AT&T Unix System V release 4 v2.1 installation problems.

edited April 2015 in Software
Hello, I'm a fan of unix. Just recently, I downloaded the Install diskette from the winworldpc archive site, which has AT&T Unix system V 2.1. However, it doesn't seem to like newer hardware, which on some, it gives me an error message after it goes past the copyright message. Like this:

PANIC: HD CONTROLLER: COMMAND ABORTED

Trying to dump 16325 pages.

1 pages dumped.

Reboot the system now.

If you want to know what system I tried to install on, It's a dell oplidex 570, (Can''t remember the exact name, but it is a dell oplidex system from 2002) It has 128 mg of ram, and it's cpu is 1.7 ghz. Also, on some computers, I managed to get past the "Insert the UNIX System Install diskette disk 2" message. But only one of them went past the partitioning screen and manages to do a scan of the hd, but it froze there. I searched everywhere, on yahoo, google and bing. There was one fourm talked about it, but had a different sanario. Looks like it needs an older system to run; I do have a 1993 Lexbook, but the screen wouldn't show on the screen (Looks like a display problem), and I don't want to break the existing Windows 3.1 system on it. My questions is, How can I get it to install on newer systems without problems, If not possible, what kind of older hardware does it work on, (Mainly the hard drive), If I can install on a bigger hard drive, how, and what is it's system requriement? I'm fairly new to unix, and any helpful expert advice would be appreciated.

Comments

  • My guess is that it only has drivers for very specific disk controllers (IIRC that release is from the era before even things like ATA were fully standardized) which are all from the 80s or 90s.
  • I see the posts on several other forums with this... including one with a direct link to a download here. (http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum ... stem-V-386)

    The more recent system V versions should support ata before 95, but if you can find old SCSI disks and controllers, those should work too.
  • Can external scsi hard drives work too?
  • kalvn wrote:
    Can external scsi hard drives work too?

    Theoretically yes they should be able to work, provided it was hooked up to a compatible controller.
  • I've only ever used AT&T UNIX System V Release 4 Version 2.1 in VirtualBox, but I think I might know the source of your problem (or at least one of the causes).

    The OS can't handle a hard drive larger than 504 megabytes. Bump it up to 505, or even 504.5 megabytes, and it spits that error message out at you.

    EDIT: After some searching around online, I found something that almost definitely relates to this.
    http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html
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