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Meet Jonathan Ives
Linux/Unix people
BSD, Linux, IT, Life, Wisdom
Wisdom
I’ve been using Unix or Linux based systems since the mid 1980’s and can remember a time when the world was green screen and command line, before the dark times, before windows.
I studied at Sheffield City Polytechnic, doing a Degree in Computer Studies.
I didn’t have a clear idea what I wanted to do as a career, but neighbours and relatives said Computers were “the new big thing”.
Also I thought the album “Computer World” by Kraftwerk was pretty cool, and I loved the TV commercial for the Fiat Punto “Handbuilt by Robots”.
Computer World by Kraftwerk
On the Degree we learnt basic programming in Pascal, Cobol and assembler , on aged IBM mainframes using teletype paper roll based devices.
It was archaic, but that was normal then.
I had done some programming on the Sinclair ZX80 and the BBC micro was around then too.
Sinclair ZX80
BBC Micro computer
The Degree was a sandwich course, lasting 4 years with a 12 month work experience included, today this would be called an internship, though back then it was fully paid.
6 of us were lucky enough to do our placement at ICL , in Bracknell.
Now part of Fujitsu, ICL was the largest UK computer manufacturer.
ICL Building, Bracknell
I worked on the second floor of this building, which at the time also housed the largest data centre in Europe - for the ICL Mainframes running VME
I wrote some scripts to test printers and other devices, before being moved to a team testing the then new port of Unix System V on a new small departmental computer they were releasing - the DRS300.
ICL DRS300 computer
It was an 8086 and later 286 based computer system with up to 6 CRT “dumb” terminals connected. They sold two flavours, one with a port of unix, the other running a port of C/PM.
CP/M Operating System
IU was required to write shell scripts that would run on a reference machine (not ICL) also running Sys V, and diff the results with the test ports to the DRS300.
Each command in the operating system, for example bc, would be scripted to run a number of functions and collect the output and compare with the reference.
The whole thing was run as a batch.
I learnt vi and ed editors, shell scripts and over the 12 months I was there I learned to love Unix.
VI Editor
ED Editor
I’m not sure if I had an epiphany , but it just felt right to me.
The way you could walk around the filesystem and look at things, the way the processes were spawned, the way huge chunks were written in script and you could understand what they were doing.
UNIX Operating System
There were some really great people working at ICL, some still there.
They were generous with their time with me and their enthusiasm.
When I returned to my Degree I wrote my thesis on contrasting the Unix and Pick Operating systems.
Pick Operating System
Today Pick is all but forgotten, but it was a portable OS, being closer to a relational database function.
ICL offered me a job conditional on graduating, and I returned to ICL , to the same department from 1986-1988, this time testing network coexistence products on the DRS300 (IBM comms).
I wanted to get married and own a house, so decided to leave ICL and took a job with an ICL reseller who configured solutions on the ICL DRS300 for Government and Defence projects.
I learned applications like Informix, and an office suite called Uniplex which ran on dumb terminals , VT100 mode, just like when you ssh into a machine.
UNIPLEX
These were successful and for a window of 10 years were very popular, before everything went PC windows.
Microsoft Windows 1.0
I learned a lot of skills on that job, including presales, which is helping sales with technical information, building demos, and installing real life systems.
The job was good, but the drive was long, so after a year I took a job with DEC (The Digital Equipment Company) - the people who produced the PDP and VAX ranges of Mini computers, and on which Unix was first developed.
PDP Mini computer
VAX Mini Computer
DEC had a strange relationship with Unix.
Their main OS was VMS which they loved, but they did also have their own port of BSD Unix, called Ultrix.
VMS Operating System
Ultrix Operating System
My job was to be the Ultrix guy in a specialist team that covered Office Automation and Desktop Publishing products.
In the UK a lot of Government accounts were stipulating Open Systems, and VMS was not going to work for them.
Again I helped sell solutions, sometimes based on Uniplex, or the new X-windows based workstations from DEC, used in Desktop Publishing.
DEC was great and the people I worked with put up with me always saying Unix is better.
DEC started to hit hard times and I left in 1993, just as their new Alpha 64 bit processor was coming out and the OSF1 port of Unix, which was connected with the development of the Motif Window manager.
Alpha 64 bit processor
DEC OSF1 Operating System
I moved to Oracle, the big database company and worked there for 25 years.
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
TVP Building 510 for Oracle
Oracle had ideas about building email and calendar systems using the relational database and competing with Microsoft.
They did, but the products never really sold in large quantities.
Later I worked on document management and portal systems.
Oracle was ported to many platforms and a lot of the time we used Sun microsystems for demo machines, so I learned another flavour of Unix.
Over the years we transitioned to Laptops , and in the team I worked we pride ourselves on always erasing windows from laptops and installing RedHat Linux , which was quite new in the early 90’s.
Red Hat Linux 6.2
Later Oracle forked their own port of Redhat.
As a company they were pretty cool at letting you run a non approved build on laptops internally, and this got easier to do as everything went over to a webUI.
I eventually was made redundant from Oracle in 2018, but I’d had a great time with them, met many great people and travelled the world, especially to San Francisco where Oracle are based, a city I love.
I took a year off, then took a job at MuleSoft, in presales.
I’d never been a developer, but figured I could learn all about API management, Cloud, Containers, JSON, which was interesting but pretty demanding.
I worked there for about 9 months, but decided the commuting into London was too much and I was able to retire from work.
Since I retired I enjoy working with Linux, and MacOS , which is a distant relative being based on FreeBSD.
One of my hobbies is rebuilding old computers I found at home or buy cheaply to run distributed computing projects through the boinc system.
BOINC Project Architecture
I have 12 or so headless computers which I manage via ssh, and run projects focused on citizen science - mostly astronomy and medical research.
I have 10 Raspberry Pi’s of various generations which I tweak and tune to better run boinc, it's enormous fun.
I also volunteer at a number of repair cafes, where fixing old laptops often requires booting them from a LiveUSB edition of Linux to try and recover files from a failing HDD.
I’ve never really learned or used windows in my work, though I can use it, but I never warmed to it, just as I never much liked VMS.
Unix/Linux has stayed with me from job to job and into my retirement.
I was very lucky in that Industrial placement with ICL to learn a precursor OS to the one that would eventually run the internet.
I used to say I was a “child of innit”, but I guess I might need to update that to “systemd” 🙂
About the Author
Jonathan Ives
Jonathan Ives
For LinkedIn Profile Click here
Retired after 35 years in IT but still interested in some aspects ,specifically dealing with the issue of data centre waste heat reuse.
I participate in a number of citizen science distributed computing projects (Fold@home, einstein@home, World Community Grid) using the menagerie of computers I have acquired over the years.
These also help to heat Ives Towers.
I'm also a volunteer at a number of Repair Cafes
See you in the next one!
If you wish to support our project
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