Unix on old-ish machines - advice sought

[Scott Stevens]

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 09:39:48 +0100
Stan Barr <stanb at dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to get a straight (ie no X) Unix running on some sort of
> older, but not necessarily ancient, hardware.  My Micro-11/73 is
> not really suitable, and PDP-11s that are seem to be a bit thin
> on the ground over here in the UK.  I've seen a few Vaxen and 
> MicroVaxen on the market lately so my thoughts are turning in
> that direction.  I know a few people here run such machines and I'm
> seeking advice on the best machine to look for and, at the risk of
> starting a religious war, the best unix to run on it... :-)
> 

If what you're wanting is a Unix prompt on, say, a TTY terminal, you can
get any of the very inexpensive 'Lunchbox' Sparc systems (I'd recommend
an IPX or IPC, a Classic if you want to be fancy) for pennies.  Plug a
Macintosh modem cable in the port with a null-modem adapter and you're
set.  They boot up readily to a console on serial port 1 if there's no
keyboard found.  And you can run an older Solaris or NetBSD on them
really easily.  They make nice cheap portable Unix boxes you can slip in
and onto any network, i.e. if there are Unixy things you want to do at
work without going Linux or installing a PeeCee of any kind.

And IPXs are almost free these days.  IPCs are not only 'free', they use
give-away memory (30 pin 1, 4, or 16 MB simms).