AT&T Unix PC booting

[Kazuo1G]

0:18 I love the sounds it starts to make... =ω=

[soloboy1991]

now that's what i call old school shiznit'!

old but still kicks ass !

[grouchypus]

that takes me back- now I am dual-booting with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10, lol

[thejuan327]

enter the matrix

[Andermetal1]

I still could use easily that machine thanks to Linux and Free(PC)BSD .

Sure Nethack would compile even today on that machine 

[MrIntosh]

UNIX System V must have been great. never used it; only Version 5-7 on an emulator. BTW, was it me, or did I spot X11 in there? Also, in the commercial, that thing had color :P

[ratchetandclankf]

Remember when AT&T wasn't crap?

[lynx2cross]

Cool nostalgia, Hideous, but very cool.

[chailey666]

I have one of these as well. Sounds like you have one of the old Miniscribe hard drives in there. If you want to replace a drive they are MFM drives e.g. Seagate 2525...hard to find. They are amazing machines, and have features still lacking in most machines even today.

[hermes14666]

you didn't set a root password :D ?!?

btw, rip dennis

[gapheu]

Zaraz się popłaczę... :-)

[hamsterpineapple]

wow the hamster in your hard drive enclosure is really angry

[Eep386]

That's a very cool sounding stepper in that hard drive. Reminds me a little bit of Miniscribe steppers.

[FLAMEZ53]

even the keyboards sound old

[cusbrar1]

Did you ever get this backed up? I've got a couple 90's model SunSparcstations here SS2 - SS10 the drives in them are all SCSI and don't click but still sound really cool they scream :D like x-wing fighters

[djmaxmv]

my first computer

Printaform XT

whit 30mb hard drive MSDos V 2.2 i Still have the original Disk in a box whit the manual. and some games and software like Works for MSdos

i remember old times. when i play Dig Dag Do, California Games, Monopoly, Princ of percia ETC

[merkur32123]

@djmaxmv But this is NOT about DOS! it's about a UNIX Computer! There are no games for UNIX! UNIX was used for REAL Work.

[psp12345678998765432]

@exposed97 I've managed to find a program for every one of my needs.. But then again, I might have changed my needs.. I'v been using Linux for 3-4 years now.

[devztube]

Wow! Computers really did used to make that noise you always hear in movies.

[psp12345678998765432]

@exposed97 That'd be kinda horrid.. You'd have to buy a computer from each company just to run others companies programs, and probably opensource ones too. I prefer linux.

[nicolajkl]

It's a Unix system, i know this!

[DerGraf1997]

Pretty cool

[Deliciousfruit233]

Man, that hard drive is LOUD.

[TheWilliamMaster]

better than vista.

[tehfailcopter]

CAN IT RUN GMOD maybe

[OrphanSweden]

pretty similar to my W7 laptop booting :)

[TheNikolson84]

Is this going to explode? :)

[primiti1]

es genial q buena onda :D, saludos de argentina!

[SolidSnyder]

Seriously cool :D

Crazy to think I could probably operate that thing, having played with Linux, some twenty five years later or so

[TheWilliamMaster]

STILL better than vista

[summer20105707]

Super cool system dude.

[tweetyaja]

Before AT&T was a phone carrier, they would create UNIX PC!

[deltaray3]

@tweetyaja Hahahaha. Um, AT&T was always a phone carrier. Before your grandfather was born, they were creating telephones.

[vtx24alpha]

Good luck backing up that data. You can get the old BSD stuff from the Unix Heritage Society but I haven't found any AT&T Unix.

[gli7utubeo]

Too bad Bell Labs ended up in /dev/null

[glowcode]

@gli7utubeo yeah, it took too much of the economies ram

[MATILLEGE]

my pc is 25 years less old and sounds exactly the same...

only a bit more silent

[Bisqwit]

Woow. The harddrive noises are awesome. I had already almost forgot that stuff!

[BeamingSplendor]

thank you for uploading this great video

[do0med1981]

I bet there are hamsters on wheels inside making the machine work. I'm pretty sure of this cause I heard them nom-nomming on something when the pc was booting lol :))

[LayZounet]

No root password ! Come on ! (just kidding :p)

[trustbut]

I am an original owner, and have my (broken) one in the garage. There's no network -- the thing to do to unload stuff would be to tar the drive and feed something like ckermit out the serial port, and then into a serial port on a current machine (also running ckermit). There's only like 10 or 20M, and this can be done at 19.2 kbits; it'll take a while, but it'll be good to get stuff off. I have some things on my HD I'd like to get off myself, actually.

