Hacker News Reader

Comment by spamizbad | Hacker News Reader

Xenix was weirdly one of the first OSes I was ever exposed to. In the early 90s I got my hands on a trash-picked TRS-80 Model 12 that was fully upgraded to a Model 16 - along with a 15MB Hard disk that booted Xenix. Its previous owner gave me its root password. Technically, this was my first computer. I checked out "Understanding Unix A Conceptual Guide" from the library to try stuff out and immediately became obsessed with Unix. Sadly it was not long for this world and died from a power surge just 3 months later :(

A few years later when I we finally got a modern family PC I immediately decided to dual-boot Linux.

View on HN

I worked for Deere in several phases of traveling around the country, installing computer systems for dealerships.

Texas Instruments was the supplier, and the first round of TI 1300 series were 386s.

https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/texas_instruments_adds_lo...

This series was upgraded to the TI 1500 class on Motorola 68000 nu-bus, running a real UNIX port.

I installed terminals, ran RS232 lines, and did basic admin work (mostly enabling ttys). The app software was mostly written in COBOL, and Ryan McFarland was the compiler at home base; using built-in ISAM (no formal database, AFAIK).

I was putting these into dealerships with dirt floors. It was an interesting time in my youth.

Edit: the "GOSUB STARTGAME" on their intro cover fills me with confidence in their port of the development tools.

Good memories. My first job at age 14 was working on Xenix boxes (386es) with a bunch of Wyse terminals connected to serial port multiplex cards customizing and configuring medical/dental software for local practitioners. Created my muscle memory for vi on Xenix as well. It was mind-blowing how well it ran on such limited horsepower back in the day.

In the mid 80s, my high school used a similar setup on a TRS-80 with I think 8 serial terminals for their COBOL classes, replacing a Burroughs minicomputer with an actual cardpunch and card reader. It was cool hitting college already knowing vi, a shell, and how to write crap to other student's ttys.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com