malcolm@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Malcolm Campbell) (03/15/91)
I have just acquired a second-hand 286 PC, and, separately, a very old copy of Xenix. I have good knowledge of PC's and UNIX, but very little XENIX knowledge so Im looking for some help. The version of Xenix I have is Sperry Xenix 2.0. I think its rebadged SCO Xenix (presumably 2.0) but Im not sure. It claims to be binary compatible with Microsoft Xenix 3.0, but Ive never heard of a Xenix numbered greated than 2.x.x. Problems: 1) It doesnt know about VGA, and the display runs out of sync if a VGA card (which my PC has on-board) is connected as soon as Xenix boots. It doesnt even work if the VGA card is set to EGA-mode. It works with Hercules, and with a real EGA card, but also not with a plug-in VGA card. This isnt a real problem for now, Im quite happy to run Xenix on a Hercules. 2) This is more of a problem. It doesnt recognize 3.5" disks, and I cant fit anything else inside the case - installing it involved ribbon cables everywhere. Since I can set the drive type to be 96tpi, 9 sectors/track I would have thought I could have got it to read/write at least low density 3.5" disks. No hope on high-density ones. Also, it wont read DOS 3.x or DOS 4.x disks properly. The command dosdir gets stuck in a loop and prints the directory over and over again. The manual talks about DOS2.x and DOS 1.x disks so I presume there is some difference it cant cope with. I havent tried reading a DOS 3.x hard disk - but will do so soon.. If anyone can help with any of this Id be very grateful - I cant afford to buy a new version of Xenix, its very expensive here - expecially since I would want the Development and Text Processing Kits as well. Im hoping there will be some workaround for now.. Thanks, --- Malcolm