[SPARCbook] Precisionbook on ebay

[Nathan J. Mehl]

> I have run into a lot of people who have somehow aquired sparcbooks
> and other esoteric Unix hardware, and simply do not know that it
> does not run Windows or Mac OS. They think a computer is a computer.
> I was given an Apple Netserver (An AIX variant from Apple based on
> PowerPC, nearly identical to the RS6000... it was the only truly
> native Apple Unix box, 

Actually not quite true.  Apple shipped _one_ native unix box, several
years before the ANS boxes: The Apple Workgroup Server 950.  It came
out of the box running A/UX 4.01, and the A/UX version of AppleShare.

A/UX was Apple's mutant version of SVR2+MacOS7, which was roundly
despised by just about everyone.  It would be mostly an historical
footnote, except that its basic conceptual architecture (*nix
underworks with most of the MacOS API and graphical widgets loosely
nailed on top) is eerily similar to NextStep 6.0, er, I mean "MacOS X".

Yours for more pedantry,

-n

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