SONY NEWS-OS 4.2.1aR

[wbyte]

There is auction in yahoo.co.jp for a NEWS-OS 4.2.1aR installation package:http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/a ... n161081536



There is a 4.1.2R version on the BA's ftp, hope this is a different:
20000JPY are ~ 150EUR so if one or more memebers are interested we can split the price. I don't insist to receive the physical media. disk,tape images + scans are enough for me

[DJ Deedahx]

For those who don't know, NEWS stands for Network Engineering WorkStation, not some actual news delivery operating system.

According to Wikipedia, it didn't ever get in the US market, where Sun was dominating, so we MIGHT need some Japanese translators if one was ever to give a demo of it here.

[Darkstar]

The hardware is hard to come by nowadays (it was only sold in Japan and even there, finding shops that sell vintage computers is getting more and more difficult) and there's no working emulator that I know of (I guess one exists in the Japanese part of the WWW somewhere though)

[MrFreeman]

Offtopic Comment

It still amazes to see tapes are still an active storage medium. Apparently, there are tapes now that can store 1.5TBs of data.

[Darkstar]

Offtopic Comment

It still amazes to see tapes are still an active storage medium. Apparently, there are tapes now that can store 1.5TBs of data.

Offtopic Comment

Of course, why not? Tapes offer the cheapest cost per TB of storage, and the highest resiliency/long-term safety (if stored correctly). Also, with tape write speeds now approaching 300 MB/s per tape (LTO-7) it is quite fast. A single tape costs maybe 50€ and can store 2-6 TB uncompressed (LTO-6/7)

[cbmuser]

Hello!

Sorry for digging out this old thread again.

I have two Sony NEWS m68k workstations (European NWS-1520 and Japanese NWS-1850) and and I'm looking for installation media for these.

I'm a frequent buyer on Yahoo Auction Japan and I even saw the exact installation kit shown in the photos above up for auction. I was planning to buy it, but I found the price to be a bit too high. When I was hoping for the price to drop (it was 30000 Yen at that time), someone else unfortunately bought it. However, since it looks like someone with a Rinkya account bought it, chances are that the buyer actually came from this thread or website.

Did anyone here buy the set? If yes, I would be very interested in getting a copy or even buying it from them.

Thanks a lot!

Adrian

[wbyte]

This particular release is for the RISC cpu, so it's not useful for your machines

[cbmuser]

This particular release is for the RISC cpu, so it's not useful for your machines

I'm pretty sure the description is wrong as it says "NEWS 800 Series" on the photograph which is the first series of NEWS workstations released. These are all m68k machines.

[wbyte]

I remember I used the translator and it was some kind of Font/Font server release 1.0 and not NEWS-OS 1.0
Also there is no chance the first release for NWS-800 to work on the portable machines.

The release you are looking for is distributed on QIC tape and you will also need two bootable diskettes.

[cbmuser]

I remember I used the translator and it was some kind of Font/Font server release 1.0 and not NEWS-OS 1.0

It says "Font Set" on the tape. But the CD media are normal installation disks.

Also there is no chance the first release for NWS-800 to work on the portable machines.

I have an NWS-1850, an NWS-1520 and an NWS-3260. Any of them should work.

The release you are looking for is distributed on QIC tape and you will also need two bootable diskettes.

Release for what?

[wbyte]

I have an NWS-1850, an NWS-1520 and an NWS-3260. Any of them should work.

1850 and 1520 have different CPU (68k) than 3260 (mips). There are two different NEWS-OS releases. Check this http://katsu.watanabe.name/doc/sonynews/newsos.html

Release for what?

The 68k release was distributed on a QIC tape along with bootable diskettes.

Btw I have 3260 and I attached external cd and used the NEWS-OS from BA ftp and it's not bootable, at least I was not able to boot directly from it.