What I find interesting about projects like this is how much of the OS "feel" doesn't survive emulation. The visual layer comes through fine, but the things that actually defined the experience — keyboard click latency, the specific mouse acceleration curves of period hardware, the way a CRT scanline gave System 7 fonts a totally different texture than a sharp LCD does, the audible click-thunk of Atari ST or early Mac dialogs — none of that gets preserved.
Run System 7 in an emulator and the menus look right, but the input feels wrong. What we're really preserving in these collections is the screen output, not the interaction. Which is fine for an archive — just worth being honest it's a museum of appearances, not of use.
neilv 7 hours ago [-]
Impressive curation effort. One comment: at least a few of the examples in the gallery seem to be of the "last, greatest" version, which actually isn't necessarily the greatest, and definitely not the most interesting.
For example, the "Domain_OS SR10.4 - 01 VUE desktop" is a bit confusing, and may cause people to miss actual DomainOS.
Apollo DomainOS (or Domain/IX, or simply Domain) had many unique and interesting things about it, but disappeared soon after being acquired by HP. It looked more like it might look if you took a programmer who had mostly only seen text terminals, and gave them a megapixel display with pixel framebuffer, a mouse, and the freedom to design the keyboard hardware, and told them to make what they would want to use.
VUE (around when the Unix workstation vendors collaborated on standarding on a common desktop environment) was for HP-UX , which was a very different operating system, and entirely different user experience. More of an early attempt at let's give non-power-users an accessible computer with virtual desktops and everything.
Similarly, Solaris had innovative OpenWindows (including but not limited to a networkable display system based on PostScript) before they got the common desktop environment.
SunOS 4.x (retronym "Solaris 1.x") and earlier could run the earlier SunView environment, which was more like monochrome early Mac than the later Open Look look and feel of OpenWindows.
INTPenis 10 minutes ago [-]
While we're discussing obscure operating systems, can anyone else remember an obscure Unix where uid 0 was called "avatar" instead of root?
It's one of those strange memories from my youth that I've been unable to confirm as an adult.
I hadn't realized Domain/OS emulation was viable these days. It's one of the few systems that has actually "lost" features - the terminal-window-like thing (called pads, I think?) when in line mode had a dividing line at the bottom where your unconsumed typeahead was visible and you could continue to edit it until it got read - not just one line, the entire unconsumed input. (Not that it's a particularly desirable feature - it's just one that I'm pretty sure you can't implement with ptys...)
andreww591 4 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, MAME has had working Apollo emulation since around 2010. Domain/OS is definitely pretty odd. You could almost mistake SR10 for a normal functional Unix if you use the SysV or BSD universes rather than the AEGIS one, but while it is clearly Unix-like, it's also quite Multics-like as well and is pretty distinct from the typical functional Unix family.
bilegeek 6 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, pre-Domain/OS AEGIS is basically lost. One person popped up with talk of imaging their 9.6 floppies, but I haven't seen anything since then.
Yeah, I'd definitely like to see older versions of AEGIS as well
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago [-]
I just received from a retired engineer, a binder of 8” floppies that says Jan 1984, AEGIS 6.0 / Mentor 3.0, Full Backup, WBAK. The owner got them from a dumpster 40 years ago, but suspects someone just reused the binder to store blank floppies. Anyhow I’m working on it.
I’ve also found source for an AEGIS menu system (mouse, hotkeys) written in Forth.
neilv 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder whether this could still pop up at estate sales, or when a retiree is cleaning out their garage.
Not all gear got junked. When I was a teen intern, I got some obsolete Apollos (and 2 logic analyzers and a terminal) from my employer, and other people were also bringing home gear the company "sold" them.
Somewhere, there might well be an industry or university sysadmin or programmer who brought home a box of old QIC tapes, and one of them says "AEGIS" on the label, and it's in a garage/attic.
Also, rumor has it that at one point Boeing physically archived at least one Apollo network, because they apparently take documentation integrity extremely seriously. If that's true, they might have an engineering librarian or someone who could take an interest in making sure any versions of Aegis/Domain they need (and have preserved media for) can run on emulators or something?
jerf 2 hours ago [-]
Not only can you implement that with PTYs, it's how they operate by default. That's why you can telnet to an HTTP server and make a mistake and use backspace to fix it. The terminal will only send lines over. You have to use a command to put it into "raw" mode so the application gets every keystroke immediately. You have to ask for your PTY to not work that way.
compsciphd 6 hours ago [-]
why could you not implement it as ptys.
