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UNIX for a 486?

T

TN-048

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2011
Messages
67
Location
Orrville Ohio, USA
My 486 system is a Compaq prosignia vs with a 486dx2/66, 96 megs of ram, and 1gb SCSI drive on a Adaptec 1540cp isa card. Right now it runs FreeBSD 3.3, but I'd like to get back to something more traditional (like sysV). Does anyone know where I could come up with disks or images that would play nicely with my config?

Thanks -- TN-048
 
I'm building a similar box, only with an IDE drive, and a whole lot less memory... Xenix, PC-IX (Interactive), AT&T SVR4, or MicroPort should work nicely. I'll send you a PM with some additional info
 
Do you plan on having networking networking? I have a 3c509 but I have no idea if it'll work with svr4 (which is the one I want to use). Any ideas?
 
My news years resolution is to get my 468/133 with SCO Unix 3.2 v4.2 off the floor and on the home network by Friday :). Personally, either SCO or ISC (Interactive) 4.11 is a great choice. The only problem with the SysV Unices is making sure you have all the packages. Base packaging didn't include networking/development/etc. A work around solution is to hook up UUCP with a Serial to Ethernet connection of some type.

Geoff
 
FWIW, earlier NetBSD releases trend pretty close to the BSD 4.3+ releases and are a lot easier to get drivers for. I felt right at home on a a NetBSD 3.x distro.
 
Actually, I think I've got the same NIC...
Click to expand...
-- Yeah that is exactly my nic.
I will try out NetBSD if I can't get any of the more "classic" Unices working.

I got home for a while to try AT&T SVR4, just to find that it doesn't like my scsi card. I'll be trying microport SysV when I get home from work.
 
lmao.. darn time travelers. I'm pretty sure as long as it has support for an NE2000 NIC you'll be fine. 3com was a pretty good standard back then, I'm just not sure about the age of the card vs OS or if it'd be expecting a token ring or arcnet or something. But certainly nothing wrong with giving it a go and finding out the fun way. You could also possibly get a result under an emulator if it uses an older nic emulation. I think the older (pre microsoft) Connectix VirtualPC used a 3com or ne2000 driver if I'm not mistaken.
 
Ok, so far I've tried the following:

AT&T SVR4 Version 2.1 -- Complains about no HD and fails out
Microport UNIX System V/3.2.2 -- Doesn't even start to load the floppy
SCO XENIX 386 v2.3.4 -- Hangs on hardware detection
SCO Unix System V 4.2 -- Can't get to boot at all? (I couldn't get any of the floppy images to boot on this one)
SunOS 4.01 -- Screen flashes like crazy, nothing else -- Actually no wonder this didn't work, it's for SPARC processors *d'oh*
PCIX Interactive Unix -- Won't boot from floppy

I've got a download for SCO OpenServer going, it's just taking a long time. I'll give that a spin later. If that doesn't work, looks like I'll be checking out NetBSD.
 
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I'm starting to think nothing but FreeBSD will run on this thing.
SCO OpenServer ran, but failed on finding the install cd in the drive.
Coherent ran, but locked up when attempting to install the bootloader.
NetBSD 3.1 starts, but freezes with an error about a failed probe on the scsi card.
It seems that everything just HATES my controller...

Any ideas?
 
I'm looking at an old copy of Slackware Linux here, version 3.5 with Linux kernel 2.0.34.

There are boot disks for Adaptec cards:

aha2x4x
aha152x
aha1542
aha1740

And if I recall correctly, the 1542 driver supports a bunch of variants despite what the name suggests.
 
Here's some old versions of slackware- ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/

Just reading the Red Hat 6.0 installation manual and the install routine should ask if you have a scsi hdd, same goes for RH 5.2

Here's link to RH 6.2 iso ftp://archive.download.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/6.2/en/iso/i386/
I've installed it and on a few 486 class machines just using the text installer. Just make sure it's running as little services as possible. It and 7.0 had a bad flaw in the ftp service iirc. Got my original copy from Aussie computer mag cover CD set which included BeOS 5.0 PE and OS/2 v4 Warp.

For some thing a bit more resent Deli Linux looks like it will install on a scsi drive http://deli.tavvva.net/wiki/doku.php?id=deli:installation:cdrom

http://delicate-linux.net/
 
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No no no no, not on this box. I have plenty of Linux boxen, this one is supposed to be as close to "old school" unix as possible.
Really I should be content with FreeBSD: It is quite similar to old unix, plays nice with all my hardware, is fast, etc.

FYI: If anyone has a 3c509 that locks up the system when you attempt to make any network connections, get a utility called 3c5x9cfg.exe and a DOS disk and just open and resave the configuration to the card. It cleared up all the troubles I was having.

PS: Slackware? Redhat? pff, Arch Linux is the way to go!! :D
 
CLI mainly, though I have put a half hearted attempt to get X running. It doesn't really work right now (it does, but refuses to get out of a terrible resolution). I'll still be trying whatever I come across, but just for the sake of having it functional, I'll keep a hd with FreeBSD around.
 
SquallStrife said:
I
aha2x4x
aha152x
aha1542
aha1740
And if I recall correctly, the 1542 driver supports a bunch of variants despite what the name suggests.
Click to expand...

AHA1542 - ISA controller with floppy support. AHA1540 - ISA controller with no floppy support. That's it. The 1540 was about as close to a a standard floppy controller in the ISA world as you could get. RH/NetBSD should certainly install on one. Heck, I've installed RH on a 486 with a AHA2840 VLB SCSI controller. Given the weirdness of VLB, that's pretty remarkable.
 
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