Hi recently received a very interesting\u00a0 message as a comment to one of the other pages on the website. It seems that there is another person out there who’s seen one of these fascinating machines.<\/p>\n
William Corcoran used one a few years ago and kindly posted this information.<\/p>\n
Hello,\u00a0 I would like to comment on the Motorola S2000. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I have been searching for years for this machine.\u00a0 I can’t believe I found someone who has one.\u00a0 It means so much to me. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I would love to share with you what I know.\u00a0 This little box was the DPU (data processing unit).\u00a0 It connected to other similar boxes that contained hard disk drives (50 MB) and tapes (WANGTEK). <\/strong><\/p>\n This is the first box that I learned UNIX on. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Way back in 1986 when this box was hot, the disks would click so loudly as the heads moved.\u00a0 I have so many stories to share about this box. <\/strong><\/p>\n However, I will tell you that this little thing was years ahead of its time.\u00a0 Unix was nearly virtualized!\u00a0\u00a0 You see, the main OS was an executive call ISOS.\u00a0 And, little UNIX actually ran as a process under ISOS.\u00a0 It was the coolest thing. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, it was initially AT&T System III and then System V. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The box had some really cool diagnostic software.\u00a0 The company I worked for at the time (1986) used this box as their main system for word processing.\u00a0 We used Motorola Codex terminals. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, this is the box I cut my teeth on with UNIX.\u00a0\u00a0 When you signed on to ISOS, you could do a “ps” equivalent and you would actually see UNIX running as a process.\u00a0 At night when everyone went home, I would spend hours learning UNIX.\u00a0 Also, I normally would create a stand alone backup of the hard disks.\u00a0 Then, by the end of the night, I would invariably hose the OS by accident (trying to tweak it).\u00a0 Then, I would have to restore the entire disk (block copy via dd) from backup tape. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I was so naive to not really understand how dangerous it was to restore the disk by way of stand alone recovery.\u00a0 Yet, I think I restored the disk over 20 times over the course of 1 year.\u00a0 It never let me down. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In the old days, in order to power off UNIX, you had to flush the disks: <\/strong><\/p>\n sync; <\/strong> And then turn off the box really quickly! <\/strong><\/p>\n I remember the awful feeling of crashing the system, fsck would clean it all up and then: <\/strong><\/p>\n BOOT UNIX; NO SYNC! <\/strong><\/p>\n So, you had to prevent the in core copy of the FS from overwriting the work that FSCK just did on the root volume. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I would always seem to get it to a point where FSCK would start screaming: <\/strong><\/p>\n UNREF INODE XXXX, CLEAR?\u00a0 (Y\/N): <\/strong><\/p>\n And, it would be an infinite loop of endless messages! \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n TIme to put the restore tape in! \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n (This little S2000 is so important to me!\u00a0 Take care of her!)<\/strong><\/p>\n and also this piece…<\/p>\n One more note on the Motorola S2000.<\/strong><\/p>\n The console was assigned to tty6. Thats why you did not get anything out of it when you connected to tty1.<\/strong><\/p>\n Try using tty6<\/strong><\/p>\n Thanks very much for that William. Next time I get the S2000 I’ll try tty6 and see how I get on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi recently received a very interesting\u00a0 message as a comment to one of the other pages on the website. It seems that there is another person out there who’s seen one of these fascinating machines. William Corcoran used one a few years ago and kindly posted this information. Hello,\u00a0 I would like to comment on … Continue reading There’s someone out there.<\/span>
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