Currently the terminal doesn't really process input itself, it just gives the program running the "raw" fd.
If instead the terminal gave the processes a pipe (for instance) and consumed all the pty input itself (and its end of the pipe being a buffer of that content), why wouldn't it be the same?
glhaynes 6 hours ago [-]
What an amazingly goofy (but also kinda maybe makes sense?) feature!
xbar 15 minutes ago [-]
Fantastic. Ignore any complainers--what is here is great, and having it nicely collected is hugely valuable.
I have long held anxiety that many of these would vanish as certain university archives disappeared. It is nice to see them protected.
My first actual job was working for a local health authority here in the UK, and they had a Pick computer running some database application thing, I think to do with accounting. I had to run the backups. Sorry to be a whinger, I don't mean to belittle the monumental amount of work.
andreww591 2 minutes ago [-]
I've got Pick PC R83 V3.1 included. The screenshots on the front page are a very small sampling of what's there.
CalRobert 5 hours ago [-]
What a legendary name for the developer.
HeyLaughingBoy 4 hours ago [-]
Ha. My first SW job interview was for a programmer on a Pick system at some small company in Manhattan. I think they were involved in publishing or something. Anyway, the salary they offered was so pitifully low all I could do was politely decline. Was too young to even know that I could negotiate.
patja 4 hours ago [-]
Similar experience here. I worked on an ERP system for a chemical distributor that ran on 5 Honeywell Ultimate systems distributed across the US. General ledger, order management, warehouse order pick lists, chemical recipes, MSDS data, inventory, etc. We synced database updates every night, and once a month someone had to spend the night in the datacenter swapping 9 track tapes for backups.
I loved working in Pick BASIC on those systems. So much you could do with "dict items"
a1o 8 hours ago [-]
Do you have that Windows 3.1 version that came with the Compaq that had the DE that was like a paper folder instead of an empty desktop, and that you could put the icons in the different tabs of the paper folder?
Avamander 8 hours ago [-]
Your comment reminds me of HP's obscure EFI OS called QuickLook. I would guess there are a lot of obscure OSs out there.
Oh, yeah! I think ASUS also had something like that at some point.
simianpirate 8 hours ago [-]
I believe you are speaking of Tabworks?
a1o 5 hours ago [-]
I had to Google and it does look like it, I remember the computer would boot into it and it also had space for a few (three?) icons outside the tabs (like in the “desktop”). It was a cool interface!
andreww591 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think I've heard of an alternate shell/launcher like that before. Do you remember what it was called?
edoceo 1 hours ago [-]
Windows still (well, Win2000) lets you build a custom shell, just replace explorer.exe (and a bunch of other work).
andreww591 1 minutes ago [-]
I've heard of custom shells for Windows before, but not that specific one
wattzee 5 hours ago [-]
How can I speak with the heavens if you don't have temple OS.
juris 16 minutes ago [-]
exactly this. no throne is more fit for Claude!
liquidise 7 hours ago [-]
This triggered a rabbit hole search that had me rediscover Packard Bell Navigator[1]. The nostalgia and joy this page brings me is hard to describe. I hope everyone remembers their formative tech journey so fondly.
Oh, this made me dig up a memory: What was that skeuomorphic music player Packard Bell would bundle with Windows 3.1? It looked like a stack of stereo equipment with a CD player, MIDI player and wav player/recorder. When I was a kid I loved how it looked like a stereo system and grabbed a copy from a friend. I also remember being greatly disappointing when it would not run on Windows 95.
AlecSchueler 6 hours ago [-]
I never experienced it but somehow I still feel nostalgic for it. For all we've gained there's so much we've lost as well, I'm sad my kids won't grow up with anything like this.
CalRobert 5 hours ago [-]
For all we've gained... the social media site I have the healthiest relationship with is basically just text and would run fine on a machine from 1998. Sure, some parts of modernity are nice (I don't miss having to call taxi companies) but I could do without a lot of it.
Keyframe 6 hours ago [-]
The maturity brought upon us homogenized experience. 90's user interfaces were something else, man.
quietfox 7 hours ago [-]
Oh this is that this was called. A long time ago, like in Googles earlier stages, I tried so hard to find this from my memory, but I failed and over the years forgot about it. Thanks for bringing it up again.
