Re: My first Unix machine came from Computerland
"at a time when having a Unix box at home was truly exotic"
It wasn't really "exotic", it was just a matter of need. Most computer professionals and students who were working on that kind of thing had access to one form of *nix or another at home starting in the early 1980s.
Coherent came out in '80.
Xenix (which was NOT written by Microsoft, it was actually Version 7 Unix) was ported to the 8088/8086 by SCO in 1983. Prior to that, there were also ports done by other companies for TRS-68000, Zilog Z8001, and Altos 8086. SCO also did a port of Xenix for the Apple Lisa, which almost makes my Lisa into a usable machine!
And of course, if you lived in a university town, you could often get a dial-up UNIX shell account for free in the early '80s ... if you knew who to ask. Free for the account, that is. Local telephone calls cost money. UUCP and scripting sure came in handy :-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
