Xenix / SCO V running in contemporary machines as VMs

Question

I am trying to install Xenix 386 and/or SCO V Unix in a VM for historical/research/reviving old times/curiosity purposes.

I have already tried to download a couple of media installation images from here.

Tried to boot them several time to install the OS, still without much success; up until now

I already tried with VmWare fusion in OS/X:

• selecting a 32-bit VM
• disabling sound cards and USB, to limit the potential interfence of unknown hardware to those OSes
• giving it just a couple megabytes of RAM
• Limiting the virtual disk to the known limit of < 250MB
• testing IDE and SCSI disk emulation.

Both in Xenix and SCO V, the installation diskette (N1) seems to boot, however either the hard disk is not recognised, or the installation hangs with the message:

"Setting up disk environment"

What to do?

Answer 1

I encountered a very interested of couple of articles about a bug, post1 and post2 in the installation/disk driver that explained why it did not run in many hardware platforms over the years.

The link, besides explaining the bug, also points out VirtualBox seems to emulate the behaviour and is able to boot those operating systems.

So I installed Virtualbox.

While it did not recognise an emulated SCSI disk, it recognised an emulated IDE disk < 250MB and got indeed into the installation phase.

Setting up installation environment...
%disk     0x1F0-01F7 14         -        type=W0 unit=0 cyls=734 hds=16 secs=31

Welcome to the SCO Unix installation.

Installation media used will be Compact Disc (CD-ROM)

Hit return to continue

...so I grabbed QEMU, and popped N1 in and booted it up. Unfortunately, the system would hang almost immediately after. Some testing revealed that the same issue existed on Bochs. PCjs got a bit further, but kernel panicked nearly immediately. Somewhat surprising to me though was VirtualBox not only booted, it got to the first step of the installer.

The OS is extremely picky about the hardware and BIOS and won’t boot at all in many virtualizers. It also contains an interesting bug in the AT disk driver (called ‘wd1010’ in this XENIX kernel version) which causes the system to hang if the controller, or more likely an IDE disk, responds “too fast” to the Set Drive Parameters command.

P.S. There seems to be hints people managed to hack/patch the bug out. There is no documentation about that, and the process should be specific to the hacked versions.

Answer 2

I'm a bit late to this but I have successfully virtualised SCO 5.0.6 using libvirt and it runs in production for a small business client (20 telnet users).

IDE disk, pcnet NIC, 1 x kvm64 CPU, 256 MB RAM

I did type up a p2v document if you're still interested.

Answer 3

PART1

Check out this URL link below it has a guide to get this Microsoft Xenix fully running, plus it works. I just tested it out and I got Xenix running with it. This guide has directions for running a Xenix box inside of Virtualbox. So excited, I just tested the command bc and was doing calculations!!!

Ref: https://www.linux.org/threads/xenix-on-linux.11207/

Screenshot of Link to Xenix software and applications REf: https://archive.org/download/Xenix386Ports

Choose standard disk

Overwrite choose yes

choose q to continue just use full disk for Xenix partitioning. option 2 after hit enter to confirm. Next two options choose q you do not need to run a bad sector scan for the virtual drive. After use default of 15 select n for the next two options after enter your serial number. Use your provided serial from the .txt file from the archive website.

Answer 4

PART2

after you enter your serial number reboot without the image in the flex drive. The software will prompt you for the rest of the disks. Starting with B1, once the disk is loaded virtually into the flex floppy disk controller, enter your root password you want set. Hard set your timezone and continue your installation. option 2 option 1 needed it will ask for X1 disk insert that. use option 1 type ALL follow requests for disks. when prompted only root filesystem choose yes. Set another password. Set another password go back to N1 and N2 enter the serial number again provided in the zip file for a second time to hard set it to the drive.

Now remove disks from drive and reboot from HDD.

do CTL D when it asks, hit enter to confirm timezone. Now log in as root insert your TCP/IP disks, type custom on the root terminal and install this as 3rd party.

I hope that helps. Roaima requested I post a summary of this. Here you go.

Use command "custom" to install 3rd party software like TCP/IP streams. choose option 1 and type RUNTIME TCP stack install use serial listed on main site.

Answer 5

Part 3 Optional:

type Custom Now you can Install TCP steams first with serial number, after that quit and run custom again.

type Custom and install TCP 1,2,3

type Custom and install TCP maintain disk (Image: TCP stack running and pinging loopback)

Command CUSTOM will allow for 3rd party software.

use command mkdev 3com follow prompts

next use command mkdev tcp follow prompts

next set route add default gateway.

Example: route add 192.168.1.1 1 this will create a default route.

Xenix with the supported TCP stack, I have the ifconfig command now.

I am so thankful for this older software I love this stuff.

All the iso files are for the floppy/flex drive controller.

Side Notes: I am still working on getting Xenix to ping my router it will not work still. However, this can ping the loopback now that is a big step in the direction of lynx use.