SkiFire13 7 hours ago [-]
Is there a way to see a list of the operating systems included without having to download and run the tool?
kmoser 4 hours ago [-]
It took me a few minutes to determine that this is basically software that one can download, not a website that showcases screenshots from all those OSes. A search feature would be great, or even just a text list of all included OSes.
I'm also wondering whether/how they include OSes from devices that VICE already emulates, since that could save some work if they want to include OSes of Commodore devices.
cf100clunk 7 hours ago [-]
I hope so, and also that it is a plain black-and-white list.
VLM 5 hours ago [-]
I can't figure out how to find a list and I believe that's intentional to avoid simplistic copyright search and takedown type of problems. It is aggravating how little information is available on the website.
1) I run my own systems in emulation and its always educational to see how other people handle configuration and sysadmin type problems. Much like programmers reading other programmer's code for educational purposes.
2) I have a genuine philosophical question which it appears I cannot answer by any means simpler than running it and trying it. Similar to the halting problem LOL. I wonder how the project handles operating systems like MVS/360 where there exists a perfectly good 1960s installation (which I have installed by hand from tape for the experience) however no one uses that IRL because the various MVS Turnkey projects provide seemingly infinite debugged and dependency organized patch sets. There's quite a difference between trying to white knuckle a homemade bare basic MVS/360 from the 1960s vs "MVS Turnkey 4" which basically just works out of the box.
Another example of #2 above is there's DEC PDP-8 OS-8 which technically boots... but the most common distro had a non-working but trivially fixable FORTRAN compiler (IIRC the runtime package filename was wrong or something similar). There's a lot of fun customization.
Another example of #2 above is I wonder how the author handles RSX-11M, distribute the ancient unpatched unmodified OS from DEC or ship something like the Billquist distro, or does the author ship the PiDP-11 RSX-11M (or is PiDP-11 shipping the Billquist RSX-11 distro now?)
I guess for people not into retrocomputing it would be like claiming some rando RedHat .iso from the 90s is "The" Linux operating system. Well, its "a" linux from one instant in time... Likewise there seems to be no "The" MVS/360 operating system there's a zillion possible local installs of all capability levels and eras, all very different and fun.
protocolture 31 minutes ago [-]
Wish it was a bit more searchable but still a great effort.
I am always on the hunt for AST, which was like, a vendors custom shell for Windows 95 but sold\included as if it was an OS in its own right. Its been eaten by history I think.
eduo 2 hours ago [-]
Nice. Reminds me of Frame of Preference, with embedded emulators for all major MacOS, placed on top of images of the machines they ran on, with effects to simulate the grain and color of those machines, and with scripted "goals" and easter eggs.
Linux sucks differently every time a kernel is released.
cozyman 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
nlitsme 7 hours ago [-]
quite a decent collection. and actual working osses.
one that i noticed missing: Novell Netware, I spent several years in de 90s developing software for it. It was the main office network server software on those days.
3.x, 4.x ran on relatively regular 32-bit PC server hardware.
2.x ran on the 80286 in protected mode, the only OS I know which did that.
Copies can be found at archive.org.
whartung 4 hours ago [-]
Mind, I never used Netware.
But, originally wasn't it mostly a network system to support network printers and file systems?
BTRIEVE would run on top of that. But, as I understand it, Netware wasn't required. They just went together really well.
Finally, especially with Netware 386, they supported "NLMs". "Netware Loadable Modules". This was what let you deploy applications to the network server. Some databases ported to that I believe. I think Informix had a NLM version of Informix OnLine.
So, to me, early Netware seemed more an interesting network utility more so than what I, at least, would consider an "OS". Perhaps it was an OS, but just sealed off. At least until NLMs arrived, making the system more extensible.
I have no idea what facilities were available to NLMs, or how they were developed.
davidgnz 4 hours ago [-]
I think NLMs are effectively kernel modules. No memory protection, and only cooperative multitasking. So I doubt there were much in the way of limits on what an NLM could do.
I think they were usually developed in C. Metrowerks had a compiler that could build them, and Open Watcom can still do so as well.
MisterTea 5 hours ago [-]
> 3.x, 4.x ran on relatively regular 32-bit PC server hardware. 2.x ran on the 80286 in protected mode, the only OS I know which did that.
