It's a Unix System, I Know This.

The title of this article may be a bit misleading as the young lady in Jurassic Park probably knew more about A/UX than I did when I started this project, but it's been a fantastic learning experience and I thought I'd share some of the ups and downs along the way in case other beginners experience similar struggles getting A/UX installed on actual hardware.

I became aware of Apple's first foray into the world of Unix within the last few years.  I was not a Macintosh user at that time, or a Unix user, as I had a PC and my college had DEC VAX systems.  As usual with my experiences in Retro Tech, I started by watched several YouTube videos about the process of installing A/UX.  The Penelope A/UX site has also been an extremely useful resource.  The idea of exploring an earlier *NIX than any I'd ever used before sounds intriguing to me as I learn about computer history.

After reading the hardware compatibility pages from this site I started thinking about which of my Beige 68K macs were compatible.  When I started the project I had only one option from the list, a Macintosh IIsi.  As the project progressed I came into enough parts to build a IIci system.  The site does warn that a IIci is underpowered for the final version of A/UX but as I didn't have a compatible '040 system at this time I decided to forge ahead with the best hardware I have and version 3.x.

The IIci I am using has been built up from one machine that was saved from recycling by my friend John, and two machines I bought from another friend.  The case parts were cleaned and the logic board was recapped.  I won't go into too much detail about my restoration process because it was rather routine, although I must say that I have not yet been able to get the Motherboard from John's machine working, as there was quite a bit of corrosion on the board.

The Specs of the machine are:

IIci w/ Cache Card
32MB RAM
Asante MacCon PDS Ethernet Card
Blue SCSI HDD Replacement

Another requirement for installing A/UX is an Apple Compatible CD-ROM drive from a short list of compatible hardware on the list at Penelope A/UX.  This was something I had to wait and watch for a while.  I was able to harvest an internal 12x Apple CD-ROM out of a PowerMac that was headed for recycling and I also came across a TASCAM branded External CD-ROM drive w/ a TEAC drive in it.  I drive swap placing the Apple drive into this enclosure and get a working "Apple" External CD ROM.  It doesn't look authentic and the SCSI ID and termination are fixed inside the drive, but the price was right!

Once I had the hardware collected getting the software burned to CD was a challenge.  Most of that struggle was due to user error on my part.  I downloaded the CD disk image and burned it multiple times from multiple sources before realizing that I needed to rename the toast image file extension to .ISO before Mac OS would burn it to CD properly.  Once I had a working Boot Floppy and correctly burned A/UX CD, I was off to the races getting this installed.

One interesting quirk I noticed with my setup is that the CD was not being recognized on the initial boot from floppy.  I inserted the CD into the machine before it booted up and when the A/UX boot floppy completed booting, it would not recognize the CD.  I had to eject and re-insert the CD after the Floppy had fully booted, then press the retry button before the installation process would recognize the CD.

I read that the maximum partition size for a bootable A/UX partition was 2GB, so I used the standard 2000MB blank drive image from RaSCSI that is recommended for Blue SCSI, however, using this partition size resulted in some drive write errors and a corrupted partition.  After that failure I moved back to using the 1000MB blank drive image which seemed to install just fine.  I can add additional space on other SCSI IDs afterwards if 1 GB is not enough for the tools I'd like to install.

After installing the Base OS and all the Extras off the 3.0.1 CD, I then moved on to the 3.1 updates.  The A/UX system is now up and running on my Macintosh IIci...

In the future, I'd like to get TCP/IP running on this machine, but I"m waiting for a part for that, as the AUI is too thick to reach inside the narrow slot openings on the IIci, I'll have to build an adapter with a male and female DB-15 connector to extend the AUI port from the card further out of the Mac's case.

This is currently my oldest *NIX system, so I'll have to go back and brush up on System V.  Time to pull UNIX in a Nutshell and Essential System Administration down off the shelf, I don't think I've looked at these since the early 2000s!

Are you, or were you an A/UX user?  Let me know what your favorite things to do with an A/UX system are in the comments, or find my email address in my profile.