Saturday, September 4, 2010

A/UX - Apple UNIX

A/UX - Apple UNIX

A/UX was Apple's solution to Sun workstations in an attempt to break into the business and server market. Since the Macintosh could only boot into its standard system software, the UNIX layer ran on top of System 7 as seen in the screenshot image (A/UX 3.1.1, the latest version created).

A/UX 3.1.1 required a 68030 CPU with FPU. A popular choice was the Mac IIci with cache card, or a Quadra 950 which offered the most powerful solution. A/UX does not run on all 68040 based systems. In particular, AV systems such as the 840av will crash upon boot. 68LC040 based systems are incompatible due to the lack of FPU, and interestingly enough when a full 68040 CPU is installed in some of these systems it was still unable to run.

I have personally run A/UX 3.1 on a IIci and Quadra 610. Failed attempts include the 840av and LC475 with full 68040. My next attempt will be an SE/30 which are known to run it just fine, albeit with a memory upgrade.

9 comments:

  1. oh wow i remembered these when I was i elementary school

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  2. Really original man! Keep it up.

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  3. A/UX was an System V based UNIX system which was compatible with Pre-PowerPC Macintosh software. So it was UNIX with the Mac compatibility layer on top. A bit like Mac OS X is today.

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  4. I have installed and run perfectly A/UX 3.1.1 on my Macintosh SE/30 with 20Mb RAM and 250Mb hard disk; despite the fact that some faq on the internet says that the SE/30 will not run 3.1.1 or not run it reliably.
    Since I created a MacPartition of 80Mb, I even managed to upgrade the System from which the Mac boots (which is NOT the same System that the Mac runs in emulation under A/UX.) You simply need to remove the automatic startup of A/UX, and install the newer version. When you want to run A/UX, simply boot into the System, and run the A/UX loader by hand. Be sure to boot the System with the shift-key pressed so as to disable any extensions, otherwise A/UX will hang (MODE32 and 32bit extensions in particular)

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