Venix is a discontinued version of the

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

for low-end computers, developed by

VenturCom Ardence was a software company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts with representatives in Washington, D.C.; Virginia Beach, VA; Chicago, IL; Denton, TX; and in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India. It developed a software-streaming prod ...

, a "company that specialises in the skinniest implementations of Unix".VenturCom ships real-time Venix/386.

Computer Business Review A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These pro ...

, 1 February 1990. Retrieved 23 March 2013.

Overview

A working version of Venix/86 for the

IBM PC XT The IBM Personal Computer XT (model 5160, often shortened to PC/XT) is the second computer in the IBM Personal Computer line, released on March 8, 1983. Except for the addition of a built-in hard drive and extra expansion slots, it is very simila ...

was demoed at

Comdex COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

in May 1983. It was based on

Version 7 Unix Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. V7, released in 1979, was the last Bell Laboratories release to see widespread distribution before the commercial ...

with some enhancements from

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

(notably vi,

more More or Mores may refer to: Computing * MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS * more (command), a shell command * MORE protocol, a routing protocol * Missouri Research and Education Network Music Albums * ''More!'' (album), by Booka S ...

and csh) and custom

inter-process communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categori ...

mechanisms. It was the first licensed UNIX operating system available for the IBM PC and its compatibles, supported read/write access to a separate DOS/

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers spec ...

-partition and could run in as little as 128 KB (256 KB - 512 KB recommended). In September 1984, Venix/86 Encore was released; it supported a number of early PC-compatibles, including the

AT&T 6300 The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU. The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as t ...

, the Zenith 150, the (first) NCR PC, and the

Texas Instruments Professional Computer The Texas Instruments Professional Computer (abbreviated TIPC or TI PC) and the Texas Instruments Professional Portable Computer (TIPPC) are personal computers produced by Texas Instruments that were both released on January 31, 1983, and discont ...

. Venix Encore, which then became Venix 2.0, was still based on

, and ran on the DEC

Rainbow 100 The Rainbow 100 is a microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982. This desktop unit had a monitor similar to the VT220 and a dual-CPU box with both Zilog Z80 and Intel 8088 CPUs. The Rainbow 100 was a triple-use ma ...

(Venix/86R) as well as PCs (Venix/86 and /286). The system contained a number of enhancements, notably tools to access

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...

files directly on a DOS/FAT-partition, and an updated ADB debugger. The system came in two flavors: a 2-user version priced at $800, and an 8-user version at $1,000. There were no technical differences between the two. Confusingly, Venix 2.0 for the DEC

PRO-380 The Professional 325 (PRO-325), Professional 350 (PRO-350), and Professional 380 (PRO-380) are PDP-11 compatible microcomputers introduced in 1982 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as high-end competitors to the IBM PC. History Like the c ...

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...

(Venix/PRO) was based "essentially" on System III. It no longer ran on the PRO-350. This is made clear in the ckermit 4E build instructions, which has a special target for ''Pro'' running Venix 1.0, but instructs the user to use the sysiii target for the ''Pro'' running Venix 2.0. These same sources also make it clear that Venix had an enhanced TTY interface relative to a pure V7 Unix System. Venix 2.1 was released for at least the PC. Like the original Venix/86, it included a C compiler, a

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

interpreter and added a Fortran 77 compiler as an option. An optional driver kit made it possible to develop hardware drivers for the system and generate new kernels. In November 1985, Unisource Software Corp., a Venix retailer, announced the availability of RM/Cobol for Venix. From version 3.0, Venix was based on

System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

. A

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

version based on System V.3.2 was released for the 386 in 1990. The last version, Venix 4.2.1, based on UNIX System V Release 4.2 ( UnixWare), was released in 1994. The workstation system included the real-time operating system, NFS and

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

networking, X, OpenLook and Motif GUIs, and the Veritas journaling File System (

vxfs The VERITAS File System (or VxFS; called JFS and OnlineJFS in HP-UX) is an extent-based file system. It was originally developed by VERITAS Software. Through an OEM agreement, VxFS is used as the primary filesystem of the HP-UX operating syste ...

). A development system included additionally an

ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ...

compiler, a library of real-time functions, GUI development software, real-time development utilities, and selected industrial I/O device drivers.

Reception

In its 1984 review ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

'' found Venix functional, despite some bugs in the initial versions. Its use of the

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...

for accessing devices made it more portable than its competitor

PC/IX Interactive Systems Corporation (styled INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, abbreviated ISC) was a US-based software company and the first vendor of the Unix operating system outside AT&T, operating from Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 19 ...

, but slowed down its display processing; the disk access speed was found to be similar. ''BYTE'' stated that Venix on the DEC Professional and IBM PC "performed adequately," but criticized its limit on

background process A background process is a computer process that runs ''behind the scenes'' (i.e., in the background) and without user intervention. Typical tasks for these processes include logging, system monitoring, scheduling, and user notification. The backgr ...

es.

References

External links

Professional 325, 350, 380

Installing Venix 2.1 in MAME/MESS

Venix/386
in the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

__NOTOC__ Real-time operating systems UNIX System V Unix variants {{Unix-stub

Overview

Reception

See also

References

Further reading

External links