Tandy Xenix (was Re: Menu{Master, Maestro, etc} question(s)) from Filepro-list Digest, Vol 40, Issue 16

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, May 11, 2007, wdg3rd at comcast.net wrote:
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 09:35:58 -0400
>> From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com>
>> Subject: Re: Menu{Master,Maestro,etc} question(s)
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Message-ID: <20070510133558.GF3976 at cgi.jachomes.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>> On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 09:21:21AM -0400, Kenneth Brody wrote:
>> > Quoting Bill Campbell (Tue, 8 May 2007 21:33:41 -0700):
>> > > Gordon!  That's the one who's name I forgot.  He was definately on the
>> > > marketing/management side, not very technical at all (he left Xenix
>> > > machines at the root login in his Radio Shack Computer center while
>> > > hosting Seattle Unix Group meetings.
>> > 
>>> And nobody took the time to give him a first-hand demonstration on why
>> this was a "Bad Thing"[tm]?  :-)
>
>> Ah... a good baggy-pantsing.
>
>> I haven't pantsed someone in a long time.
>
>> I *did*, though, get a memo sent out to all the Computer Center
>> managers telling them to set passwords on their Xenix boxen.  I'm told
>> it mentioned me by name, but I never did get to see a copy of it.

>Don't remember seeing it, though most of my RSCC managers let me see all
>Xenix-related memos, at least if they knew what was good for them.  (I did
>RSCC training and tech support for over five years -- few managers and far
>less sales types who didn't graduate to management lasted nearly that long,
>I outlived at least eight managers at three RSCCs before the ATSOs were
>formed).

>I was the CSR.  I owned the store demo systems.  Since for much of that
>time I was also the Instructor, they had to wait for class breaks to demo
>Xenix with more than the simple demo login (password demo) capability.
>Because those turkeys on the sales floor couldn't even demo Dancing Demon
>without breaking something.

I first saw Xenix in late 1982 when I was managing the RSCC in the
Congressional Plaza shopping center in Rockville Maryland when my CSR Jeff
(I forget his last name) came back from training in Fort Worth.  I borrowed
his manuals for a weekend, finding that here, at last, was a real Operating
System (I had 12 years in mainframes, mostly Burroughs MCP, before going to
work for Radio Shack in 1980).  Jeff was amazed that I understood it, and
then I got Thompson's book on Unix (the blue one that was probably the only
Unix book available at the time), and learned Xenix by reading that and
digging through system scripts.

I first met John Esak when he was working at the RSCC at 18th and M streets
in D.C.  when I was managing the ``X'' department at 19th and K streets,
until I was ``demoted'' from the RSCC back to another ``X'' at 19th and M
in D.C.  My ``promotion'' from 19th and K to the RSCC dropped my income to
about 25% of what it had been.  I stayed at L street from May 1983 through
October, giving my notice the day I got back from a week in Hong Kong,
courtesy of Radio Shack (it was great entering a sales contest in a brand
new ``X'' department where there was no sales history, and I was generally
beating the sales of all the RSCCs in the area :-).

I had missed making a trip to Switzerland while I was managing the 19th and
K street store as it was for the top 2 managers in each division.  Our
division included New York City, and I was 3rd in the division, and 3rd in
the U.S. as well.

>As it was, I wound up reinstalling the OS on the demo system at least every
>other week -- cumulative damage from sales types rebooting the box and
>bypassing the fsck.

I never had those problems, but then my CSR and sales people were pretty
well indoctrinated, as were most of the other computer people in the D.C.
Region as I did several training sessions for them.

>Our first pre-release Xenix system was passworded to the hilt the first day
>it was installed and permissions were set to a little more secure than
>default.  Helped that I had played with Xenix a bit in my classroom setup
>for a couple of weeks courtesy of a (big) customer who had a beta copy and
>we thought we could save time in passing the problems to Fort Worth if I
>knew what he was talking about.

>Yes, Tandy Xenix 68k through version 3.2 could (can -- I tested a couple
>years back on my 6k) run from a floppy.  After PG&E killed my HD (my
>personal book and LP databases on [yes, it was bootleg, an RSCC CSR and
>later an ATSO CSR were poorly paid but had access to a bunch of software
>and hardware] Profile 16+ were backed up), I still ran my 16 for a while,
>root and swap on drive 0, /usr on drive 1, to play hack.  (By that time,
>1989, most of my attention at home was on my 3B1, which almost anybody will
>admit was a prettier machine).

I got rid of my Model 12/6000 around 1989.  At that time I had four 70MB
hard drives mounted in a full-sized tower case with the controller board
mounted where the main board would normally go.  I had gotten thoroughly
tired of the shoddy cabling and power relays on the Radio Shack hard drive
cases so built my own.  This didn't hold a candle to some of Bob Snapp's
hardware, but it got the job done for mu until I got my Tandy 4000 up and
running, which at that time seemed to be faster than some NCR Tower systems
running Unix I was using at client sites.

One of my more interesting projects that I did on the Tandy 4000 running
Tandy's version of SCO Xenix was a conversion program I wrote for Microrim
to convert old rBase applications to rBase 3.0.  I wrote this in C on the
Tandy 4000, cross-compiling it for DOS.  I still have that 4000 box sitting
on a shelf, last used running DRDOS to burn EPROMS.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo
of the entire earth on it. On the back it said: ``Wish you were here''.
		-- Steven Wright