A Life Wasted

Unix 1983

After being fired by Apple I started a new computer company.  Towards the end of Computer Centre One I had started selling Altos Computers as a larger system alternative to Commodore.  The ones I'd sold in Youngstown ran the MP/M operating system, a multi-user version of CP/M.  The multi-user part was far from perfect, but okay.  I liked the Altos computer.  Before Computer Centre One's downfall I'd set myself up as an Altos dealer, even made several purchases from them.  So when I got back into the business Altos was a natural place for me to turn.  I was an established Altos dealer, all I had to do was give them my new address and new company name.

When the company sent me their new product catalog I was intrigued to see a new model, the Altos 386, which ran on the UNIX operating system.  I'd heard of UNIX.  Heard good things.  Altos was not a microcomputer, but a super microcomputer.  The computer itself was a modern looking box you plugged multiple dumb terminals into.  The users shared a CPU and hard drive.  In an era when everyone was going to the stand alone PC, I saw a better small business model in a multi-user super microcomputer.  I had liked the MP/M based Altos, but I went nuts over their UNIX based model.  Where MP/M was a forced multi-user system, UNIX was a pure and perfect multi-user system.  With UNIX there was no compromise.  With this system I could compete with the big boys in the smaller market.

I couldn't afford to purchase an Altos so I found a customer who needed one.  There was no software for my customer's industry so I'd have to write it.  Earlier I used dBase II, a database program to write applications, but dBase II wasn't available for the UNIX operating system. This forced me to look for a different database which led me to Informix, the best database I ever used.   My planed resurrection was going fine until I set up this new computer and tried to install the Informix database.  This should have been simple, but proved to be otherwise.

To this point I'd used CP/M, MP/M, PC-DOS, and MS-DOS.  All simple operating systems similar to each other with less than a dozen standard system level commands.  UNIX had more than 200 system level commands.  UNIX was complex at a point I hadn't expected complexity.  UNIX was created in the early 1970's at AT&T's Bell Labs as a programming operating system to be used by programmers.  UNIX was written in the C, a high-level language and its users were assumed to know.  I didn't know UNIX or C.  The C programming language was and is the most difficult to grasp.  UNIX, with its 200 plus system level commands was and is the most complex operating system on the market.

UNIX of 1983 was different than today.  Today there are hundreds of utilities and interfaces to make it easier and dozens of books to explain it.  In 1983 none of this existed.  Not even a book to explain it.  The only thing I was able to find to explain UNIX was a $90 set of poorly photo copied three ring binders from Bell Labs.  This was loosely called a UNIX guide.  This "guide" was a computation of notes from multiple Bell Labs and MIT students on their area of expertise on the UNIX platform.  All of them assumed a working knowledge of UNIX and C.  Looking through those pages I was overwhelmed because I didn't understand a single part of what I saw.

I set the computer up in the bedroom of our small rented house.  With the expensive Altos computer on the floor and one of the dumb monitors on a night stand, I sat on our bed and began the daunting task of learning the UNIX operating system.  Those who knew UNIX were smarter than I and had the benefit of training at one of three locations:  AT&T Bell Labs, MIT, or University of California Berkeley.  Every one else had to learn on their own and this didn't seem possible.  My first intelligent decision was to ignore the vast power of UNIX and focus on what I needed to know to fulfill my customer's needs.  The first challenge was to load the Informix database on to the Altos hard drive.  Something simple in other operating systems was a mountain to climb in early UNIX.  My first effort resulted in destruction of the "UNIX Core", which meant I had to reinstall the operating system and start fresh.  Thus began my learning process.