(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Ultrix on gxemul is nothing new. The DECstation is gxemul’s oldest and most complete machine mode, and it has run Ultrix for over 20 years. What’s new is Rico’s fork, which fixes a ton: the real KN02-AA PROM boots, the LK201 keyboard works, faster NAT, NFS, and best of all high resolution graphics!

Behold! Ultrix V4.5 in 1280×1024 on an emulated DECstation 5000/200 (3MAX, R3000, 128 MB) with the HX (PMAGB-BA) color frame buffer:

The high resolution HX is new here. Stock gxemul topped out at a lower res frame buffer. Rico emulated the HX’s SFB drawing chip — fills, stipples, lines, copies, all 16 raster ops — so Ultrix’s X server drives it directly. uname says it all: ULTRIX ds5000 4.5 0 RISC.

Best of all, the image comes with a pile of cool software already installed and ready to run. Let’s look at some apps!

There is more under the hood: gcc 3.0.4 and the GNU tools, bash, vim with Motif, xv, and even NCSA Mosaic for some retro web browsing. Ultrix V4.5 (Rev. 47) itself is patched up with DEC’s late 1997 Y2K fixes.

As usual I have prepared a ready to run, portable image with gxemul binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows. Just unpack and run run.sh (or run.cmd on Windows), type boot at the >> prompt, and log in as root with password ultrix.

Download: https://files.42718.net/mirror/tenox/os/ultrix/virt/decstation5000-ultrix45-gxemul.tar.lz

Rico’s fork: https://github.com/rpajarola/gxemul

Have Fun with Virtualization!