Microsoft Xenix on the Apple Lisa
When people mention Microsoft and Unix in the same sentence, they usually are talking about their pros and cons for various deployments. However, 1980, Microsoft made its very own flavor of Unix, which ended up not being as big of a hit as they had hoped. Still, it’s a fun curiosity which Jason Perkins & Eric Rucker decided to explore on an Apple Lisa 2, an IBM 5155 PC portable , and a Zenith Z19 connected to the Lisa.
Together, both main machines ran a fun guestbook program that was synchronized over serial by way of a cron job. Of course, I entered my name into the guestbook by way of the Z19
On Sunday of VCF East, someone (who I never caught the name of, on the left), programmed up a bitmap viewer on the Lisa, while Jason (center) & Eric (right) converted and transferred a file onto its hard drive. Apparently converting their cellphone photo to a suitable type for the Lisa, and getting it there took several hours of trial and error. The results were pretty spectacular though!