Get the latest tech news

Installing AIX PS/2 v1.3 on a 486


e August of 2022, after two years of remaining relatively healthy, COVID-19 finally caught up with me. Cut off from friendly gathering, working out, and even food that wasn’t protein bars, a completely normal thought occurred to me: “How about I install AIX on my old 486?” My 486 is, as I assume most extant 486es are today, a franken-486: a hodgepodge of pieces collected over the course of thirty years, ultimately a Ship of Theseus of opportunity (yard sales!) and necessity (30 year old capacitors!).

Cut off from friendly gathering, working out, and even food that wasn’t protein bars, a completely normal thought occurred to me: “How about I install AIX on my old 486?” My 486 is, as I assume most extant 486es are today, a franken-486: a hodgepodge of pieces collected over the course of thirty years, ultimately a Ship of Theseus of opportunity (yard sales!) In my case, it’s actually not correct to even call it a 486 anymore - while it might have started life as a Compaq Deskpro 4/33i with a proper 33MHz 486DX CPU, it’s now sporting an 83MHz Pentium Overdrive.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Hacker News

Read more on:

Photo of AIX

AIX

Photo of AIX PS/2

AIX PS/2

Related news:

News photo

IBM scores perfect 10 ... vulnerability in mission-critical OS AIX