[rescue] 3b1/7300/unixpc/s4 history [was: Wanted - 3B2]

[Jay York]

Lovely to see so much interest in nearly 25 y.o. technology.

Some random thoughts:

I bought my PC7300 in 1988 from Digital Data Systems in Marietta, GA.   
It had been advertised in a Uni-Ops Technical Books Unix & C  
"magazine", which accidentally came across my desk after the original  
subscriber had been fired.

I think the O.S. was a SVR2 derivative, with some nice additions, like  
shared libraries.  I think it was badged CTIX.  I actually had  
occasion to do a next gen CTIX driver gig for Unisys around that time,  
for a Convergent 386-based box (NOT A PC).  By that point, CTIX was  
SVR3 based.  Poking through the header files, and kernel disassemblies  
revealed the similarities.

I still have this machine, although it's not been powered in years.   
Some time ago, the soldered in battery got replaced with a coin  
holder.  I think I have the voice board that went with it.  It got a  
ST-251/1 40MB upgrade early on.  I have tubes of DRAM still waiting to  
be soldered in - who has the time?  Never had StarLAN, always wanted  
to build an ISA bridge to get some networking onto the box.

I seem to recall that the video chip was *very* simple - I'm almost  
thinking straight-on bit-mapped.  The MMU was custom, and effectively  
just a single SRAM.

Cheers,

-Jay