-dB

[asams1996]

ITS A UNIX SYSTEM.... I KNOW THIS!!!!

[climagic]

Enter for the root password, is this Richard Stallman's machine?

[merkur32123]

LOL, 'ls -l' as we know it today worked back then the same way? Cool!

[bockebg]

Btw, there is a site or two were you can still find some additional software for the machine. If you still have it. I see the video is 2 years old.

[bockebg]

Impresive little machine. It has 512kb to 4 mb ram and is based on Motorola 68010. I'm not sure if that machine could run even the first versions of Linux. But this AT&T Unix works ok. For this type of machine (it's from middle 80s) this isn't slow. I even wonder how it runs at all. We all have that conception of Unix as a big and needy OS. :)

UnixPC comes with a windowing system called Mgr. Have you tried it? The resource on it are very sparse. It would be nice to see video of how it works. :)

[gnuchris]

was anyone else thinking the first command he would type was going to be ls ?

[alos31]

awesome

[sundownup1]

Does it run Windows? LOL JK

[0xFFender]

Nice - no root password.

That or you typed it quickly. I don't have sound on so I couldn't listen for keypresses.

That's really awesome, and great that you didn't just throw it out. I'm also interested in a HDD dump - maybe, if you do dump it, you should put it on rapidshare/etc, and make a link in the description. Note that doing that is illegal, since it is copyrighted software - but if they're gonna say that, ask them where you can buy it :P.

[hanrinch]

i wanna run cysis on it!!!

[merkur32123]

Wow! I want to buy a copy of that OS! Where can i get it for i386?

[hookemdan1010]

seems alittle slow.......... may need to defrag

[chattychar]

that noise sounds familar.

[VollundLeysing]

I see there is an "a.out" file in the directory you list. Did you or the previous owner write/compile a program on this computer? If so, do you know which compiler you used?

[TheNovum]

cool!!

How dees the keyboard feel?



[gilbert4321]

epic

[keinegravitation]

Did you tried "uname -a" I'd like to know, what it says.

[Babkockdood]

I love noisy keyboards.

[ZILOGz80VIDEOS]

I wont one

[6364gg2]

It's called cp / to the floppy disk drive. I'd be more than happy to supply some as I am in need for one.

[jibblejubs]

This makes me so hard

[scott93257]

AWESOME!!!!

[pioneerz450]

AT&T The computers with the future built in.

[HumanTurkey]

Really love the sound of the keyboard. I certainly want computers today to be very robust like in those days.

[code123ns]

it's a good thing that you remember the root password :)

[framk20]

3.5MB HDD?

damn that's huge

[GreasyPragma]

I LOVE the sound of that keyboard. Brings back memories.

[phoxetis]

Hah! keep up that spirit. That hard disc sound brings back some memories. Thanks for sharing :)

[bamdadkhan]

you should make a backup of the hard drive asap, for the sake of preserving history (and you should also send me a copy, lol).

[lordtaw]

@bamdadkhan I would love to dump an image of the disk. But as to how to preform a backup is beyond me. If anyone has any input as to ho, please message me.

[pocketprobe]

@lordtaw I would suggest using dd with counts and offsets to clone the hard drive to floppy disks. Then on your Linux box use dd to get the floppy peices off. Use cat to reassemble them and then you should be able to mount it.

[qopha]

@lordtaw AFAIR Linux does have a MFM/RLL driver (which is not compiled by default, of course).

If you can get a PC with ISA bus and that interface (neither hard to find), you may simply plug the HD and dump the contents of /dev/whatever to a file.

[lordtaw]

@qopha Interesting! I still have a bunch of 386/486/Pentium I/II/III motherboards kicking around with ISA of course :-D

That certainly is worth a try. Thanks for that information.

[lordtaw]

@qopha Interesting! I still have a bunch of 386/486/Pentium I/II/III motherboards kicking around with ISA of course :-D

That certainly is worth a try. Thanks for that information.

One more thing, Any particular MFM card to go with?

[qopha]

@lordtaw Prepare yourself for a journey then. ;)

I _think_ that MFM/RLL cards (pick the right one or both) had the same hardware implementation.

Remember that such HDs are not like SCSI/ATA/etc and you have to manually specify the HD parameters (cylinders etc). I guess the Linux module has parameters for that.

If you specify that wrong you may end with garbled data and even damage the HD.

