[rescue] SunOS 4

Wed Jan 8 07:11:25 EST 2025

As promised, just in case anyone can make use of them, archived Sun Workshop 4.2 CD ISOs for SunOS 4, and for Solaris 2 (SunOS 5):

https://fido.aalin.co.uk/vault/sw/sunos4/sparc/sdks/ (also accessible via sftp://fido.aalin.co.uk/sw/sunos4/sparc/sdks/, login/password is guest/guest)

https://fido.aalin.co.uk/vault/sw/sunos5/sparc/sdks/ (also accessible via sftp://fido.aalin.co.uk/sw/sunos5/sparc/sdks/, login/password is guest/guest)

That server is on a slow link, so you might need to be a little patient when downloading from there.

Regards,

Mike Spooner

From: rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org <rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org> On Behalf Of Mike Spooner via rescue
Sent: 06 January 2025 19:02
To: 'The Rescue List' <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Cc: Mike Spooner <mikes at aalin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [rescue] SunOS 4

After reviewing the original Sun paper documents I have, and my contemporaneous notes, the details of the nightmare are coming back to me now…

The physical media packs came with a registration card containing a shipment-unique serial-number. You had to provide that serial-number to Sun (snail-mail, email, or telephone), together with the intended local license-server hardware host-ID, a list of the subproducts needed and the number of users for each, when subsequently purchasing licences, from which Sun would internally generate an “Authorisation Code” that encoded the target licence-server’s hardware host-ID, the subproducts being licensed (C, C++, Fortran, debugger, Workshop IDE, or whatever), and the number of users.

You then had to enter that received authorisation code when installing/configuring the tools, to create the necessary licence-file containing the (derived) keys.

Quite a performance!

Without a valid licence-file, the compilers would work, but would then be completely locked-out for 30 seconds, and still remain user-locked and node-locked for a further 5 minutes after that.

The IDE component would work fully regardless.

In any case, the upshot is that the reverse-engineered licence-files mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that are not hostID-locked and provide non-expiring licence-keys are probably the best ones to use.

In any case, I will rip the following physical CDs that I have and make them available somewhere as ISO files, stand by.

1.	Sun Workshop 4.2 for SunOS 4.x, contains:

SPARCworks 3.0.1

SPARCcompiler C 3.0.1

SPARCcompiler C++ 4.0.1

SPARCcompiler FORTRAN77 3.0.1

SPARCworks TeamWare 1.0.3

SunSoft Performance Library 1.1

Tools.h++ Source Code 6.0.4

2.	Sun Workshop 4.2 for Solaris 2.x, contains:

SPARXCworks 3.1

SPARCcompiler C 4.0

SPARCcompiler C++ 4.1

SPARCcompiler FORTRAN77 4.0

SPARCcompiler FORTRAN90 1.1

SPARCcompiler Pascal 4.0

SPARCcompiler Ada 3.0

SPARCworks/Ada 3.0

SPARCworks IMPact/Ada 2.0

SPARCworks/IMPact 3.0

SPARCworks/TeamWare 1.0.4

SPARCworks/Visual 1.1

SPARCworks/Visual XP 1.1

SunSoft Performance Library 1.1

Tools.h++ Source Code 6.0.4

Regards,

Mike Spooner

From:  <mailto:rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org> rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org < <mailto:rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org> rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org> On Behalf Of Andrew Back via rescue
Sent: 06 January 2025 13:38
To:  <mailto:rescue at sunhelp.org> rescue at sunhelp.org
Cc: Andrew Back < <mailto:andrew at carrierdetect.com> andrew at carrierdetect.com>
Subject: Re: [rescue] SunOS 4

IIRC the FlexLM licenses are locked to a particular Host ID, which of course can be changed provided that doesn't upset anything else (such as another license!) At least this was the case with the Sun tools we purchased with Solaris 2.4.

Though I also seem to recall hearing that at some time after the tools stopped being sold, keys were published for them which would work with any Host ID. Assuming this is true and not a false memory, I have no idea which versions of what this was for!

Andrew

On 06/01/2025 12:05, Mike Spooner via rescue wrote:

William,

I have a Sun Workshop (the previous name for Sun Studio) CD from circa 1993. However, the Sun compilers from that era were licensed using FlexLM, so without a valid key would not work.

As it happens, I might have a key as well, I need to check. If so, that should do for all of us, as IIRC early-90's FlexLM licensing doesn't do "phoning-home", the checks are all only against the feature-encoded key.

I'll get the version details of the CD, and post the info as a reply here.

Regards,
Mike

On 6 January 2025 09:53:18 GMT, William Barnett-Lewis via rescue  <mailto:rescue at sunhelp.org> <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

Of course this does make me wonder if anyone has a copy of the old
Sunsoft Workshop 1.0 for SunOS 4.1.x

More as a curiosity at this point since I never got to play with it in the day.

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 3:03 AM William Barnett-Lewis
 <mailto:wlewisiii at gmail.com> <wlewisiii at gmail.com> wrote:

You might find this link useful:

https://www.oldsilicon.com/sunos-4-1-4-image-download

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 2:35 AM silcreval via rescue  <mailto:rescue at sunhelp.org> <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:

The mad thing is I actually started on SunOS 4, but somehow switched to Solaris in the 90s and forgot how good the earlier versions were.

I'm now trying to track down some software for SunOS 4, starting with gcc so at least I can compile up some tools. IIRC it wasn't possible to compile gcc 2.95 for SunOS 4 for some reason, so I might try for 2.7 as I definitely remember using that at one time.

- Ian

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