DELL Unix 4.0

edited September 2021 in Product Comments

imageDELL Unix 4.0

Dell Unix, first introduced in 1989, was an adaptation of AT&T Unix

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Comments

  • Does this work on HP or Acer?
  • Possibly? It does work on non-Dell computers (some people have gotten it to work in 86Box and Bochs).
  • edited November 2023
    The system.img files have both been apparently put through the DOS newline mangler, and it's the bad kind that mixes all the different input newlines together (LF -> CRLF, CR -> CRLF, CRLF->CRLF) so there's not enough information there to restore the original file. And then they truncated them to 1474560 bytes again just to nail it home. Where did this come from? I think someone is messing with you.

    Is there maybe some FTP client involved that has some kind of ASCII/binary autodetection mode that is extremely bad at actually figuring out what files are appropriate to transfer in ASCII mode?
  • I believe the source was this offer post: https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/10968/offer-dell-unix-4v22
    But there are screen shots of it running.

    A LOT of FTP systems would butcher binary files like that, especially if one was not careful to put things inside of a ZIP.
  • I have added a note to the product page that the system.img image is corrupt and needs a redump.
  • Ok, I tracked down the source, and it seems WinZip is at fault for extracting IMG files from a TAR archive as a text file.

    I've re-uploaded the files, as well as added issue 2.0.
  • edited November 2023
    If anyone wants to give this a crack...

    86Box, Socket 4, Dell Optiplex, Pentium OD, 32MB RAM, Tseng ET4000AX, no more than 510MB HDD (it doesn't support LBA, there's a 508MB preset in 86Box), 2 x 1.44MB FDD (no point in 2.88 as the Dell BIOS doesn't support it), Microsoft Serial Mouse.

    After install getting X running is a PITA, if you're confident then you can create /root, change roots home in /etc/passwd and copy the required files from /usr/lib/X11/xinit to /root making them dot files in the process. Then make the below changes to the dot files in roots home folder.

    If you're not confident then do an init 0 as root, when prompted close 86box and make a backup of the VHD (we're gonna edit system files and trust me, you don't wanna sit through a 70 disk install twice) then boot back up and with vi edit /usr/lib/X11/Xconfig, uncomment 1024x768, change the server type to mach and enable the mouse by uncommenting the MS Serial mouse section then save and quit. Now xinit SHOULD start X correctly. startx will not work without also editing /usr/lib/X11/xinit/xserverrc.

    See this page for the source and a more in depth write up - https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/12/01/dell-unix-on-86box/
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