My friends father worked for a shipping company and their office ran off a 286 Netware server until the early 2000's. It was a big white label tower with classic orange monochrome monitor and large Epson dot matrix printer with tractor feed paper.
dansquizsoft 1 hours ago [-]
Oh man, this is absolutely amazing. I’ve built a much smaller project with 13 vintage OSes running in the browser, and even at this scale the amount of fiddly work involved was stupidly high. Doing this for 1700+ systems is crazy! Nice work.
nonamenoslogan 6 hours ago [-]
This is stellar. I've been doing this for a few years myself, but I thought I was killing it with like 70ish OSs. Thank you for all your work!
drittich 5 hours ago [-]
And I thought I was killing it just saving some install disk images!
Postosuchus 3 hours ago [-]
Amazing project - and you actually fulfill a dream of mine (to have a collection absolutely all historically interesting UNIX-like OSes in VMs available on demand).
I'll dig through my collection of "abandoned" OS distros to see if I have something that could make an addition to your museum.
pvelagal 51 minutes ago [-]
I loved those solaris machines in our department lab!
erickhill 6 hours ago [-]
The rarest possible choice for Amiga (Amiga UNIX) represented. Curious thing to do. Fun project site either way.
For those experience with some of these OS, what might be something to explore (try) on these OS for some learning objective. Any call outs feature wise?
Evidlo 6 hours ago [-]
I would suggest to crop your screenshots down to the OS being featured. It's a bit confusing to see a picture labeled as IBM AIX but then see GNOME 2 window decorations everywhere.
cortesoft 6 hours ago [-]
I just love passion projects like this. One person does a ton of work because they care about the thing, and then shares it with the world so everyone can enjoy it.
NikolaNovak 6 hours ago [-]
Pardon a simple question - this implies nested virtualization, or is the second step emulation?
The download is a Linux VM, gotcha.
Are other OS-s nested virtual machines inside that Linux VM, or emulators (in which case, holly mackerel, that is even more impressive :O... and also why??).
Readme seems to imply it's emulators, but it also uses the words "virtual/virtualization" or "VM images" liberally sprinkled.
gwynforthewyn 5 hours ago [-]
I imagine the author's using OpenSIMH (https://opensimh.org) or something similar, so it'd be an emulated CPU running the userlands.
I have a container that runs a 4.3 BSD userland using opensimh; it's not super hard to set up, just takes a bit of patience and willingness to learn how opensimh works.
danborn26 3 hours ago [-]
This is a great resource. Did you run into any weird emulation quirks with the older OSes? I imagine getting some of them to boot wasn't straightforward.
sdbillin 7 hours ago [-]
Could really do with a torrent. 120GB at 3MB/sec...
dmitrygr 5 hours ago [-]
If my download ever finishes i'll spin up a torrent.
So far on retry/resume #12, 97.3/120GB done (i am live updating this comment as long as i can)
all mine broke of and wouldn't resume but became 7k broken zip files.
dmitrygr 1 hours ago [-]
downloaded, creating torrent
morphle 3 hours ago [-]
much appreciated!
Teever 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah I tried to tell him that the other day… I think he under estimated the popularity that this would have on HN and thought that cloudflare would be able to handle it
salted-cacao 5 hours ago [-]
Some of these are runnable in the browser, for example here: https://copy.sh/v86/
HeyLaughingBoy 4 hours ago [-]
Searched, but could not find OS/9.
[edit]
No, found it!
rcakebread 3 hours ago [-]
Ran it on a 32k/64k Color Computer.
Narishma 6 hours ago [-]
Scrolling is extremely laggy.
rogster 6 hours ago [-]
This is wonderful. I'm looking forward to looking thru it properly. My earliest "real computer" memories are VAX/VMS and SunTools...
whartung 4 hours ago [-]
I wrote a SunTools front end to a simulation hosted on a VAX. I don't recall how we moved the data back and forth (serial port of some kind, most likely). I also can't recall "what it was like using SunTools and SunView". Just that, whatever or however it was done, I managed to get it to work. :)
DrBurrito 4 hours ago [-]
Not a single OS/2 screenshot..
9p 2 hours ago [-]
love this stuff. please change the color scheme asap
delichon 6 hours ago [-]
I don't see HAL or WOPR or Skynet or GLaDOS.
TrackerFF 7 hours ago [-]
Just a couple of years ago I worked for a client who had a computer with Solaris 2.x running. It was quite a critical piece in the system.
llsf 6 hours ago [-]
THANK YOU!
