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AIX 3.x

SystemSystem
edited April 2021 in Product Comments

imageAIX 3.x

AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a Unix port originally developed by IBM and released in 1986 for the IBM RT 6150, a RISC based desktop workstation. It was later ported to the RS/6000, POWER, and PowerPC platforms as well as IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, and the PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server.

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Comments

  • WinWhatWinWhat
    edited April 2021
    I wonder if QEMU can run it... (since QEMU also emulates IBM RS/6000 PC)
  • dungeonseekerdungeonseeker
    edited January 8
    I've spent the last day trying to answer this question and the answer is, its complicated.

    For V3.x, no, as far as I can tell its impossible to get this to run, however there is 96 discs and I haven't tried them all.
    For V4.1, theoretically yes (as explained below) however the ISO is missing core boot files.
    For V4.3 and V5.1, yes it is possible however it requires manually building a 7 year old QEMU binary with patches, using a custom BIOS and video does not work at all so you have to use a serial terminal to interact with it.

    The process is documented here - https://virtuallyfun.com/2019/04/22/installing-aix-on-qemu/
    with an update for 2022 GCC here - https://virtuallyfun.com/2022/11/08/revisiting-aix-4-3-on-qemu/

    I haven't gone as far as building QEMU since honestly I can't be bothered, AIX looks very rudimentary. From testing on stock QEMU, it gets as far as the "Welcome to AIX" message then freezes for V4.3 and V5.1 and as I said earlier, I'm not going through 96 discs to find the boot disk for V3.
  • dungeonseekerdungeonseeker
    @SomeGuy I caved and built QEMU, currently installing AIX5 and it seems good. Any interest in a HDD image archive with the binary and everything?
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