Pressing on towards the past

[equill]

It's coming up to a quarter-century since the innards of Unix was a day-to-day concern of mine when I was programming in PostScript on top of Unix on an Onyx (not Oryx) minicomputer through a glorious green-text dumB terminal. I don't remember which flavour, if there were 'flavours' then, of Unix, but my Bible of the time (The Business Guide to the Unix System, Yates and Emerson, 1984) writes breathlessly of the sheer wonder and power of 16-bit addressing by comparison with the 8 bits of the Z80 or 6502.

I am considering running A/UX on one of my Quadra 950s, to begin to refresh my acquaintance with (All right. Relearn.) the OS. Apple seems now to be quite tight-lipped about A/UX. What contemporary books were there for the mystic art?

de

 

[beachycove]

There are some pdf files online on Apple.com, including the main one (something about _Server Administration..._ as I recall), which also gives a listing of all the available unix commands, arguments, and so forth. Some of these materials also come via the standard install, along with a document viewer, from which all 500 pp. or so can be printed.

The more complete set of "ring binder" manuals was on ebay australia, however, just a week or so ago - you ought to check on that, as I haven't looked recently. These are obviously very hard to find ordinarily, and most of the manuals collection does not come in electronic form.

I'd not upgrade to the last upgrade of A/UX, by the way, but would stick with the penultimate install (stock AWS95 fare, in other words), for the simple reason that perhaps the most useful feature of A/UX for your purposes, Commando, ceases to work properly once the final upgrade is installed. Or so I have found (twice, and that on a Q950 complete with the AWS95 pds card, and not on a lesser beast). Some of the available binaries (e.g., Apache) are also unsupported on the final release. The final A/UX update promises more speed, but delivers less haste, if you know what I mean.

Hope this helps.

 

[scott]

They're not exactly contemporary, but Jan L Harrington wrote a pair of really good books on A/UX (1.0 and 2.0). Both are out of print, of course. [] ]'>

The A/UX Handbook (ISBN: 9780130548269)

The A/UX 2.0 Handbook (ISBN: 9780201567847)

These pdf's might come in handy too:

http://www.cilinder.be/docs/appleux/

 

[ChristTrekker]

The A/UX FAQ does occasionally see some updates, whenever something happens (which is rare these days) and I find the time to add it. I think it links most of the major A/UX resources that are still around.

The Unix Rosetta Stone page has some A/UX info that I submitted, so if you are familiar with how it's done in another Unix and want to look up the equivalent, that's a start.

 

[equill]

My thanks to all three of you for your admirably prompt (if not hasty ...) replies. Although the seller wasn't aware of it, there was an AWS card in the 950 that I bought a few months ago, so that part is provided for. I also have parity RAM SIMMs coming from the US for the ride.

That set of manuals for A/UX (v3.0) went for AUD75.00, I discover, plus postage on 18kg (~40lb.). Sheesh. Had I read the FAQ list completely I should have found at least a partial answer to my question, but I'm happy to have it directly from the cavalry, too.

de

 

[RacerX]

Seems like a rather odd omission, but why hasn't anyone pointed out A/UX Penelope? It is far easier to find Apple's PDF manuals on that site's downloads page than to find similar info on Apple's site. The caretakers of Apple's support archives have a poor track record of retaining older info (I know that there are a lot of Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server 1.x pages gone now, and that software was still being sold until 2001). And things from before 1997 are quite problematic over there these days.

 

[equill]

Seems like a rather odd omission, but why hasn't anyone pointed out ...

Wow. Many, even profuse, thanks.

de

 

[beachycove]

The A/UX Penelope site has come a long way since last time I checked in. Excellent stuff. Thanks for the reminder.

New binaries too.