This is a treasure trove. And glad you made the whole museum downloadable, so this treasure does not get lost.
jschveibinz 6 hours ago [-]
VMS? I didn't see it listed.
ike____________ 4 hours ago [-]
I think something got into my eye.
dchftcs 6 hours ago [-]
I'd love to go back to the 90s and live it again.
dfxm12 6 hours ago [-]
A Mister does a good job of recreating period appropriate load times and quirks. You can put it in whatever old computer case you're most nostalgic for, connect an old CRT monitor and most peripherals should have some USB converter if necessary.
“Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product intended to provide a more user-friendly interface for the Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, supplanting the Windows Program Manager.“
cf100clunk 7 hours ago [-]
Hug of death? Error code 522 on downloads.
kramit1288 6 hours ago [-]
quite impressive, how did you collected? just find images online or you actually have all of these OS.
tankenmate 6 hours ago [-]
TENEX and TOPS-20 would be nice
iberator 6 hours ago [-]
tops20 is avalible to use at sdf.org :)
strrl 6 hours ago [-]
I didn't see ryOS
FergusArgyll 3 hours ago [-]
Reposting from iluvcommunism who's shadowbanned
https://os.ryo.lu/ Quite cool.
jolmg 3 hours ago [-]
One can also click on their timestamp then click "vouch".
FergusArgyll 2 hours ago [-]
I did, I think it needs more than one vouch. Was still dead after I vouched anyway...
HeliOS and transputers is one of the most interesting systems ever; if you use Golang and/or know 9front and concurrency you'll be at home, because it was concurrent and multicore literally by design where the CPU 'cores' synced themselves with messages.
That doesn't answer his question.. looks like there isn't a comprehensive list of what's actually included. Maybe for legal reasons but that's just a guess.
newer_vienna 7 hours ago [-]
Maybe it falls under the "Various hobby/alternative OSes up to some very recent ones" category. I'm not going to download a one hundred gigabyte file to find out though...
ktm5j 4 hours ago [-]
I knoow right?! Wonder how much bandwidth they user per month and how much it costs them.
Run System 7 in an emulator and the menus look right, but the input feels wrong. What we're really preserving in these collections is the screen output, not the interaction. Which is fine for an archive — just worth being honest it's a museum of appearances, not of use.
For example, the "Domain_OS SR10.4 - 01 VUE desktop" is a bit confusing, and may cause people to miss actual DomainOS.
Apollo DomainOS (or Domain/IX, or simply Domain) had many unique and interesting things about it, but disappeared soon after being acquired by HP. It looked more like it might look if you took a programmer who had mostly only seen text terminals, and gave them a megapixel display with pixel framebuffer, a mouse, and the freedom to design the keyboard hardware, and told them to make what they would want to use.
VUE (around when the Unix workstation vendors collaborated on standarding on a common desktop environment) was for HP-UX , which was a very different operating system, and entirely different user experience. More of an early attempt at let's give non-power-users an accessible computer with virtual desktops and everything.
Similarly, Solaris had innovative OpenWindows (including but not limited to a networkable display system based on PostScript) before they got the common desktop environment.
SunOS 4.x (retronym "Solaris 1.x") and earlier could run the earlier SunView environment, which was more like monochrome early Mac than the later Open Look look and feel of OpenWindows.
It's one of those strange memories from my youth that I've been unable to confirm as an adult.
[1]https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputers/posts/7062462...
I’ve also found source for an AEGIS menu system (mouse, hotkeys) written in Forth.
Not all gear got junked. When I was a teen intern, I got some obsolete Apollos (and 2 logic analyzers and a terminal) from my employer, and other people were also bringing home gear the company "sold" them.
Somewhere, there might well be an industry or university sysadmin or programmer who brought home a box of old QIC tapes, and one of them says "AEGIS" on the label, and it's in a garage/attic.
Also, rumor has it that at one point Boeing physically archived at least one Apollo network, because they apparently take documentation integrity extremely seriously. If that's true, they might have an engineering librarian or someone who could take an interest in making sure any versions of Aegis/Domain they need (and have preserved media for) can run on emulators or something?
Currently the terminal doesn't really process input itself, it just gives the program running the "raw" fd.
If instead the terminal gave the processes a pipe (for instance) and consumed all the pty input itself (and its end of the pipe being a buffer of that content), why wouldn't it be the same?
I have long held anxiety that many of these would vanish as certain university archives disappeared. It is nice to see them protected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system
My first actual job was working for a local health authority here in the UK, and they had a Pick computer running some database application thing, I think to do with accounting. I had to run the backups. Sorry to be a whinger, I don't mean to belittle the monumental amount of work.
