brian@electra.la.locus.com (Brian D. Horn) (11/27/90)
In article <1990Nov19.113340@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com> mjones@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com writes: > >In article <1990Nov13.150450.18758@watserv1.waterloo.edu>, hurley@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Patrick Hurley) writes: >> >> Has anyone out there ever gotten aix to run on clones? Actually AIX/PS2 started on a Compaq 386 as IBM couldn't get the PS/2s shipped early enough. These worked at LCC until about a year ago. ... >Ummm...copy protecting? Not quite. IBM has never claimed that AIX will work >on anything other than PS/2's, and support has only been announced on >specific models of those. Most clones are clones only down to the BIOS >level, and have various bits of hardware underneath, so a "clone" is >actually a different machine to AIX. Would you be surprised if you tried to >install it on, say, a Sun i386 and it didn't work? The fact is that AIX is >optimized for the PS/2 hardware, not crippled to keep it from working on >other hardware. There is no guarantee of AIX running on non-PS/2 machines, however it will run on non-MCA machines (just don't complain when something doesn't work). The biggest problem one might run into is the console driver, but if the card is VGA compatible even that might work. Other device drivers - you're on your own. The code is not especially optimized for PS/2 hardware, but there probably are a few assumptions about the hardware that are implicit (such as non-volatile RAM availability) that might well cause problems on other boxes. N.B.: I (and IBM and LCC) make NO promises or guarantees about AIX running on non-supported hardware (or the accuracy of the above statements). Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: AIX/PS2 Running on Clones? Summary: References: <1990Nov13.150450.18758@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1990Nov19.113340@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com> Followup-To: Distribution: comp Organization: Locus Computing Corporation, Inglewood, CA Keywords: In article <1990Nov19.113340@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com> mjones@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com writes: > >In article <1990Nov13.150450.18758@watserv1.waterloo.edu>, hurley@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Patrick Hurley) writes: >> >> Has anyone out there ever gotten aix to run on clones? Actually AIX/PS2 started on a Compaq 386 as IBM couldn't get the PS/2s shipped early enough. These worked at LCC until about a year ago. ... >Ummm...copy protecting? Not quite. IBM has never claimed that AIX will work >on anything other than PS/2's, and support has only been announced on >specific models of those. Most clones are clones only down to the BIOS >level, and have various bits of hardware underneath, so a "clone" is >actually a different machine to AIX. Would you be surprised if you tried to >install it on, say, a Sun i386 and it didn't work? The fact is that AIX is >optimized for the PS/2 hardware, not crippled to keep it from working on >other hardware. There is no guarantee of AIX running on non-PS/2 machines, however it will run on non-MCA machines (just don't complain when something doesn't work). The biggest problem one might run into is the console driver, but if the card is VGA compatible even that might work. Other device drivers - you're on your own. The code is not especially optimized for PS/2 hardware, but there probably are a few assumptions about the hardware that are implicit (such as non-volatile RAM availability) that might well cause problems on other boxes. N.B.: I (and IBM and LCC) make NO promises or guarantees about AIX running on non-supported hardware (or the accuracy of the above statements).
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (11/27/90)
In article <19900@oolong.la.locus.com> brian@electra.la.locus.com (Brian D. Horn) writes: > There is no guarantee of AIX running on non-PS/2 machines, however >it will run on non-MCA machines (just don't complain when something >doesn't work). The biggest problem one might run into is the console >driver, but if the card is VGA compatible even that might work. Other >device drivers - you're on your own. I'd imagine that the disk driver would be a possible source of problems, since IBM's embedded ESDI disks have a rather unusual controller which does not look at all like your typical MFM/RLL AT-bus controller. (I know AIX PS/2 1.2 added support for the Mod 55 with its MFM disk. I don't know whether it looks like most AT-bus type controllers.) -- Steve Dyer dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu