221–230 of 236 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think I've heard of an alternate shell/launcher like that before. Do you remember what it was called?
Windows still (well, Win2000) lets you build a custom shell, just replace explorer.exe (and a bunch of other work).
0: create an empty VM called osmuseum with 4 cores, 8192 MB of memory, no drives, OS type Linux 6.x - 2.6 kernel using whatever vmid fits your schedule
1: unzip the relevant part of the distribution:
unzip virtual_os_museum-2026.05.19-lite.zip virtual_os_museum-2026.05.19-lite/VirtualOSMuseum.utm/*
qemu-img convert Data/host_x86.vdi Data/host_x86.raw
qemu-img convert Data/guest_images.vdi Data/guest_images.raw
qm importdisk 700 Data/host_x86.raw ext-lvm
qm importdisk 700 Data/guest_images.raw ext-lvm
5: set the scsi0 drive as bootable in the vm Options settings page and move it up in the boot order (e.g. ide2, scsi0, net0)
6: boot the vm and change the network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces to fit your needs. In my case I changes the address for br0 to a free address on a local network segment, corrected the broadcast, network mask, gateway and dns-nameservers parameters to fit my network and restarted the networking service (service networking restart)
7: Things should now work, you may want to reboot the vm but it should not be necessary.
Some I would love to see: - Convergent Technologies CTOS - Whatever the Rational R1000 ran ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000 ) - OS/400 (emulating an AS/400 or IBMi is problematic - not enough information available) - Tandem's NonStop - Stratus' VOS - Nixdorf's NIROS/TAMOS - Data General's RDOS and AOS. DG/UX is also kind of rare (the 88000 was a flop, but it ran on the Eclipse platform)
I hadn't included the R1000 emulator because originally they emulated it at the logic gate level and it literally took a week to boot. It looks like they now have a more traditional instruction-level emulator that is supposedly comparable to the real hardware in speed, so I guess I should try to install that.
I think a major reason that no AS/400 emulator exists is because people are afraid of IBM sending them a C&D, although I'm not sure if IBM would care all that much if somebody wrote an emulator for IMPI AS/400s. Those haven't been supported for well over 2 decades AFAIK.
I do know somebody is slowly working on S/32 and S/34 emulators, but they haven't shared either because both apparently are still somewhat flaky. Hopefully they release them at some point. The entire midrange/office computer category is very under-preserved. The only such machines represented in the OS museum currently are HP3000 and S/3.
I've never seen images anywhere for NonStop, VOS, or NIROS, nor do emulators exist for the original hardware they ran on. Later versions of NonStop and VOS run on x86, but I'm not sure if they run under virtualization.
Some I would love to see: - Convergent Technologies CTOS - Whatever the Rational R1000 ran ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000 ) - OS/400 (emulating an AS/400 or IBMi is problematic - not enough information available) - Tandem's NonStop - Stratus' VOS - Nixdorf's NIROS/TAMOS - Data General's RDOS and AOS. DG/UX is also kind of rare (the 88000 was a flop, but it ran on the Eclipse platform)
I'd second this. Of course, there would need to be 3 emulators - the original proprietary CISC systems, the tightly-lockstepped MIPS systems, and the loosely-lockstepped Itanium systems.
HPE still sells NonStop on X86-64 systems now, including virtualized NonStop as a Service "cloud" offerings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never experienced it but somehow I still feel nostalgic for it. For all we've gained there's so much we've lost as well, I'm sad my kids won't grow up with anything like this.
The maturity brought upon us homogenized experience. 90's user interfaces were something else, man.
This is "hunter gatherer experience": click an element, see if it does something (opens a link, displays a menu), see if it brings any value. Such a waste of human life.
For those experience with some of these OS, what might be something to explore (try) on these OS for some learning objective. Any call outs feature wise?
Apollo had a "UX" which didn't get in the way of the user, customizable ( i know, not in fashion anymore). Apollo had a multitasking, multiuser network distributed OS which ran on 4MB of RAM, with 3 personalities (AEGIS, SYS V and BSD) and with a versioning filesystem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The maturity brought upon us homogenized experience. 90's user interfaces were something else, man.
> The maturity brought upon us homogenized experience. This is "hunter gatherer experience": click an element, see if it does something (opens a link, displays a menu), see if it brings any value. Such a waste of human life.
Some I would love to see: - Convergent Technologies CTOS - Whatever the Rational R1000 ran ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000 ) - OS/400 (emulating an AS/400 or IBMi is problematic - not enough information available) - Tandem's NonStop - Stratus' VOS - Nixdorf's NIROS/TAMOS - Data General's RDOS and AOS. DG/UX is also kind of rare (the 88000 was a flop, but it ran on the Eclipse platform)
> Tandem's NonStop I'd second this. Of course, there would need to be 3 emulators - the original proprietary CISC systems, the tightly-lockstepped MIPS systems, and the loosely-lockstepped Itanium systems. HPE still sells NonStop on X86-64 systems now, including virtualized NonStop as a Service "cloud" offerings.
Some I would love to see: - Convergent Technologies CTOS - Whatever the Rational R1000 ran ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000 ) - OS/400 (emulating an AS/400 or IBMi is problematic - not enough information available) - Tandem's NonStop - Stratus' VOS - Nixdorf's NIROS/TAMOS - Data General's RDOS and AOS. DG/UX is also kind of rare (the 88000 was a flop, but it ran on the Eclipse platform)
DG/UX for x86, CTOS, AOS, and RDOS are already included. I hadn't included the R1000 emulator because originally they emulated it at the logic gate level and it literally took a week to boot. It looks like they now have a more traditional instruction-level emulator that is supposedly comparable to the real hardware in speed, so I guess I should try to install that. I think a major reason that no AS/400 emulator exist…
Wow! Thanks. I didn't see a list of available titles, so I just shot those blindly. And I never imagined DG/UX for x86 was a thing. I'm pleasantly surprised.
> I'm not sure if IBM would care all that much if somebody wrote an emulator for IMPI AS/400s
They might complain loudly about software copyright - it's not the same thing as VM/370 and MVS 3.8j. S/32 and 34 will most likely have the same issue.
> I've never seen images anywhere for NonStop, VOS, or NIROS, nor do emulators exist for the original hardware they ran on.
NonStop and VOS under x86 might draw some fire, and they would also require emulation of the specific hardware - they run on x86, but not on PCs. As for NIROS, you are right, but Nixdorf might be more amenable to even supporting building emulators (they have a very nice museum in Germany).
I ran it very early in its life, got it to boot, then couldn't do much else with it :)
... and you may consider DESQview . Not quite an OS, but a precursor to Windows.