I loved working in Pick BASIC on those systems. So much you could do with "dict items"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssob-7sGVWs
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator
I'm also wondering whether/how they include OSes from devices that VICE already emulates, since that could save some work if they want to include OSes of Commodore devices.
1) I run my own systems in emulation and its always educational to see how other people handle configuration and sysadmin type problems. Much like programmers reading other programmer's code for educational purposes.
2) I have a genuine philosophical question which it appears I cannot answer by any means simpler than running it and trying it. Similar to the halting problem LOL. I wonder how the project handles operating systems like MVS/360 where there exists a perfectly good 1960s installation (which I have installed by hand from tape for the experience) however no one uses that IRL because the various MVS Turnkey projects provide seemingly infinite debugged and dependency organized patch sets. There's quite a difference between trying to white knuckle a homemade bare basic MVS/360 from the 1960s vs "MVS Turnkey 4" which basically just works out of the box.
Another example of #2 above is there's DEC PDP-8 OS-8 which technically boots... but the most common distro had a non-working but trivially fixable FORTRAN compiler (IIRC the runtime package filename was wrong or something similar). There's a lot of fun customization.
Another example of #2 above is I wonder how the author handles RSX-11M, distribute the ancient unpatched unmodified OS from DEC or ship something like the Billquist distro, or does the author ship the PiDP-11 RSX-11M (or is PiDP-11 shipping the Billquist RSX-11 distro now?)
I guess for people not into retrocomputing it would be like claiming some rando RedHat .iso from the 90s is "The" Linux operating system. Well, its "a" linux from one instant in time... Likewise there seems to be no "The" MVS/360 operating system there's a zillion possible local installs of all capability levels and eras, all very different and fun.
I am always on the hunt for AST, which was like, a vendors custom shell for Windows 95 but sold\included as if it was an OS in its own right. Its been eaten by history I think.
https://aresluna.org/frame-of-preference/
This preservation of old OS is important.
Spread the word, this needs to reach anyone who's interested in it.
https://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/humor/Unix/os-suck.html
macOS sucks, but it's pretty
one that i noticed missing: Novell Netware, I spent several years in de 90s developing software for it. It was the main office network server software on those days.
3.x, 4.x ran on relatively regular 32-bit PC server hardware. 2.x ran on the 80286 in protected mode, the only OS I know which did that.
Copies can be found at archive.org.
But, originally wasn't it mostly a network system to support network printers and file systems?
BTRIEVE would run on top of that. But, as I understand it, Netware wasn't required. They just went together really well.
Finally, especially with Netware 386, they supported "NLMs". "Netware Loadable Modules". This was what let you deploy applications to the network server. Some databases ported to that I believe. I think Informix had a NLM version of Informix OnLine.
So, to me, early Netware seemed more an interesting network utility more so than what I, at least, would consider an "OS". Perhaps it was an OS, but just sealed off. At least until NLMs arrived, making the system more extensible.
I have no idea what facilities were available to NLMs, or how they were developed.
I think they were usually developed in C. Metrowerks had a compiler that could build them, and Open Watcom can still do so as well.
My friends father worked for a shipping company and their office ran off a 286 Netware server until the early 2000's. It was a big white label tower with classic orange monochrome monitor and large Epson dot matrix printer with tractor feed paper.
I'll dig through my collection of "abandoned" OS distros to see if I have something that could make an addition to your museum.
The download is a Linux VM, gotcha.
Are other OS-s nested virtual machines inside that Linux VM, or emulators (in which case, holly mackerel, that is even more impressive :O... and also why??).
Readme seems to imply it's emulators, but it also uses the words "virtual/virtualization" or "VM images" liberally sprinkled.
I have a container that runs a 4.3 BSD userland using opensimh; it's not super hard to set up, just takes a bit of patience and willingness to learn how opensimh works.
So far on retry/resume #12, 97.3/120GB done (i am live updating this comment as long as i can)
seeding now.
and it is not resuming ...
#23, 118.5/120GB and going again[edit] No, found it!
This is a treasure trove. And glad you made the whole museum downloadable, so this treasure does not get lost.
“Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product intended to provide a more user-friendly interface for the Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, supplanting the Windows Program Manager.“
https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n4/transputer.html
They were pretty much ahead of time with multiprocessing.
Are there any any operating systems that you'd like to add to the collection but haven't been able to find?
Maybe someone here at HN could help with that.