AIX/PS2 Running on Clones?

[Brian D. Horn]

In article <1990Nov19.113340 at fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com> mjones at fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com writes:
>
>In article <1990Nov13.150450.18758 at watserv1.waterloo.edu>, hurley at watserv1.waterloo.edu (Patrick Hurley) writes:
>> 
>>   Has anyone out there ever gotten aix to run on clones?  

Actually AIX/PS2 started on a Compaq 386 as IBM couldn't get the PS/2s
shipped early enough.  These worked at LCC until about a year ago.

...
>Ummm...copy protecting? Not quite. IBM has never claimed that AIX will work
>on anything other than PS/2's, and support has only been announced on
>specific models of those. Most clones are clones only down to the BIOS
>level, and have various bits of hardware underneath, so a "clone" is
>actually a different machine to AIX. Would you be surprised if you tried to
>install it on, say, a Sun i386 and it didn't work? The fact is that AIX is
>optimized for the PS/2 hardware, not crippled to keep it from working on
>other hardware.

	There is no guarantee of AIX running on non-PS/2 machines, however
it will run on non-MCA machines (just don't complain when something
doesn't work).  The biggest problem one might run into is the console
driver, but if the card is VGA compatible even that might work.  Other
device drivers - you're on your own.  The code is not especially optimized
for PS/2 hardware, but there probably are a few assumptions about the
hardware that are implicit (such as non-volatile RAM availability) that
might well cause problems on other boxes.

	N.B.:  I (and IBM and LCC) make NO promises or guarantees about AIX
running on non-supported hardware (or the accuracy of the above statements).
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: AIX/PS2 Running on Clones?
Summary: 
References: <1990Nov13.150450.18758 at watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1990Nov19.113340 at fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com>
Followup-To: 
Distribution: comp
Organization: Locus Computing Corporation, Inglewood, CA
Keywords: 

In article <1990Nov19.113340 at fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com> mjones at fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com writes:
>
>In article <1990Nov13.150450.18758 at watserv1.waterloo.edu>, hurley at watserv1.waterloo.edu (Patrick Hurley) writes:
>> 
>>   Has anyone out there ever gotten aix to run on clones?  

Actually AIX/PS2 started on a Compaq 386 as IBM couldn't get the PS/2s
shipped early enough.  These worked at LCC until about a year ago.

...
>Ummm...copy protecting? Not quite. IBM has never claimed that AIX will work
>on anything other than PS/2's, and support has only been announced on
>specific models of those. Most clones are clones only down to the BIOS
>level, and have various bits of hardware underneath, so a "clone" is
>actually a different machine to AIX. Would you be surprised if you tried to
>install it on, say, a Sun i386 and it didn't work? The fact is that AIX is
>optimized for the PS/2 hardware, not crippled to keep it from working on
>other hardware.

	There is no guarantee of AIX running on non-PS/2 machines, however
it will run on non-MCA machines (just don't complain when something
doesn't work).  The biggest problem one might run into is the console
driver, but if the card is VGA compatible even that might work.  Other
device drivers - you're on your own.  The code is not especially optimized
for PS/2 hardware, but there probably are a few assumptions about the
hardware that are implicit (such as non-volatile RAM availability) that
might well cause problems on other boxes.

	N.B.:  I (and IBM and LCC) make NO promises or guarantees about AIX
running on non-supported hardware (or the accuracy of the above statements).