What is this rare multi-user UNIX workstation? (Plexus P/20)

Thank you to everyone who has reversed the root passwords I briefly showed. One of my patrons jumped onto it when I first released this video to them and managed to provide them. :-) Also check out my Github repo with some technical information and various documents which have been turned up so far on these Plexus machines: github.com/misterblack1/plexus-p20

That looks a whole lot like a gateway drug to the large scale minicomputer world. Welcome!

Finally! I worked for Plexus from 85 to 88. This was the smallest Plexus system. It was code named Robin. It competed with the NCR Tower.

Should get a solar panel to run it off of, so it can be a solar plexus.

And THIS is one of my favorite type of content. Unknown machine, unknown architecture and unknown soft. I can't wait for another episode.

About Plexus Computer, Inc. : It started operating in 1981 and in 1988 sold its Unix and hardware side of their business to Motorola. By this time they 've already gone up to the 68020 processor with up to 48 MB of RAM and adopted the VMEbus in their P/95 product. They kept on developing their expensive and niche software imaging products under chapter 11 protection (bankruptcy) until 1989 when they finally sold the remaining software assets to "Recognition Equipment".

Adrian is attempting a Usagi Electric type of revival. Look at what Usagi Electric did with Centurion mini computers 😊

For unix that old passwords are probably saved with DES, not MD5. At the time MD5 itself did not even exist.

Strictly speaking, this is not a workstation. When I was at Plexus, we referred to it as our entry-level departmental deskside system.

I wasn't sure if I would just bounce off this video. I've never had any connection to UNIX or any kind of terminal based computing. But I really enjoyed this! And very much looking forward to the story unfolding 😁

Now THATS a motherboard.

When encountering a key cylinder like that, the best approach in my opinion is to order a replacement key off eBay. Usually the number stamped into the cylinder next to the keyhole will tell you all you need to know to find the correct key. In this case it is an EAO 311 selector switch key.

It's crazy how they took the time to make a mainframe that almost no one will ever see look so nice. That thing is a work of art.

So cool to see one of those again! I worked for a Circuit City location years ago that in the 2000s was still running serial terminals over a PLEXUS server. I do know it was based on 68030 CPUs, with a pair of 160MB SCSI drives in mirror. But it so happened that I was the only non-corporate person who had root level login on the command line. The rest of the store was based on a locked menu for sales, inventory management, etc. I had just quit consulting and as the ONLY person on site with Unix certificates, I got saddled with emergency on-call. It never happened, but oh that brings back memories!

Regarding /etc/passwd. You can easily override the root password when (if) you boot in single user mode, before the entire Unix is run at multi-user boot level. It would mean editing /etc/passwd and simply setting the password field as blank between the colon separators for the root user. Of course, that relies on a whole bunch of prior steps working correctly to get it to the point of beginning the boot process. Generally the approach is when the boot device is specified by the ROM monitor (i.e BIOS), the boot level is typically also specified. This is from memory, from general Unix/SCO/Xenix principles, so Plexus Unix SysVR2 will probably have it's own specific incantation to specify the boot level.

The main board reminds me of the inside of an arcade cabinet, I've never seen such a dense amount of ICs

Didn't you use to have an old AT&T Unix machine? Wouldnt mind a followup.

That is BEAUTIFUL COMPUTER. Wow. This is the way we all thought our own computers would look someday. I think old computers had a way of looking more futuristic and capable than they really were...and now that computers are as powerful as the old machines looked, they're more boring to look at.

One of the root passwords (hash begins SLW/...) is an empty string. devroot is, too.

Qoffice was an office automation suite from Quadratron Systems. Main feature was a word processor, but it also had EMail and database. I don't recall it having a spreadsheet. It was really slow -- optimized to handle many concurrent users, rather than being good for any one person. For example, it didn't try to optimize screen updates, because that would require CPU cycles. A full redraw could be offloaded to an I/O processor.