What is the ULTRIX Operating System?

ULTRIX operating system is the original brand of Unix systems developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

What is the ULTRIX Operating System?

The DEC team initially developed the Unix on the PDP-7 and PDP-11 systems. Later, VAX systems became popular platforms for Unix.

In 1978, the first port for VAX, UNIX/32V, was completed. The Unix Engineering Group (UEG) played a significant role in bringing Unix into the company.

Bill Munson, Bill Shannon, and Armando Stettner founded this group. Jerry Brenner and Fred Canter also joined the team.

Later, members such as Joel Magid, Bill Doll, and Jim Barclay joined the UEG. Under Middle Slam’s direction, V7M was released as a modified version of its 7th Edition.

BSD

Shannon and Stettner initially worked on the CPU and device driver support of UNIX/32V. However, they later focused on Berkeley’s 4BSD version.

Bill Joy from Berkeley came to New Hampshire to work with UEG. Joy prepared a new BSD version and did the final development and testing. This version became the latest OS that VMS developers encountered in the morning.

Joy marked this new Unix as 4.5BSD. However, it was thought more appropriate to use the name 4.1BSD. After the completion of 4.1BSD, Bill Joy left Berkeley to join Sun Microsystems.

Bill Shannon later joined him. Armando Stettner stayed on in December and started the Ultrix project. December UEG’s main VAX, decvax, was one of the critical nodes in the Usenet and UUCP network. This system connected Duke University and UC Berkeley in the USA with real-time e-mail and Usenet news articles.

Later, decvax began contacting Europe and Australia. After IBM announced its plans, Stettner decided it was time to offer a Unix product.

Bill Munson presented the idea to Ken Olsen, and the Ultrix project officially began.

V7m

On December 1, the native UNIX product for the PDP-11 was V7M. This product was based on Bell Labs’ 7th Edition. V7M was developed by the Unix Engineering Group (UEG).

Fred Canter and Jerry Brenner played a leading role in its development. Armando Stettner, Bill Burns, Mary Anne Cacciola, and Bill Munson also contributed. V7M included many significant improvements.

For example, there was hardware error recovery and support for separate instruction spaces. However, many device drivers also received significant improvements. V7M became well-respected in the Unix community. As a result, the UEG group later developed Ultrix.

First Release

Ultrix-32 was the first native UNIX VAX product released since December. It was released in June 1984 and is based on 4.2BSD.

It also has some System V features. This product was developed under the leadership of Armando Stettner. It aimed to provide a UNIX-compatible version to VAX users.

However, several changes were made with the Usenet/UUCP experience gained from Decvax. It also added support for other DEC protocols, such as DECnet and LAT. However, it is not compatible with VAX clustering.

As a result, it was limited to selling only dual licenses. Technically, it is essential to make the systems configurable and flexible.

Armando joined the workstation systems engineering organization on the West Coast. He also contributed to the formation of the Open Software Foundation.

He later worked on the DECstation RISC workstation based on the MIIS 3100. Finally, he worked on providing native Unix operating systems on the three platforms.

ULTRIX Next Versions

The V7m product was later named Ultrix-11 and joined the Ultrix-32 family. However, the PDP-11 version was known as Ultrix.

When the MIPS versions were released, the VAX and MIPS versions were named VAX/ULTRIX and RISC/ULTRIX. Also, supportability and reliable operation were of great importance.

Hardware failure and CPU and device driver support were carefully considered. Ultrix-32 included some features of 4.3BSD. In addition, DECnet and SNA were offered as options along with standard TCP/IP. Interprocess Communication (IPC) was also included in this version.

However, in 1986, the Sun and AT&T alliance added BSD features to System V. As a result, Ultrix-32 had a desktop environment based on the X Window System. Later, an extended version of X11 called DECwindows was added.

It also introduced the DECwindows motif look and feel. Ultrix-32 ran on multiprocessor systems and supported a variety of storage systems. However, it lacked distributed lock management like OpenVMS.

A product called Prestoserv improved performance for diskless workstations. Also, work by Armando Stettner supported symmetric multiprocessing. However, frequent use of locks and task restrictions to specific CPUs were every day. Compared to competing Unix systems, some capabilities developed slowly.

ULTRIX Latest Version

During the OSF submission process, Armando Stettner went to Cambridge Research Laboratories. Here, he worked on the OSF/1 port on the DECstation 3100 workstation.

Later, in December, Unix development on MIPS and VAX platforms ended. The focus was on the OSF/1 proposal for Alpha. OSF/1 was released for the MIPS architecture in 1991.

However, it was not considered a mature product and was not advertised. OSF/1 had a Mach-based kernel. It also included many features that were missing from Ultrix. UEG optimized OSF/1 for digital hardware.

The aim was to provide the expected reliability and maintainability. The last major release of Ultrix was released in 1995. This release supported all DECstations and VAXes.