HOW TO EMULATE AN OLD UNIX BOX
FIRST FAST CONCLUTIONS:
The “UNIX Certified” is marketing bullshit. OS X is a mishmash of Mach, BSD, and proprietary Apple components.
But it meets and complies with the UNIX 03 specification and is registered with the UNIX open group. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
GUI programming natively is proprietary (but well documented), or you can run an X11 client. Now back under your bridge!
Setting up emulator:
Windows XP / 7 / 8 / 10
The standard way to build on Windows is with Visual Studio. Visual Studio Express 2008 is required at a minimum, and is used as the baseline for all SIMH projects.
Simply open the following two projects in a new solution:
Visual Studio Projects\BuildROMs.vcprojVisual Studio Projects\3B2.vcproj
Make sure the 3B2 project depends on the BuildROMs project. You should then be able to build.
(Please note: Visual Studio 2019 is not yet supported as of June 2019)
Getting Software
The 3B2 line ran AT&T UNIX System V as its native operating system. To my knowledge, no other operating system was ever ported to them.
The very earliest 3B2s shipped with AT&T UNIX System V Release 1, but they almost immediately started shipping with AT&T UNIX System V Release 2, and after it became available, Release 3.
The last version of System V supported by the 3B2/310 and 3B2/400 was System V Release 3.2. Later 3B2 computers, such as the 3B2/600 and 3B2/1000, could run System V Release 4.
Installing UNIX From Scratch
If you would like to install UNIX from scratch, there is now a guide that will walk you through every step.
Installing UNIX On the AT&T 3B2 Simulator
I encourage you to try this method, but if you don’t want to go through all that work, keep reading.
It will be what you conclude:
AT&T 3B2 series of computers are historically significant, being the main porting platform for System V Release 3 UNIX. Unfortunately, the documentation for these computers has been nearly lost to the sands of time. They are, however, architecturally interesting machines, and [Seth Morabito] has been working for some time on reverse engineering them. Now, [Seth] is calling it: his AT&T 3B2/400 emulator is almost complete, resurrecting an ancient machine from the dead by studying UNIX source code.
The 3B2 line ran AT&T UNIX System V as its native operating system. To my knowledge, no other operating system was ever ported to them.
The very earliest 3B2s shipped with AT&T UNIX System V Release 1, but they almost immediately started shipping with AT&T UNIX System V Release 2, and after it became available, Release 3.
The last version of System V supported by the 3B2/310 and 3B2/400 was System V Release 3.2. Later 3B2 computers, such as the 3B2/600 and 3B2/1000, could run System V Release 4.
Multi-user UNIX computer developed by AT&T in 1985. It was part of the larger 3B family of UNIX computers based on the Western Electric WE32000 and WE32100 series of CPUs and peripherals. What makes the 3B2 historically interesting was its use as the primary porting platform for AT&T UNIX System V Release 3.
This simulator is part of the SIMH simulation framework, and emulates a standard desktop 3B2/400 with the following devices:
- WE32100 CPU
- WE32101 MMU
- WE32106 MAU
- 1MB, 2MB, or 4MB of system memory
- One 720KB floppy diskette
- One or two 30MB, 72MB, 135MB, or 161MB MFM hard disk drives.
- One 23MB QIC Cartridge Tape (CTC)
- One Ethernet Network Interface (NI)
- Up to twelve 4-port serial cards for remote terminals (PORTS)
My new conclutions after a while:
It was the age of Unix as something to drool over, the software either unavailable, or the hardware too expensive. But we kept reading about Unix, and there was a steady stream of reviews for machines that were capable enough, just too expensive for us.
It was a powerful and fast machine for the time. I did system test on them at the AT&T facility in Illinois. They were very reliable and very expensive. The Air Force bought many of them and we heard stories of them surviving being dropped off trucks and still working. In the pre-GUI days Air Force IT folks that was sent for training and administered the AT&T 3b2. I had been an Apple ] [ then turned PC programmer at the time and was completely amazed at this thing called Unix.
Unfortunately that machine came out just as PC networking (Novell Netware) just started it’s period of dominance and focus shifted away from Unix when implementing LAN technologies. Getting the Air Force contract was a big deal for the Computer Systems division. The project to develop the bid and the customized version was called Falcon. I got into trouble once when giving a tour I accidentally showed the guests the room where we were developing and testing the systems.
