Post

Belated announcement: this weekend I will be at https:// retrofest.uk with my #PERQ 2T2 graphical workstation from 1984, which (after months of troubleshooting, which I promise to describe someday) appears to have been working just now. I've successfully booted:

PNX: a System III Unix by ICL with a pre-X11 GUI, the UK's most commonly-used PERQ OS

POS - a simple DOS-like OS that was more popular in the US

RSRE Flex - made by MoD researchers and one of the weirdest OSs I have ever experienced

My exhibit could be one of the first public displays of Flex in a few decades, and I'm excited to show it off. Come early for best odds of seeing it working, as the PERQ is prone to hardware failure.

If the machine breaks, I'll have the emulator handy, and if you can't make it, I'll also be giving a whole talk on Flex at #emfcamp in July. Hope to see you soon!

The #PERQ has made it through Day 1 of RetroFest in Swindon with no major failures. I suspect a hard drive cable needs a new connector, but if the drive (emulator) is positioned like so and doesn't get jostled, then things seem to work. We'll see how far we can go on Day 2...

POS by name and p.o.s. by nature. Not that pee-nix was a whole lot better… And “weird” may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about FLEX.

That leaves Accent I guess :-) I've never met someone who's tried to use Flex in anger; did you have to deal with it that way? It does feel like an acquired taste. I have to love something that quirky, though.