I suggest you to pick a (working) MFM/RLL HD to test before attempting to connect that HD.

[qopha]

@lordtaw Also remember that such HDs usually have no auto-parking, you'll have to do that manually before powering-down. That AT&T Unix probably does that automatically when you shut down the machine, but I don't know how it is under Linux.

Ah, if you replace the AT&T's HD with one with different geometry (that is, a different model) you'll need to pick one that is equal or exceedes each of the parameters of the current one (bigger size alone does not necessarily mean that!).

[qopha]

@lordtaw Hmm.. I've just read the video description, probably I've written many obvious things to you.

Unintended patronization. oops

[jbasniakgm112]

@lordtaw I hope you dump an image of this hard drive :P. I would like to look at what all is on there, just for curiosity sake. Ancient UNIX has always interested me.

[bamdadkhan]

@lordtaw i don't know why youtube didn't senf me e-mail about these messages.. personally, i'd try to go the network route, i.e. if the at&t pc has a network card in it. use a modern linux/unix pc as an nfs server, mount an export on the at&t machine, and dd the hard drive into a file.

did you end up trying to directly hook up the drive to an isa pc? this is so exciting. :)

[bamdadkhan]

@lordtaw i think this project should be rather interesting: philpem{dot}me{dot}uk{slash}co­de{slash}3b1emu

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@lordtaw Have you done so already, sir? I may wish to get a copy too.

[singletona082]

@lordtaw Send that drive to Jason Scott from textfiles.

Seriously. Dude's preserving computing history at pretty much any cost.

[Membrane556]

@lordtaw

If the computer has some form of networking it might be possible to image the drive with dd and save it over a mounted network volume.

There's also a way to network over serial but I never tried it so I don't know the details.

[jbevren]

@lordtaw if its a unix system and has a serial port, you could try tar cf - / |compress > /dev/cua0 after setting the serial port up. Prepare another system to save a binary stream from its serial port to a file. Files will be captured. You can also use dd to dump the disk to a serial port similarly. Takes ages though ;)

[merkur32123]

@lordtaw Can't you just DD the Disk into a image?

[jvillavic]

@bamdadkhan I wish today's programmers had the same vision of those who gave us unix and c.

Pure genius!

[RaminHAL9001]

"I wish today's programmers had the same vision of those who gave us unix and c."

@jvillavic - There are some brilliant computer scientists out there like Kerningham and Ritche. The problem is, when you are working with cutting edge stuff, no one will recognize your work as genius until well after the fact.

I put my money on Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow. Ironically they work at Microsoft Research, (the sort-of anti-unix), but their GPL'd technology "Haskell" is a game changer, I believe.

[marlls1989]

@jvillavic If today's programmers had the minimal ideal about the hardware they are developing to. Programs would be a lot more efficient. Less resources would be wasted as overhead, doing stuff the lazy programmer didn't want to.

Today's programmers are more worried about making their codes look nice and reusable than making it fast. The whole Object Oriented scene is just a huge bloated useless ball of code made by bad programmers.

[marlls1989]

@marlls1989 At my work I really prefer to do things directly in assembly if possible. If a higher level language is required, C do it...

[Cenu911]

@jvillavic please forgive my question, but what was that vision? (This isn't a rhetorical question, I really want to know.)

[jvillavic]

@Cenu911 I do respect today's programmers, specially the ones that produce tons of beautiful C++/ObjC/Java code. I'm just saying that the engineers from the 60's and 70's were the visionaries, because they created from scratch the basis of modern computing. No offense, but today the changes are more "evolutionary" than "revolutionary". The new kids are more interested in writting fancy html5 angry-birds clones, rather than make a push for the ultimate architecture for the future.

[goochbuntu]

@jvillavic true and you get people like me that just know how to use the system. i enjoy linux and using arch but by no means do i understand the code or how to do anything like that. it would have been. hard to create commands from scratch. no teachers or anything like that. no internet to ask questions to. just figuring out on your own. lots of respect for the people who made the unix kernel and unix operating system and programs

[fgc2001]

@bamdadkhan XD THAT´S RIGHT

LOL

[pchapman905]

Ha! I used to own one of these. I bought one back in 1991 or so to teach myself Unix. I had a HUGE voice-coil 80 meg HD in it, which made it much more usable and quicker. I got the "red wall" of AT&T printed Unix documentation. That machine was tons of fun.

There's a huge root hole in these: send yourself an email, click the mail icon at the top, and enter "!" at the mail prompt. Tada! Root shell! Oops.

