides, HOW-TO, knowledge and experience you want to share

Tenox is exempted, he has already offered his help when I asked by mail :D
Click to expand...

Hello. How is your Xenix software collection going? Have you got the "Development Set" (C compiler and header files) for Xenix?

I know some users here (I won't name names) have the "Development Set" floppies for SCO Xenix, but for the time being the willingness to share those bits is proving to be limited...

I have set up a working SCO Xenix 386 system, but I have no "Development Set" to go with it.

This blogger here ( http://virtuallyfun.blogspot.com/search/label/xenix ) managed to find in some Soviet Union FTP server a binary of GCC for Xenix, and used it successfully. However, the link seems dead now. So sad.
 
I saw my blog mentioned here and I thought I'd chip in....

I've built a few things for Xenix, and you can find them here:
http://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/install/xenix/

Although I'd recommend gzip
gzip-i386-xenix.exe

And of course, I did save gcc for Xenix... I had a feeling that old soviet site would eventually go down...

gcc-xenix-bin.vfd.gz

I forget at the moment if the contents of the floppy are gzipped, then tarred, or if it's just a tar that contains a tar gzipped file..... It made sense when I made the disk a while back... Anyways this build of GCC includes the headers & libraries needed to build stuff. And honestly, it's better then the SCO compiler, as it's ANSI C, while the SCO compiler I had limited access to was K&R.

I'm not sure if it was custom patches to GCC to support XOUT binaries, or what the deal was... I just know it was a lucky find.
 
Pepinno said:
Those are great news!

Thanks a lot for sharing this information. Xenix revival looks much brighter now.

By the way, have you investigated the "SCO TCP/IP Supplement" for Xenix 386?
Click to expand...

I don't have it, but someone I know does.. it only supports 2 NIC's (neither one are emulated!) and we set it up over SLIP... it's exceptionally unstable. I guess since it was so hard to get a hold of, nobody mentioned that little detail.

After all that fighting it just wasn't worth it.
 
I may take a bit of slack for reviving such an old thread, but neozeed appears to have checked the forums within the last month or so, so maybe this will get his (or others) attention.

I recently learned that modern versions of GCC can still be built with an ANSI C compiler as a base, which builds a first-stage compiler capable of compiling the remaining portions of GCC which depend on its own extension. In this case, it might be possible to have a modern version of GCC for Xenix for those interested, and would lend itself to modern versions of a number other of useful pieces of software (notably coreutils). Have you or anyone had any experience with trying to get a modern GCC or C compiler/bash/configure/make system working?
 
I didn't, and I don't think neozeed tried hard to do it either.

Where did you learn that?
 
Is there still a Xenix target in new versions of GCC? If so, then I would simply build a cross-compiler on a Linux machine. You could then use the cross-compiler to build a native version of gcc, and any supporting libraries necessary (if said libraries have Xenix support).

-Tor
 
According to the docs, gcc version 3 still supports xenix. Couldnt find anything in the version 4 docs.
 
The fact that the target is there doesn't mean the target was mantained in any way, but I'll try
 
Echoes said:
I didn't, and I don't think neozeed tried hard to do it either.

Where did you learn that?
Click to expand...

(Sorry for the delay- I never saw the respones): The GCC manual makes a note that the first stage requires an ANSI C compiler. Curious, I verified this for myself and successfully compiled (with very minor source tweaks) the first half of the first stage of GCC using the Tiny C Compiler- at which point, the resulting executable is a GCC that can compile the rest of itself (The source code of GCC proper depends on its own extensions). Sadly, due to problems with TinyCC, the cross-GCC segfaulted :p. But it can be done.
 
Echoes said:
That'd be great... What about compiling with cc?
Click to expand...

Is CC an ANSI C or K&R C compiler? If the latter, GCC 2.95 and below is capable of being compiled with a K&R C compiler. My guess is that the Xenix port would have to be reinstated for 4.0 and above. Additionally, GCC after 4.7.3 requires an ANSI C++ compiler.

I don't have a copy of Xenix or a spare 286/386 to try to run it... I was just offering suggestions/what I know :p. Portable C Compiler may be a better alternative- for perspective it is capable of compiling most of the NetBSD source tree and userland... well when it's not out of date :p.
 
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Uh you're absolutely right, it's K&R but my brain was melted yesterday.

Well, there's GCC 2.95 then.
I'll try as soon as I can (that means in a few months).
 
Echoes said:
Uh you're absolutely right, it's K&R but my brain was melted yesterday.

Well, there's GCC 2.95 then.
I'll try as soon as I can (that means in a few months).
Click to expand...
You should in principle be able to bootstrap yourself up through various GCC versions.. (after all, that's how many of us did it, just spread over some years). First use cc to start building GCC 2.95, then use that one (as it's an ANSI compiler) to build as late a version of GCC 3.x as you can, and then you should, presumably, be able to build a 4.x version. Note that 4.5 through 4.9 (IIRC) have some issues but that has AFAIK only been reported with building Linux kernels (real bug, but may not hit everyone).

-Tor
 
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