I was working at Sequent at the time. Sequent made x86 based, massively SMP (up to 64 CPU's, combinations of 386s, 486s and Pentiums) machines. They were running a SysV R4 based OS, (Dynix/PTX) after moving away from a BSD 4 (Dynix) unix in 1991 or 1992.
They also had a 'PC Hardware' build of Dynix/PTX which ran on standard PC hardware, albeit with specific SCSI cards and network cards (Adaptec and Intel, so it wasn't too out of the ballpark). It wasn't SOLD as that, you bought a Sequent server, it just happened to be the size and shape of a full tower PC. This was pretty exciting to me, as having a 'real' Unix on PC hardware was barely in the realms of possibility to me. Sure, there was SCO, but it was terrible, and insanely expensive. Minix was cool, but it was a pain to load and run. Dynix booted from CD (*impressive, at the time*) and pretty much just worked. Anyway, there was all this talk about this new OS called Linux, which ran on 386s, and worked with all the GNU stuff. And you could get it on a couple of floppies. Anthony Rumble and I had been friends for a long time (since the old dialup BBS days), and after seeing him posting on linux mailing list at the time (..of which I can find no trace now, after an admittedly quick search) he gave me a boot/root floppy set to play with. That pretty much hooked me. Sequent had their own 64kpbs connection to the US, which then connected to the internet, which I pretty much commandeered overnight, downloading kernels, floppys, keeping up to date with HJ Liew's Boot/Root packages, and several times downloading the complete SLS packages, which took a huge amount of floppies. I was then uploading all this stuff to various BBSs in NSW, and also allowing FIDOnet file requests to pick up files from my own FIDO node. One of the major BBSs was 500cc, which was quite a large multi-line TBBS, and I stayed in contact with the owner (Dean Mackin) for many years. He managed to somehow get picked up as an Australian Linux distribution site, and was getting free magazines and CDs for YEARS. Anyway, I was making noises about starting a Sydney Linux Users Group, but was somewhat uncertain of the name. Did we really want to be called SLUG? The concensus was yes, and.. Well, you guys were off. We had at least one meeting at the Sequent offices in North Sydney which now appears to be a Raine and Horne building.. http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=north+sydney&sll=-25.335448,135.745076&sspn=53.165153,89.208984&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=North+Sydney+New+South+Wales&ll=-33.836103,151.205494&spn=0.00307,0.005445&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=-33.836017,151.20546&panoid=dm0eqJs48BfvT3fpT7yX6A&cbp=12,271.84,,0,-3.96 although the awnings are still the Sequent colour! Sequent decided to move to NT[1], I left, and was off the net for a bit. I ended up starting an ISP a couple of years later, and was (of course) purely linux based. As a rough timeframe, I remember that I had a couple of machines that were vunerable to the F0 0F C7 C8 bug, and was most annoyed about Intel only providing patches for one of the BSDs, which were almost instantly reverse engineered for Linux. So, that's pretty much all that I can remember. I hope that that jogs some of the other old-timers memories who might be able to fill in the gaps in my (notoriously awful) memory! --Rob [1] I was reading through the Wikipedia site for Sequent, and it says there that they built machines for NT _and_ Unix. This is incorrect, to my recollection. They were re-targeting themselves as a Windows NT shop, and were going to allow the Unix market to dry up, as it obviously was. That was one of the 'stupid corporate decisions' that caused them to shut down. They were the hardware provider to the Australian Electoral Commission - your votes were tallied on a Sequent machine, running Oracle. The AEC actually had two - a hot standby machine, in case the first one died. It never did, and Sequent were justifiably proud of this. I think that around 1998 they dropped Sequent and moved to Sun. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
