Technologists Notes

A Mastodon thread initiated by Erik Uden today unleashed discussion of two seemingly separate controversies: the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian crisis and the massive proliferation of Large Language Models (LLM) aka Machine Learning aka Artificial Intelligence.
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“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew”
(1975) “Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan

tl;dr with 86Box, obsolete hardware not needed

[update December 2021: files for 86Box install at https://technologists.com/DellUnix2.2.1/]

[update February 2024: [koko] knowing and accepting limitations]

With prodding and help from Antoni Sawicki, and bits of help from others, I’ve been trying to get Dell Unix to be sustainable on modern hardware. I’d succeeded in building our SVR4 from the last sources on turn of the century and older hardware. VMware and VirtualBox options seemed plausible, but so far we haven’t gotten those to have minimally useful networking, only had slow SLIP.

Though it has been around for years, and used by Antoni before, I was unaware of 86Box until late last year when Antoni posted about it, particularly: Dell Unix on 86Box “Today let me present Dell Unix more properly, with 1024×768, 256 colors video and proper networking using emulated VGA and NIC.” That post illustrates Mosaic, FrameMaker et al.

That left the question “What about using Dell SVR4 on 86Box to build SVR4 from the sources?”
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“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew”
(1975) “Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan

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tl;dr Updated 2015 MacBook Pro to Big Sur, regretted, restored Catalina from Time Machine, will probably get M1 MacBook (Air or Pro?) soon

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Apple Event — November 10

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on NEXTSTEP 486 on JAWS

April 30 [1993]: “Date on the declaration by CERN’s directors that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to CERN. A milestone document.”
December 25, 2021: Happy 31st birthday WorldWideWeb – the first browser!
July 1, 2021: Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web NFT fetches $5.4m at auction while rest of us gaze upon source code for $0
June 15, 2021: Web inventor Berners-Lee to auction original code as NFT

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Could not keep on keepin’ on”
(1971) “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – Bob Dylan

With working NEXTSTEP 3.2 in hand, I wondered if I could find sources for the original browser that Tim Berners-Lee wrote when he invented the World Wide Web at CERN, and if I could, could I get that browser working. Success!

Tim Berners-Lee WorldWideWeb on NEXTSTEP 3.3 on JAWS

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“Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Could not keep on keepin’ on”
(1971) “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – Bob Dylan

Working with the JAWS machine brought me back to thinking about NEXTSTEP 486 being developed on that machine. I only know part of the story first hand. Andy Groves and Steve Jobs were friends. Between the two of them, it was decided that NeXT should create a 486 version of NEXTSTEP and that JAWS would be the best development platform. If I recall correctly, it was late December 1991 that Steve, Avie Tevanian and a few other NeXT folks came to Michael’s conference room and told Michael, Glenn Henry, probably Dennis Jolly, some other Dell folks and me about their plans. Glenn and I went to hear Steve announce NEXTSTEP 486 and demo on JAWS at NeXTWorld in January 1992. Dennis was the primary sales VP providing impetus for joint Dell/NeXT efforts — Dennis and I would routinely go to the (in)famous NeXT headquarters in Redwood City to discuss our joint plans. (more…)