[leereyno]

That does sound like a miniscribe.  I had a 3650 that sounded a lot like that.

[KB3PNC]

I can recognize that sound anywhere! That's a MiniScribe hard drive! Model 3212, guaranteed!

[douro20]

I wonder if anyone has tried to run the m68k version of Debian on one of these...

[mrmartinmartin]

That's so awsome I love how it makes a noise and thinks before it gives a response, very retro.

[iShadeSx7]

The sound of the HDD gives me a boner... lol,, xD jk...

[girrcky]

I Second that sir!

[Messerschmitt262a2a]

whats the firm of the hard drive? can you make a video with spinup?

[toorlooo]

I really love the harddrive sound!

[lostinxlation]

Beautiful.

[Arkaniad]

want.

[rwb1955]

Great old Pc and when you can tell me more about the titan I used to own a 1989 superliner with e9 500 18 speed neway airride my ex wife got it miss the bulldog not her

[DarthScape]

nice

[HSTCalvin]

Nice to see an antique PC still being able to boot up!

:o)

[fullmontycarlo]

My roommate had one in 1986. That damned drive would wake me up in the middle of the night.

[EpsilonProcess]

I have 3 of these beasts. I bought a PC 7300 in 1992 at the Trenton Computer Festival. It was in great shape. The guy gave me 3 boxes full of manuals, docs and software. I used it to help me with C language programming assignemnts at college (we used a 3B2 for Unix and C classes). A friend who worked in a former NYNEX building got rid of one and gave it to me, which I've just started trying to restore. I'm trying to find more of them to salvage. Fun vintage machine to tinker with.

[whetphish]

This is awesome! Anyone know where I can get one in the UK? Pity about the 3B1. Couldn't you get an old MFM hard disk on eBay and use that?

[ideologger]

Man, I had one of these! It sat next to my NeXT Cube. I don't remember for the life of me what I did with it- I think it might've ended up in the trash back in 1999 when I went off to college. I can't remember where I got it, somewhere for free around 96-97.

Back in those days, I wasn't able to find much info online- only a few references. A darn shame, because 10 years later there might be someone who'd at least want it to play with.

Fun little machine with that funky text-mode WIMP/GUI.

[macheads101]

I saw a.out there. Is there cc on the computer?

[macheads101]

DUDE THAT IS SOO COOL!

[nickmctrick]

Nice machine. I own a PC7300 as well and gave my 3B1 to my brother. I noticed "a.out" in your directory list. Do you have the developer tools installed?

[lordtaw]

I have never installed any software but the previous owner was in fact a programmer. He and his brothers used to sell these things and write custom software for customers.

[Superfreaxx]

Why is the text green and not grey like MSDOS?

[DynamioPL]

Because this monitor is showing only green and black colour.

[TalksWithDirt]

In 1995 I was too poor to have a PC at home so I got one of these old beasts. I used the 1200 baud modem to dial into the campus network. Even in '95 I was stunned to see how far *nix had come. There was so much missing in this version of unix. Then I finally got some old coax a recovered vampire tap and a 3 port breakout, two old 486's and one Sun 3/60 and made myself a network. I never got the Unix PC on it. Ah, the bad old days.

[sslaxx]

Nice to see a bit of old kit still working!

[wisteela]

That is fantastic!

[daand12]

Name seagate but has it a st-506 interface or a scsi?

[daand12]

What's the name of the hard drive ?

[DURAMATRIX112]

seagate st-506

[KB3PNC]

Wrong. ST-506 means it's an MFM interface. The hard drive itself is a MiniScribe, not a Seagate. Since it's 10 megs it's probably a 5-1/4" HH model 3412. I can identify MiniScribe drives a mile away just by the sound.

[lordtaw]

" I can identify MiniScribe drives a mile away just by the sound."

That how you know your getting old in this industry ;-).

[KB3PNC]

I'll trust a MiniScribe 3650 connected to an Adaptec ACB-2002A HBA over any SATA drive any day of the week.

I'd just have to figure out how to get Windows 7 to issue the 'PARK' command during shutdown..... ;)

[evilunixuser1]

@lordtaw - - LOL - true. I was running systems when removable disk packs were the norm. DA, SA, ISAM, VSAM disk storage, card readers, the whole magilla.

[Membrane556]

@KB3PNC

I had a Mac SE back in the early 90s that had a 20MB 3.5" SCSI miniscribe for it's internal drive that sounded just like this.